The following appeared as an editorial in the student newspaper of Groveton College.
"To combat the recently reported dramatic rise in cheating among college students, colleges and universities should adopt honor codes similar to Groveton's, which calls for students to agree not to cheat in their academic endeavors and to notify a faculty member if they suspect that others have cheated. Groveton's honor code replaced an old-fashioned system in which teachers closely monitored students. Under that system, teachers reported an average of thirty cases of cheating per year. The honor code has proven far more successful: in the first year it was in place, students reported twenty-one cases of cheating; five years later, this figure had dropped to fourteen. Moreover, in a recent survey conducted by the Groveton honor council, a majority of students said that they would be less likely to cheat with an honor code in place than without."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The arguer claimed that since after Groveton College adopted the honor code, cheating among students became less prevalent and students reported that they were less liekly to cheat. Given this great experience, all colleges and universities should adopt the honor code to mitigate cheating. To make this argument more compelling, some evidences need to be looked more closely.
First of all, the arguer claimed that the number of reported cheating cases dropped from more than 30 to 14. While the number of cases dropped, it is not clear if the ratio of dishonest student also decreased. If the enrolled students has been declining for the past five years, it is not surprising that the number of the cases of cheating dropped. Therefore, the evidence of decreasing ratio of cheating should be provided instead of the number of reported cases. A decreasing ratio would strengthen the argument, indicating that honor code may help showing that the honor code prevented students from cheating.
Moreover, the arguer also mentioned that the honor code replaced the closely manual monitor. It may indicate that the probability of cheating without been detected increase. That is, the dishonest students still cheated but not been caught due to the lack of close monitor, rendering the declination in reported cases of cheating. To strengthen the argument, the evidence that the probability of cheating been caught remain the same.
The arguer also refer to a survey showing that students are less likely to cheat. It worth noting that people tends to conform to the social norms when answering the survey, especially when the survey is not conducted anonymously. After all, few students would honestly report that they want to cheat if their identies were not protected. The aruger should mention how the survey was conducted. If the survey was conducted correctly and anonymously, and the result of the survey was valid, this evidence may strengthen the arguments. Otherwise, the result of the survey was probably invalid and thus weaken the argument.
Finally, it worth questioning if the Groveton College's case is universal. It may be the case that the Groveton College is a religious school and most students have higher moral standard, or the Groveton College is full of students that do not need to worry about graduating on time, so they have less incentive to cheat. To show that other schools adopting the honor code would generate the similar results, the arguer has to show that Groveton College is an average college that has no special properties that make the case particular.
To conclude, while adopting honor code may help reducing the chance of cheating, some evidences have to be provided to strengthen the arguments.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 446 350
No. of Characters: 2238 1500
No. of Different Words: 191 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.596 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.018 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.469 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 167 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 129 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 99 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 45 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.273 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.203 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.682 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.329 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.6 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.147 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 553, Rule ID: ADVISE_VBG[5]
Message: The verb 'help' is used with infinitive: 'to show' or 'show'.
Suggestion: to show; show
...nt, indicating that honor code may help showing that the honor code prevented students ...
^^^^^^^
Line 11, column 49, Rule ID: ADVISE_VBG[5]
Message: The verb 'help' is used with infinitive: 'to reduce' or 'reduce'.
Suggestion: to reduce; reduce
...ude, while adopting honor code may help reducing the chance of cheating, some evidences ...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, honestly, if, look, may, moreover, so, still, then, therefore, thus, while, after all, as to, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 21.0 13.6137724551 154% => OK
Pronoun: 32.0 28.8173652695 111% => OK
Preposition: 48.0 55.5748502994 86% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2302.0 2260.96107784 102% => OK
No of words: 446.0 441.139720559 101% => OK
Chars per words: 5.16143497758 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.5955099915 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.56657421152 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 197.0 204.123752495 97% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.441704035874 0.468620217663 94% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 704.7 705.55239521 100% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 45.9347363114 57.8364921388 79% => OK
Chars per sentence: 104.636363636 119.503703932 88% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.2727272727 23.324526521 87% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.04545454545 5.70786347227 106% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 13.0 6.88822355289 189% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.334228229093 0.218282227539 153% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0984006788441 0.0743258471296 132% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0947900015019 0.0701772020484 135% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.17782709971 0.128457276422 138% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.125235997555 0.0628817314937 199% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.0 14.3799401198 90% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.65 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.35 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 105.0 98.500998004 107% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 7.5 12.3882235529 61% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.