The following appeared in an article written by Dr. Karp, an anthropologist."Twenty years ago, Dr. Field, a noted anthropologist, visited the island of Tertia and concluded from his observations that children in Tertia were reared by an entire village rat

Essay topics:

The following appeared in an article written by Dr. Karp, an anthropologist.

"Twenty years ago, Dr. Field, a noted anthropologist, visited the island of Tertia and concluded from his observations that children in Tertia were reared by an entire village rather than by their own biological parents. However, my recent interviews with children living in the group of islands that includes Tertia show that these children spend much more time talking about their biological parents than about other adults in the village. This research of mine proves that Dr. Field's conclusion about Tertian village culture is invalid and thus that the observation-centered approach to studying cultures is invalid as well. The interview-centered method that my team of graduate students is currently using in Tertia will establish a much more accurate understanding of child-rearing traditions there and in other island cultures."

The two kinds of evidence missing in the author's claim are the following - the observations based on which Dr. Fields had made his claims, and the interviews (or citations from it) based on which the author arrived to his conclusions.

For the author to reject Dr. Fields' conclusions, he needs to give the readers a better understanding of what those conlcusions were, and on what observations they were based. He needs to convince the readers that the data he collected from the interviews completely opposed the inferences of Dr. Fields' observations.

Perhaps the observations were not enough to justify that the children in Tertian villages are raised by the entire village. Perhaps the observations were something like these - he saw children staying at other houses, with other elders of the villages, carrying on their daily tasks. But he did not explore the reasons behind these sort of activities. Maybe the children he observed did not have enough resources in their families and the other villages were simply helping them out. Maybe they were related and were just spending sometime with their relatives. Nothing can be said until we know what exactly the observations were.

Even if the observations were not enough for Dr. Fields' conclusions, the author should generalise this case to the entire observation-based methodology of culture study. The author needs to give other examples where observational study has led to false conclusions. Until this is done, the reader cannot be convinced.

Coming to the interviews, as mentioned before, the readers need to be informed of the data collected from the interviews and how it invalidated the inferences drawn from Dr. Fields' observations. Just because the children spend more "time" talking about their biological parents does not guarantee that they were raised by them. For example, the interviews could prove that the children justified why they were living with the other villagers (building on the initial possible scenario), and how it is not a traditional practice, but due to financial reasons they had to be take help from other villagers. Perhaps they spend so much time explaining why their biological parents are not equipped to raise them. Again, the actual interview data would be needed. The author should quote the interviews, and also present some statistics - about how many children his group interviewed, and perhaps some generic questions to which the responses can be described in numbers.

Until concrete data is provided, one cannot be convinced of this argument - neither of the rejection of Dr. Fields' methods, nor of the acceptance of Dr. Karp's methods.

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Average: 6.6 (1 vote)
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Comments

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 327, Rule ID: THIS_NNS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'this sort' or 'these nulls'?
Suggestion: this sort; these nulls
...t he did not explore the reasons behind these sort of activities. Maybe the children he ob...
^^^^^^^^^^

Discourse Markers used:
['also', 'but', 'if', 'may', 'so', 'for example', 'sort of', 'talking about']

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.23138832998 0.25644967241 90% => OK
Verbs: 0.177062374245 0.15541462614 114% => OK
Adjectives: 0.0623742454728 0.0836205057962 75% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0523138832998 0.0520304965353 101% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0543259557344 0.0272364105082 199% => Less pronouns wanted. Try not to use 'you, I, they, he...' as the subject of a sentence
Prepositions: 0.10060362173 0.125424944231 80% => OK
Participles: 0.0583501006036 0.0416121511921 140% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.99607098041 2.79052419416 107% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0281690140845 0.026700313972 106% => OK
Particles: 0.00201207243461 0.001811407834 111% => OK
Determiners: 0.1046277666 0.113004496875 93% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0160965794769 0.0255425247493 63% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.0241448692153 0.0127820249294 189% => OK

Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 2706.0 2731.13054187 99% => OK
No of words: 430.0 446.07635468 96% => OK
Chars per words: 6.29302325581 6.12365571057 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.55372829156 4.57801047555 99% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.367441860465 0.378187486979 97% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.297674418605 0.287650121315 103% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.220930232558 0.208842608468 106% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.158139534884 0.135150697306 117% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.99607098041 2.79052419416 107% => OK
Unique words: 211.0 207.018472906 102% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.490697674419 0.469332199767 105% => OK
Word variations: 54.6236424377 52.1807786196 105% => OK
How many sentences: 19.0 20.039408867 95% => OK
Sentence length: 22.6315789474 23.2022227129 98% => OK
Sentence length SD: 62.7965099512 57.7814097925 109% => OK
Chars per sentence: 142.421052632 141.986410481 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.6315789474 23.2022227129 98% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.421052631579 0.724660767414 58% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.14285714286 117% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 3.58251231527 28% => OK
Readability: 52.3990208078 51.9672348444 101% => OK
Elegance: 1.37588652482 1.8405768891 75% => OK

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.276993662765 0.441005458295 63% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.130695732674 0.135418324435 97% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0907700433879 0.0829849096947 109% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.606077622429 0.58762219726 103% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.214097933448 0.147661913831 145% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.119799126908 0.193483328276 62% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.068226189641 0.0970749176394 70% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.359793517521 0.42659136922 84% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0879775953174 0.0774707102158 114% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.187404444391 0.312017818177 60% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0339321035194 0.0698173142475 49% => OK

Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.33743842365 60% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.87684729064 58% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 10.0 4.82512315271 207% => Less neutral sentences wanted.
Positive topic words: 3.0 6.46551724138 46% => OK
Negative topic words: 2.0 5.36822660099 37% => OK
Neutral topic words: 5.0 2.82389162562 177% => OK
Total topic words: 10.0 14.657635468 68% => OK

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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations to cover all aspects.