The following is a recommendation from the personnel director to the president of Acme Publishing Company.
"Many other companies have recently stated that having their employees take the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course has greatly improved productivity. One graduate of the course was able to read a 500-page report in only two hours; another graduate rose from an assistant manager to vice president of the company in under a year. Obviously, the faster you can read, the more information you can absorb in a single workday. Moreover, Easy Read would cost Acme only $500 per employee — a small price to pay when you consider the benefits. Included in this fee is a three-week seminar in Spruce City and a lifelong subscription to the Easy Read newsletter. Clearly, to improve productivity, Acme should require all of our employees to take the Easy Read course."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the advice and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the advice.
At first glance, the author’s argument seems plausible. After all, investing in their employee’s growth could have an increase in productivity in the long term. Nonetheless, once it’s fully analyzed, the assumption that the company should require all employees to partake in the course will clearly improve productivity is flawed and unsound.
To begin, the author emphasizes the idea that because other companies suggest the course has greatly improved productivity, this will occur in their own company as well. Two important questions are left unanswered: What does the word productivity in this context mean? How is it measured? It could be that in other companies, individuals were able to process more emails by teaching their employees how to be more efficient readers. Or perhaps they can read memos faster. However, none of those explanations back the idea that investing in this program had a definite impact worth the cost. In order for this point to have more weight, the author needs to provide data of how the program would directly and quantitatively improve the company and its employees.
Moreover, the author uses an example of a graduate of the program rising from an assistant manager position to vice president. It’s implied the employee’s success in the program led to his promotion. But, no context is provided behind this promotion. Possibly the employee had great credentials and the team he led was doing great at the time. Perhaps he was working on an MBA, and this was the tool that enhanced his resume enough to land him the position. The author should provide more evidence to understand why this promotion occurred and if in reality it had any impact in the success of the employee.
Lastly, the author says that the faster you read, the more information one can imbibe in a single workday. This is a quite a flawed statement. First of all, one can read as fast as they can, and it does not guarantee any individual’s grasp of the content. Second of all, most of us have a limited capacity of information we can process at any given time. One could argue that this directive will cause issues in the future as the employee’s brain power will be hindered by the quantity of information provided to them. Ultimately, this will not be beneficial to the employees or the company, proving to be a negative effect on productivity.
In conclusion, the director’s recommendation to have all employees go through the course to improve productivity is flawed. Many questions are left without response in his argument: How is productivity measured? What was the context behind the assistant manager’s promotion? What evidence can he produce to support the idea that the faster a person reads, the more information they absorb? If the author wants his argument to have validity, he should provide answers and evidence. Otherwise, his assumptions are flawed and hollow.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
The arguments are on the wrong way.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: ??? out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 28 15
No. of Words: 481 350
No. of Characters: 2350 1500
No. of Different Words: 231 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.683 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.886 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.688 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 174 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 134 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 88 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 56 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 17.179 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.172 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.464 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.262 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.449 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.106 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, however, if, lastly, moreover, nonetheless, second, so, well, after all, in conclusion, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 45.0 28.8173652695 156% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 57.0 55.5748502994 103% => OK
Nominalization: 19.0 16.3942115768 116% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2464.0 2260.96107784 109% => OK
No of words: 481.0 441.139720559 109% => OK
Chars per words: 5.12266112266 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.68313059816 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.97919184411 2.78398813304 107% => OK
Unique words: 234.0 204.123752495 115% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.486486486486 0.468620217663 104% => OK
syllable_count: 764.1 705.55239521 108% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 28.0 19.7664670659 142% => OK
Sentence length: 17.0 22.8473053892 74% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 42.8905078457 57.8364921388 74% => OK
Chars per sentence: 88.0 119.503703932 74% => OK
Words per sentence: 17.1785714286 23.324526521 74% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.0 5.70786347227 70% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.67664670659 171% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.186221629753 0.218282227539 85% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0492459728914 0.0743258471296 66% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0585297961001 0.0701772020484 83% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.112266214584 0.128457276422 87% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.044212049647 0.0628817314937 70% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.3 14.3799401198 79% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 54.22 48.3550499002 112% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.9 12.197005988 81% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.12 12.5979740519 96% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.22 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 114.0 98.500998004 116% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 9.0 12.3882235529 73% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.8 11.1389221557 79% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.