The following appeared in a letter to the editor of the Parkville Daily newspaper.
"Throughout the country last year, as more and more children below the age of nine participated in youth-league sports, over 40,000 of these young players suffered injuries. When interviewed for a recent study, youth-league soccer players in several major cities also reported psychological pressure exerted by coaches and parents to win games. Furthermore, education experts say that long practice sessions for these sports take away time that could be used for academic activities. Since the disadvantages outweigh any advantages, we in Parkville should discontinue organized athletic competition for children under nine."
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 the letter to the editor of the Parkville Daily newspaper the author states that organized athletics should be discontinued in Parkville due to the numerous negative impacts. The evidence is that the children suffer from practices being too long, injuries are on the rise, and unfavorable results from psychological pressure. However, the argument should be considered flawed and unconvincing due to its reliance on several unsupported assumptions.
First of all, the author assumes that by shortening the long practice sessions there could be more time used for the children’s academic activities. Perhaps shorter practice sessions lead to more time the kids play video games, or sleep, or watch television. Just because the children have more time available does not mean they will devote that time to studying. If this scenario is true, then the argument does not hold water.
Futhermore, the writer presumes that the sports related injuries in child athletes will continue to increase. It is possible that new technology, rules, and equipment will drastically decrease these sports related injuries. Maybe this year there will be only a few injuries that have resulted from athletics. If the case above is true, then the conclusion drawn in the argument is significantly weakened.
Finally, the author assumes that the reported psycological pressures exerted by the parents and coaches to win games have a negative outcome. Perhaps these psycological pressures result in a strong competitive spirit and diligent work habits for the children. For example, professional athletes have multiple coaches throughout life that have a main purpose of motivating and pushing the athletes to excel and win. If this is true, then the assertion made by the author is dramatically hampered.
In conclusion, the argument presented by the author is potentially a good idea. However, as it stands now, the argument is considerably flawed due to its reliance on several unwarranted assumptions. Unless the author is able to provide more sound evidence(in the form of a meta analysis), then the viewers should consider the argument unpersuasive.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 335 350
No. of Characters: 1758 1500
No. of Different Words: 178 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.278 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.248 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.81 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 136 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 111 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 86 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 43 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.611 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 4.361 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.556 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.314 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.567 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.063 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 16, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...amatically hampered. In conclusion, the argument presented by the author is ...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
finally, first, however, if, may, so, then, for example, in conclusion, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 16.0 19.6327345309 81% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 19.0 28.8173652695 66% => OK
Preposition: 32.0 55.5748502994 58% => More preposition wanted.
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1821.0 2260.96107784 81% => OK
No of words: 335.0 441.139720559 76% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.43582089552 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.27820116611 4.56307096286 94% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.92906255317 2.78398813304 105% => OK
Unique words: 181.0 204.123752495 89% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.540298507463 0.468620217663 115% => OK
syllable_count: 573.3 705.55239521 81% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 30.0760866413 57.8364921388 52% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 101.166666667 119.503703932 85% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.6111111111 23.324526521 80% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.66666666667 5.70786347227 82% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.101005322353 0.218282227539 46% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0291802376679 0.0743258471296 39% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0329578437562 0.0701772020484 47% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0523013963358 0.128457276422 41% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0292372822791 0.0628817314937 46% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.5 14.3799401198 94% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 44.75 48.3550499002 93% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.27 12.5979740519 113% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.2 8.32208582834 111% => OK
difficult_words: 99.0 98.500998004 101% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.