The following appeared in a letter to the editor of Parson City's local newspaper.
"In our region of Trillura, the majority of money spent on the schools that most students attend—the city-run public schools—comes from taxes that each city government collects. The region's cities differ, however, in the budgetary priority they give to public education. For example, both as a proportion of its overall tax revenues and in absolute terms, Parson City has recently spent almost twice as much per year as Blue City has for its public schools—even though both cities have about the same number of residents. Clearly, Parson City residents place a higher value on providing a good education in public schools than Blue City residents do."
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.
This argument is well presented yet far-fetched. It lays a claim that Parson City residents place a higher value on the good education than Blue City because it spends much more budget on education. Nevertheless, due to several flaws after close scrutiny, the argument has to establish some pieces of evidence to make the statement more convincing.
First of all, a problem arises in this argument that the author points out that the majority of money which spend on the schools in Trillura come from taxes. However, this contention not clearly indicates who make this statement. It might open to a number of interpretations such as that the data is coming from the government, the guessing of the author, or the news with no original source. We would never know where the data come from and whether the data is accurate or not. Hence, without accounting for and ruling out other likely possible, by no means could the author contend that this information is correct.
In addition, even though the writer may be able to provide us with enough information to infer a solution to the above problem, this argument is still ill-conceived. Another problem is Parson City has recently spent almost twice as much per year as Blue City, therefore, the writer states Parson value on education more than Blue City. It may be right that Parson really spent much money in recent years, but it is not going to say that Blue does not pay attention on education. Blue City is entirely possible that they already cost very large fund on education in the past so that its education is very well, and does not need to expend much more money on it than before. In order to confirm his point of view, the writer should pay close heed to as well as address the alternatively representative probability mentioned above. Only the specific situations in both cities' education are the key to bolstering his advice.
Ultimately, even if the previous assumptions might turn out to be supported by subsequently detailed illustration, a crucial problem remains that the article says both cities have the same number of residents. But this is meaningless since the same number of residents cannot represent the same numbers of people who need to be educated. In this light, it is reasonable to cast doubts upon presumption which made by the author because presumption actually is inadequate in that although Blue City has the same number as Parson City, its total students in schools are less than Parson. Consequently, it is of course that Blue does not have cost much more money on education than Parson. Pursuing this reasoning proves that the writer has the responsibility to carefully consider his assumptions and then provide cogent evidence to pave the way for a more reliable argument.
In hindsight, it seems precipitous for the author to make the summary based on a sequence of problematic premises. To eliminate the implausibility of conclusion, the author must offer the more specific evidence mentioned on the above.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- not OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 507 350
No. of Characters: 2446 1500
No. of Different Words: 241 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.745 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.824 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.657 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 165 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 116 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 90 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 57 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.143 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.254 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.762 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.296 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.521 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.096 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 241, Rule ID: CLOSE_SCRUTINY[1]
Message: Use simply 'scrutiny'.
Suggestion: scrutiny
...evertheless, due to several flaws after close scrutiny, the argument has to establish some pie...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 866, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'cities'' or 'city's'?
Suggestion: cities'; city's
...e. Only the specific situations in both cities education are the key to bolstering his...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, consequently, first, hence, however, if, may, nevertheless, really, so, still, then, therefore, well, as to, in addition, of course, such as, as well as, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 18.0 13.6137724551 132% => OK
Pronoun: 39.0 28.8173652695 135% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 72.0 55.5748502994 130% => OK
Nominalization: 29.0 16.3942115768 177% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2497.0 2260.96107784 110% => OK
No of words: 507.0 441.139720559 115% => OK
Chars per words: 4.92504930966 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.74517233601 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.74987051156 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 249.0 204.123752495 122% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.491124260355 0.468620217663 105% => OK
syllable_count: 795.6 705.55239521 113% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 11.0 4.96107784431 222% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 46.3088321652 57.8364921388 80% => OK
Chars per sentence: 118.904761905 119.503703932 99% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.1428571429 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.61904761905 5.70786347227 151% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.156951432068 0.218282227539 72% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0457698416394 0.0743258471296 62% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0520010197356 0.0701772020484 74% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0792492087357 0.128457276422 62% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0404305423242 0.0628817314937 64% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.9 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.61 12.5979740519 92% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.35 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 113.0 98.500998004 115% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => 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.