The following appeared as a letter to the editor from the owner of a skate shop in Central Plaza.
"Two years ago the city council voted to prohibit skateboarding in Central Plaza. They claimed that skateboard users were responsible for litter and vandalism that were keeping other visitors from coming to the plaza. In the past two years, however, there has been only a small increase in the number of visitors to Central Plaza, and litter and vandalism are still problematic. Skateboarding is permitted in Monroe Park, however, and there is no problem with litter or vandalism there. In order to restore Central Plaza to its former glory, then, we recommend that the city lift its prohibition on skateboarding in the plaza."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation 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 recommendation.
The owner of a skate shop in Central Plaza claims that in order to restore Central Plaza to its former glory, the city should lift the prohibition of using skateboards in the plaza since the ban has done little to improve the number of people coming to the plaza and solve the problems associated with litter and vandalism. To support his claim, he has erroneously made a few assumptions which undermine his cause. The author should clarify these assumptions with valid data to bolster his claim.
The author also states that in the two years since the prohibition, the number of people visiting the plaza has not increased significantly. However, there can be numerous reasons for the declining popularity of the plaza. For example, new shopping complexes with better facilities may have opened near the Plaza, the shops in the plaza can be overpriced, the food that the plaza serves can have inferior quality, the economic condition of residents surrounding Central Plaza may have deteriorated etc. which prevents people from going to the plaza. Without detailed proof, which negates all other causes for declining popularity of the plaza, it is not correct to conclude that lifting the ban on skateboarding will restore the plaza to its former glory.
The author has also stated that even after the prohibition of skateboarding the plaza still faces problems with litter and vandalism. Here the author has fallaciously assumed that since skateboarding has been prohibited in the Plaza, the skateboard users have also stopped coming there. Since the skateboard users may continue to frequent the Plaza, they are likely to continue to litter and vandalize it, thus making it still a persistent problem. At the same time there may be new sources that are littering and vandalizing the plaza. For example, food outlets in the Plaza may be responsible for the litter. Similarly, there is a possibility that area surrounding the Plaza have seen a drastic change in its population – increased unemployed and homeless people, who may be involved in vandalism. Concluding that litter and vandalism problem was not all or solely due to skateboarding would be wrong. Hence, it is fallacious to say that since litter and vandalizing problems are extant, skateboarding will not worsen the situation.
Finally, the author uses the example of Monroe Park, which permits skateboarding and does not have any problem with litter and vandalism, and extrapolates that since Monroe Park does not face problems neither will Central Plaza. It could simply be that Monroe Park has a better security system which results in no problems with littering and vandalism. Additionally, the skateboarders visiting Monroe Park could be better educated and law abiding people from affluent families. Therefore, without a proper comparison between the two places to establish their similarities it would be misleading to assume that reintroducing skateboarding in Central Plaza will have no adverse effect on the current situation of the plaza.
Under these conditions, it would be erroneous to conclude that banning skateboarding did not have the desired effect on the popularity and cleanliness of the plaza and lifting the ban will not have any antagonistic effects on the plaza but will increase its popularity.
Discourse Markers used:
['also', 'but', 'finally', 'hence', 'however', 'if', 'may', 'similarly', 'so', 'still', 'therefore', 'thus', 'for example']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.248695652174 0.25644967241 97% => OK
Verbs: 0.187826086957 0.15541462614 121% => OK
Adjectives: 0.0591304347826 0.0836205057962 71% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0486956521739 0.0520304965353 94% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0295652173913 0.0272364105082 109% => OK
Prepositions: 0.111304347826 0.125424944231 89% => OK
Participles: 0.0713043478261 0.0416121511921 171% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.82988426036 2.79052419416 101% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0295652173913 0.026700313972 111% => OK
Particles: 0.0 0.001811407834 0% => OK
Determiners: 0.114782608696 0.113004496875 102% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0382608695652 0.0255425247493 150% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.0139130434783 0.0127820249294 109% => OK
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 3295.0 2731.13054187 121% => OK
No of words: 530.0 446.07635468 119% => OK
Chars per words: 6.21698113208 6.12365571057 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.79809637944 4.57801047555 105% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.394339622642 0.378187486979 104% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.267924528302 0.287650121315 93% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.194339622642 0.208842608468 93% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.137735849057 0.135150697306 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.82988426036 2.79052419416 101% => OK
Unique words: 233.0 207.018472906 113% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.439622641509 0.469332199767 94% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
Word variations: 50.9513140082 52.1807786196 98% => OK
How many sentences: 21.0 20.039408867 105% => OK
Sentence length: 25.2380952381 23.2022227129 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 75.0634501069 57.7814097925 130% => OK
Chars per sentence: 156.904761905 141.986410481 111% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.2380952381 23.2022227129 109% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.619047619048 0.724660767414 85% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.14285714286 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 3.58251231527 0% => OK
Readability: 52.0305480683 51.9672348444 100% => OK
Elegance: 1.62091503268 1.8405768891 88% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.581513307356 0.441005458295 132% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.177851703745 0.135418324435 131% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0842361278614 0.0829849096947 102% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.592890118961 0.58762219726 101% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.158813968812 0.147661913831 108% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.253948837942 0.193483328276 131% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.122637003177 0.0970749176394 126% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.529911929284 0.42659136922 124% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0773707555479 0.0774707102158 100% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.418810106399 0.312017818177 134% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0856204235071 0.0698173142475 123% => OK
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.33743842365 156% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.87684729064 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.82512315271 41% => OK
Positive topic words: 9.0 6.46551724138 139% => OK
Negative topic words: 6.0 5.36822660099 112% => OK
Neutral topic words: 2.0 2.82389162562 71% => OK
Total topic words: 17.0 14.657635468 116% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
---------------------
Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
---------------------
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.