The following appeared in a health newsletter.
"A ten-year nationwide study of the effectiveness of wearing a helmet while bicycling indicates that ten years ago, approximately 35 percent of all bicyclists reported wearing helmets, whereas today that number is nearly 80 percent. Another study, however, suggests that during the same ten-year period, the number of accidents caused by bicycling has increased 200 percent. These results demonstrate that bicyclists feel safer because they are wearing helmets, and they take more risks as a result. Thus there is clearly a call for the government to strive to reduce the number of serious injuries from bicycle accidents by launching an education program that concentrates on the factors other than helmet use that are necessary for bicycle safety."
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 suggestion that government should concentrate more on educating people about bicycle safety rather than encouraging or requiring bicyclists to wear helmets is strengthened by several convincing evidences at the first glance, but further reflection reveals that these evidences cannot constitute a logical statement in support of its conclusion.
To begin with, the author asserts that the bicycle-related accidents has increased, so helmet must be blamed. The assumption is unwarranted in two aspects. First, is the bicycle-related accident means the bicycle-fault accident? Actually not. It is equally possible that cars run so fast and that leads to the accidents, and bicyclists a just the one who got hurt. Therefore, the fault is not the bicyclists', so does the helmet. And the author fails to give the information about the severity of the accidents. It is more possible that bicyclists who wore helmets just got slight injure in the accidents, and who did not have helmet during the accident got serious injure, or even died. Just numbers of the accident cannot prove anything. Until the author provides further clue to exclude all these possibilities, it is unfounded to reach the author’s conclusion straightly.
The speaker also believes that the disappointing traffic result is due to the helmet. Admittedly, helmet may be a probable reason because of the study. But there a huge amount of other reasons to be considered. For instance, what about the huge increase of the population in the country leads to more cars and bicycles on the road, so that accidents become more common. Or it would be also convincing that more accidents are caused by poor regulation of the government about traffic. Without ruling out this possibility, the conclusion is not defensible.
Additionally, the reliability of the study depends on the statistical integrity of the survey. However, the author fails to indicate what is the portion of the people surveyed actually responded; the smaller the portion, the less reliability the result. Nor does the argument indicate how many people are surveyed and can these people represent the country’s bicyclists. Why does the author choose specific "ten-year period" to study? Is the increase of accidents just normal fluctuation of the data? And the speaker just gives the percentage of the data. What is the actual number of the accidents? If the number is very small, the increase of 200 percent does not mean it is serious. So we need further information when judging the study.
In conclusion, the letter’s author fails to adequately support the suggestion. To strengthen the argument, the author must provide dear evidence about the situation of the accidents and the traffic. To better evaluate the argument, we need more information about the survey.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- not exactly. need to argue this:
A ten-year nationwide study of the effectiveness of wearing a helmet while bicycling indicates that ten years ago, approximately 35 percent of all bicyclists reported wearing helmets, whereas today that number is nearly 80 percent. Another study, however, suggests that during the same ten-year period, the number of accidents caused by bicycling has increased 200 percent.
//we may say: maybe there are more populations ten years later.
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- not OK. need to argue this:
Thus there is clearly a call for the government to strive to reduce the number of serious injuries from bicycle accidents by launching an education program that concentrates on the factors other than helmet use that are necessary for bicycle safety.
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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: 29 15
No. of Words: 449 350
No. of Characters: 2293 1500
No. of Different Words: 214 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.603 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.107 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.824 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 177 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 133 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 98 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 67 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 15.483 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.096 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.517 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.272 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.439 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.076 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, however, if, may, so, then, therefore, for instance, in conclusion, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 21.0 28.8173652695 73% => OK
Preposition: 52.0 55.5748502994 94% => OK
Nominalization: 21.0 16.3942115768 128% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2387.0 2260.96107784 106% => OK
No of words: 449.0 441.139720559 102% => OK
Chars per words: 5.31625835189 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.60321845022 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.0367611928 2.78398813304 109% => OK
Unique words: 222.0 204.123752495 109% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.494432071269 0.468620217663 106% => OK
syllable_count: 736.2 705.55239521 104% => 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: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 9.0 1.67365269461 538% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 28.0 19.7664670659 142% => OK
Sentence length: 16.0 22.8473053892 70% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 60.6781532988 57.8364921388 105% => OK
Chars per sentence: 85.25 119.503703932 71% => OK
Words per sentence: 16.0357142857 23.324526521 69% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.89285714286 5.70786347227 68% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 15.0 6.88822355289 218% => Less negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.17501992313 0.218282227539 80% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0489285658072 0.0743258471296 66% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0998595182158 0.0701772020484 142% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0972425162159 0.128457276422 76% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0852565181307 0.0628817314937 136% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.6 14.3799401198 81% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 55.24 48.3550499002 114% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.5 12.197005988 78% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.28 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.44 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 114.0 98.500998004 116% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.4 11.1389221557 75% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.