While it is possible that the new honor code system is better than the monitoring system, the argument in the prompt is rife with holes and unwarranted assumptions.
First, the argument is based on the assumption that their data of reported case is valid and can indicate success of the new system. However, reported cases do not equal reality. There are a variety of factors that can distort the report. For example, students might choose not to notify faculty when their friends cheat in the exams. They might even abuse the new system by intimidate other students to prevent them from informing faculties. Thus, even when the actual cases are the same, cheating are less likely to be caught after the new system was employed. For the same reason, the decrease from 21 cases to 14 cases per year might not represent the reality as students might become more adept in abusing the system and cover for each other. The argument also confounds numbers with percentages. Less reported cases do not guarantee less percentage of cheating. When the population of students is smaller, the numbers of reported cases would fall even when the ratio of cheating is the same. By the same token, the decrease of reported cases in the past five years might also reflect other changes in the university, such as fewer enrollment of students, different ways of scoring, or even the difference between newly-admitted students and those admitted before the new system. That's say if Groveton College choose to emphasize on integrity when they admit new students. As seniors and juniors graduate, Groveton College is replaced by the bunch of students with probity. Under such circumstance, the decrease might actually caused by the change of characteristics of the student population rather than the success of new system.
Second, the argument is based on the faulty assumption that the survey is representative, reliable, and valid. Since there is no detail concerning the sampling method of the survey, we cannot determine whether the survey results is representative, or just reflect the opinion from a few extremely biased students. Also, when it comes to survey questions, people are likely to give fake answers when they do not want to look bad in front of others. Thus, the survey results in which students self-report that they would be less likely to cheat with an honor code can be misleading, as those who still cheat under honor code might not reveal their own behavior. In addition, without the content of the questionnaire, we can not determine whether the survey questions are well-written. It is possible that the question concerning new system is mixed with a lot of irrelevant questions, which will result in higher probility that students missed the question or did not fully express their view.
Finally, the indication of "other university similar to Groveton's" is vague. What does it mean by "similar"? Does it indicate that these schools are in the same province? Or that these schools have similar ratio of male and female students? Since the argument does not provide enough details as to how similar these schools are, and how does these similarities affect the potential influence of honor code system, it fails to justify that we should adopt such change to other schools.
Because the argument makes several unwarranted assumptions, it fails to make a convincing case that universities should adopt honor codes similar to Groveton's in order to decrease cheating among students.
- 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 endeav 69
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- Some people believe that college students should consider only their own talents and interests when choosing a field of study Others believe that college students should base their choice of a field of study on the availability of jobs in that field Write 66
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 9 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 6 2
No. of Sentences: 27 15
No. of Words: 576 350
No. of Characters: 2850 1500
No. of Different Words: 257 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.899 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.948 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.546 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 204 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 152 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 101 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 51 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.333 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.866 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.556 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.282 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.463 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.128 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 244, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'students'' or 'student's'?
Suggestion: students'; student's
...hether the survey results represent all students opinion on this issue or just the opini...
^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 363, Rule ID: THIS_NNS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'this similarity' or 'these similarities'?
Suggestion: this similarity; these similarities
...similar these schools are, and how does these similarity affect the potential influence of honor...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, finally, first, however, if, look, regarding, second, so, still, thus, well, while, as to, for example, in addition, such as, by the same token
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 20.0 13.6137724551 147% => OK
Pronoun: 34.0 28.8173652695 118% => OK
Preposition: 64.0 55.5748502994 115% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2584.0 2260.96107784 114% => OK
No of words: 512.0 441.139720559 116% => OK
Chars per words: 5.046875 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.75682846001 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.68454597826 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 231.0 204.123752495 113% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.451171875 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 789.3 705.55239521 112% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 65.9762230185 57.8364921388 114% => OK
Chars per sentence: 112.347826087 119.503703932 94% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.2608695652 23.324526521 95% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.47826086957 5.70786347227 113% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 15.0 6.88822355289 218% => Less negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.216794952878 0.218282227539 99% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0599543302232 0.0743258471296 81% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0653446362261 0.0701772020484 93% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.113869976476 0.128457276422 89% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.054497306154 0.0628817314937 87% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.5 14.3799401198 94% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 57.61 48.3550499002 119% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.31 12.5979740519 98% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.34 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 117.0 98.500998004 119% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.