According to a recent report, cheating among college and university students is on the rise.
However, Groveton College has successfully reduced student cheating by adopting an honor code, 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 a system in which teachers closely monitored students; under that system, teachers reported an average of thirty cases of cheating per year. In the first year the honor code was in place, students reported twenty-one cases of cheating; five years later, this figure had dropped to fourteen. Moreover, in a recent survey, a majority of Groveton students said that they would be less likely to cheat with an honor code in place than without. Thus, all colleges and universities should adopt honor codes similar to Groveton's in order to decrease cheating among students.
The author of the text concluded that the decrease in the reported cheating cases (reported being the key word here) is due to the moral code introduced among the students of Groveton College. However, the reasoning behind them is not entirely sound since the analysis of this situation omitted a group of considerations.
First and foremost, even thought the idea of a system that implicitly trust in the students honesty and thus, promotes the creation and reinforcing of positive moral values is certainly appealing from an educative point of view, there are negative implications that could negate all the benefits from such system. Worse even, assuming that the cases reported by the students are in fact, a true reflection of reality without critically examining the evidence is, at best, naïve.
Because reporting a cheating situations goes inherently against the students best interests, it could be equally assumed that not all these cases are reported. The real number could be considerably higher, meaning the author is basing the conclusions on false evidence and ergo, these are not valid. The moral code could be making things worse, but since the data is being collected by a flawed mechanism, this reality would not be accounted for.
Moreover, the students can use the reporting system as a vehicle for personal gain, or even settle scores with their peers. An internal dispute between two or more students could end up in one of them fabricating evidence and submitting a false report of cheating to the school principals, as a way of obtaining revenge or causing prejudice to the opposing parts. On this sense, the text presented does not mention that there are any kind of verification devices to prevent this from happening.
Although is true that building trust relationships between educates and teachers are a necessary part of any effective educational system, this shouldn't be overextended. A more effective approach to the cheating would be to combine the moral code with a set of rules and verification mechanisms enforced by the institution's authorities. Also, the ways for gathering feedback data should have means to verify the information provided and prevent false accusations to be made against innocent people.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 13 15
No. of Words: 364 350
No. of Characters: 1846 1500
No. of Different Words: 201 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.368 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.071 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.76 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 134 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 112 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 86 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 45 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 28 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.283 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.538 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.333 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.626 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.072 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 84, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'students'' or 'student's'?
Suggestion: students'; student's
...f a system that implicitly trust in the students honesty and thus, promotes the creation...
^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 472, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ally examining the evidence is, at best, naïve. Because reporting a cheating s...
^^
Line 7, column 435, Rule ID: THERE_RE_MANY[3]
Message: Possible agreement error. Did you mean 'kinds'?
Suggestion: kinds
...ted does not mention that there are any kind of verification devices to prevent this...
^^^^
Line 9, column 145, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: shouldn't
... any effective educational system, this shouldnt be overextended. A more effective appro...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, however, if, moreover, so, thus, in fact, kind of
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 18.0 28.8173652695 62% => OK
Preposition: 47.0 55.5748502994 85% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1900.0 2260.96107784 84% => OK
No of words: 363.0 441.139720559 82% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.23415977961 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.3649236973 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.80596870507 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 203.0 204.123752495 99% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.559228650138 0.468620217663 119% => OK
syllable_count: 598.5 705.55239521 85% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 13.0 19.7664670659 66% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 27.0 22.8473053892 118% => OK
Sentence length SD: 50.327566058 57.8364921388 87% => OK
Chars per sentence: 146.153846154 119.503703932 122% => OK
Words per sentence: 27.9230769231 23.324526521 120% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.15384615385 5.70786347227 90% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.19773094562 0.218282227539 91% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0725152910568 0.0743258471296 98% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0702171001986 0.0701772020484 100% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.118168728213 0.128457276422 92% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0541225883191 0.0628817314937 86% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.2 14.3799401198 120% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 44.07 48.3550499002 91% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.35 12.5979740519 106% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.54 8.32208582834 115% => OK
difficult_words: 105.0 98.500998004 107% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 19.0 12.3882235529 153% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.8 11.1389221557 115% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 75.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.5 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.