An ancient, traditional remedy for insomnia—the scent of lavender flowers—has now been proved effective. In a recent study, 30 volunteers with chronic insomnia slept each night for three weeks on lavender-scented pillows in a controlled room where their sleep was monitored electronically. During the first week, volunteers continued to take their usual sleeping medication. They slept soundly but wakened feeling tired. At the beginning of the second week, the volunteers discontinued their sleeping medication. During that week, they slept less soundly than the previous week and felt even more tired. During the third week, the volunteers slept longer and more soundly than in the previous two weeks. Therefore, the study proves that lavender cures insomnia within a short period of time.
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 author suggests that lavender could work as a remedy for insomnia of which efficacy shows within a short period of time. The author cites a recent study to prove the argument. However, the author fails to provide sufficient evidences to support the claim.
First, the author does not provide information if those 30 volunteers participated in a recent study could fully represent the entire population. The sample size is too small to effectively draw conclusion of the whole population. The author needs to provide a study conducted with increased sample size. Also, there is no data of demographics of those subjects and if the study participants were selected through random assignment according to their demographic data. The author needs to show more information regarding how those volunteers were gathered, which could either strengthen or weaken the argument.
Second evidence that needs to be provided is the degree of resemblance of the controlled setting to environments elsewhere. What worked in a controlled room could not necessarily so in other settings such as a real bedroom. Particular settings in that controlled room could have facilitated the positive outcome on participants. There is a possibility that participants' insomnia was improved owing to other confounding variables, not lavender. It could be differences in room temperature, weather, presence of bugs, and lighting that affected largely on those volunteers' sleep quality. The author has to provide information of which the controlled setting accurately mimics conditions of other rooms in reality in order to strengthen the claim.
Third, the author has to give further information regarding the study subjects' responses. Even if the electronic device proves to be efficacious, the participants' sleep quality and tiredness are also dependent on their responses. Thus, evaluation of the objectiveness of those responses is required since their answers could be out of placebo effect. Without the evidence of how objective those responses are, reliability of those answers will remain questionable.
Lastly, information of effects after the study is required. The study is only conducted for three weeks, which is relatively a short time span. The author needs to provide information of changes on participants after the study to prove the effectiveness of lavender in enhancing sleep quality. Data of the future response needs to be garnered. Also, the duration of the positive effect of lavender pillow needs to be provided for accurate assessment. Without giving further information of participants after the study, the author cannot draw substantial conclusion if lavender can cure insomnia.
In sum, aforementioned evidences should be provided for the author to strengthen the claim that lavender cures insomnia within a short period of time. Without providing further evidences, the author's arguments will remain far-fetched. Accurate evaluation will be available only after considering detailed evidences.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
argument 4 -- OK
flaws:
The third argument should relate more to following content:
'During the first week, volunteers continued to take their usual sleeping medication. They slept soundly but wakened feeling tired. At the beginning of the second week, the volunteers discontinued their sleeping medication. During that week, they slept less soundly than the previous week and felt even more tired. During the third week, the volunteers slept longer and more soundly than in the previous two weeks. '
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 27 15
No. of Words: 457 350
No. of Characters: 2492 1500
No. of Different Words: 202 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.624 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.453 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.973 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 191 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 151 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 122 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 82 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 16.926 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.069 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.444 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.313 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.532 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.102 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 110, Rule ID: PERIOD_OF_TIME[1]
Message: Use simply 'period'.
Suggestion: period
... of which efficacy shows within a short period of time. The author cites a recent study to pro...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 358, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'participants'' or 'participant's'?
Suggestion: participants'; participant's
...rticipants. There is a possibility that participants insomnia was improved owing to other co...
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 11, column 106, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'cures'' or 'cure's'?
Suggestion: cures'; cure's
...r to strengthen the claim that lavender cures insomnia within a short period of time....
^^^^^
Line 11, column 136, Rule ID: PERIOD_OF_TIME[1]
Message: Use simply 'period'.
Suggestion: period
... lavender cures insomnia within a short period of time. Without providing further evidences, t...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Discourse Markers used:
['also', 'first', 'however', 'if', 'lastly', 'regarding', 'second', 'so', 'then', 'third', 'thus', 'as to', 'such as']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.272365805169 0.25644967241 106% => OK
Verbs: 0.168986083499 0.15541462614 109% => OK
Adjectives: 0.0815109343936 0.0836205057962 97% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0457256461233 0.0520304965353 88% => OK
Pronouns: 0.00795228628231 0.0272364105082 29% => Some pronouns wanted.
Prepositions: 0.123260437376 0.125424944231 98% => OK
Participles: 0.0437375745527 0.0416121511921 105% => OK
Conjunctions: 3.03774296899 2.79052419416 109% => OK
Infinitives: 0.037773359841 0.026700313972 141% => OK
Particles: 0.0 0.001811407834 0% => OK
Determiners: 0.113320079523 0.113004496875 100% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0258449304175 0.0255425247493 101% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.0178926441352 0.0127820249294 140% => OK
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 3009.0 2731.13054187 110% => OK
No of words: 457.0 446.07635468 102% => OK
Chars per words: 6.58424507659 6.12365571057 108% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.62358717085 4.57801047555 101% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.431072210066 0.378187486979 114% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.334792122538 0.287650121315 116% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.275711159737 0.208842608468 132% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.194748358862 0.135150697306 144% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.03774296899 2.79052419416 109% => OK
Unique words: 212.0 207.018472906 102% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.463894967177 0.469332199767 99% => OK
Word variations: 51.8392988516 52.1807786196 99% => OK
How many sentences: 27.0 20.039408867 135% => OK
Sentence length: 16.9259259259 23.2022227129 73% => OK
Sentence length SD: 32.9440644951 57.7814097925 57% => OK
Chars per sentence: 111.444444444 141.986410481 78% => OK
Words per sentence: 16.9259259259 23.2022227129 73% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.481481481481 0.724660767414 66% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.14285714286 117% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 3.58251231527 112% => OK
Readability: 50.4051381798 51.9672348444 97% => OK
Elegance: 1.97321428571 1.8405768891 107% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.313920181613 0.441005458295 71% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.133697440956 0.135418324435 99% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.073978848893 0.0829849096947 89% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.54959897116 0.58762219726 94% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.0974904181023 0.147661913831 66% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.123445961558 0.193483328276 64% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0576548574411 0.0970749176394 59% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.397403506949 0.42659136922 93% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0601448396829 0.0774707102158 78% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.208268471417 0.312017818177 67% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0512215860568 0.0698173142475 73% => The ideas may be duplicated in paragraphs.
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.33743842365 96% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.87684729064 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 12.0 4.82512315271 249% => Less neutral sentences wanted.
Positive topic words: 7.0 6.46551724138 108% => OK
Negative topic words: 6.0 5.36822660099 112% => OK
Neutral topic words: 8.0 2.82389162562 283% => OK
Total topic words: 21.0 14.657635468 143% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
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More arguments wanted.
Rates: 75.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.5 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.
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Note: This is not the final score. 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.