While the Department of Education in the state of Attra recommends that high school students be assigned homework every day, the data from a recent statewide survey of high school math and science teachers give us reason to question the usefulness of daily homework. In the district of Sanlee, 86 percent of the teachers reported assigning homework three to five times a week, whereas in the district of Marlee, less than 25 percent of the teachers reported assigning homework three to five times a week. Yet the students in Marlee earn better grades overall and are less likely to be required to repeat a year of school than are the students in Sanlee. Therefore, all teachers in our high schools should assign homework no more than twice a week.
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
In this statement, the author questioned the usefulness of a recommendation from the Department of Education in the state of Attra, in which students are recommended to be assigned homework daily. To support his/her argument, the author referred to a statewide survey of high school math and science teachers. Specifically, the author took the data of the district of Sanlee and the district of Marlee as his examples. In the former district, 86 percent students are assigned 3-5 times of homework per week comparing to less than 25 percent students with the same frequency in the latter district. Nevertheless, the students of the latter district outperformed the former one in the criteria of overall grades and possibility to take an additional school year. With this counterintuitive result, the author argue that teachers should assign homework less than twice a week instead of recommended daily basis. Though seeming to be reasonable with all the data as a backup, the whole induction is based on several questionable presumptions, which will be detrimental to the whole argument if proved to be unjustified.
First of all, the survey referred by the author was based on math and science teachers. However, the author extended the subject frontier and made his/her suggestions to all teachers in their high schools. The premise here is that this kind of subject generalization is reasonable and grounded. However, it is not necessarily true in reality. For example, in the field of literature and writing, if students do not have enough homework to practice their newly learned writing techniques, it is intuitively not possible for them to solidly master those skills, not to mention managing to use them in the future. The whole course will become more of a reading practice course instead of a writing one. In a word, courses are not mutually similar and some of them need more practice after the limited contacting hours in the class if students want to do well in these subjects, which requires more homework.
Another assumption the author implied in his induction is that after school homework frequency is the only changing variable and every other variables stays the same between those two districts mentioned by the author. Yet, this assumption is also hardly to be proved true. Since they are two different districts, too many other factors could influence those students performance besides the after school homework frequency. For example, the teachers teaching style and ability, the quality of infrastructures in those schools (such as lab equipments) and even the neighborhood atmosphere toward education could to some extends if not a lot influence students’ school performance. If the outperformed district turns out to have better teachers, better infrastructures and more attention to education in the neighborhood, the combining effects of all those factors will make the results hard to explain thus making the induction of the author unreliable.
If we take a more careful scrutiny, we will find a even more questionable assumption: the author are talking about the frequency of students’ homework, as if more frequent homework implies more workloads after school. This assumption is also not necessarily true. A teacher may assign a less frequent homework while he/she could also increase the workload of the homework each time and still balance the overall workload. In this case, it is not necessarily important how frequent teachers arrange their homework but the overall workloads will really take effects, which consequently makes the argument of the author about how many times should teachers assign homework per week to improve students’ performance a neither reasonable nor important aspect to consider.
To put it together, the author based his/her induction on assumptions of subjects generalization, variables comparability between schools of different districts, and equality between homework frequency and actual workloads, thus making the whole induction unwarranted and questionable.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
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| 2020-01-03 | stevewang1007 | 69 | view |
| 2019-12-06 | harshit kukreja | 53 | view |
| 2019-11-25 | Yann | 63 | view |
| 2019-11-18 | ifxcuo | 43 | view |
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- duplicated to argument 2
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Need to argue against the conclusion always. For this topic it is:
Therefore, all teachers in our high schools should assign homework no more than twice a week.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 638 350
No. of Characters: 3328 1500
No. of Different Words: 265 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.026 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.216 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.878 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 264 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 211 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 155 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 83 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.583 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.899 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.708 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.306 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.484 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.146 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 469, Rule ID: AFFORD_VBG[1]
Message: This verb is used with infinitive: 'to write'.
Suggestion: to write
...omework to practice their newly learned writing techniques, it is intuitively not possi...
^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 360, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'students'' or 'student's'?
Suggestion: students'; student's
...any other factors could influence those students performance besides the after school ho...
^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 50, Rule ID: EN_A_VS_AN
Message: Use 'an' instead of 'a' if the following word starts with a vowel sound, e.g. 'an article', 'an hour'
Suggestion: an
...e a more careful scrutiny, we will find a even more questionable assumption: the ...
^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, besides, but, consequently, first, however, if, may, nevertheless, really, so, still, thus, well, while, for example, kind of, such as, talking about, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 18.0 11.1786427146 161% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 38.0 28.8173652695 132% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 87.0 55.5748502994 157% => OK
Nominalization: 30.0 16.3942115768 183% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3425.0 2260.96107784 151% => OK
No of words: 634.0 441.139720559 144% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.40220820189 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.01790360848 4.56307096286 110% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.01740622387 2.78398813304 108% => OK
Unique words: 282.0 204.123752495 138% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.444794952681 0.468620217663 95% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 1049.4 705.55239521 149% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 15.0 8.76447105788 171% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 10.0 4.22255489022 237% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 80.7732487172 57.8364921388 140% => OK
Chars per sentence: 142.708333333 119.503703932 119% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.4166666667 23.324526521 113% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.04166666667 5.70786347227 123% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 9.0 4.67664670659 192% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.282691190141 0.218282227539 130% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0791135350303 0.0743258471296 106% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0758203005254 0.0701772020484 108% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.145491257263 0.128457276422 113% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0917976529369 0.0628817314937 146% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.2 14.3799401198 120% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 36.63 48.3550499002 76% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.6 12.197005988 120% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.34 12.5979740519 114% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.39 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 139.0 98.500998004 141% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 30 minutes.
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.