The following appeared in a letter to the school board in the town of Centerville.
"All students should be required to take the driver's education course at Centerville High School. In the past two years, several accidents in and around Centerville have involved teenage drivers. Since a number of parents in Centerville have complained that they are too busy to teach their teenagers to drive, some other instruction is necessary to ensure that these teenagers are safe drivers. Although there are two driving schools in Centerville, parents on a tight budget cannot afford to pay for driving instruction. Therefore an effective and mandatory program sponsored by the high school is the only solution to this serious problem."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
According to the letter, the high school should sponsor the mandatory driving training program to solve the problem of accidents involving teenage drivers. This argument may seem plausible at first glance; however, the argument is based on a number of assumptions regarding the cause of the accidents, the number of Centerville High School students who are involved in the accidents and the willingness of students to take the course. In order to evaluate the argument critically, we need to examine these assumptions carefully.
To begin with, the author assumes that by taking the cources, students will be proficient in driving, reducing the probability of accidents. However, there may be other reasons why there are many accidents have involved teenage drivers in the past two years. For example, it is probable that the traffic condition in and around Centerville is so bad that even excellent driver may not drive safely all the time. As a result, there are many accidents take place every day, and the number of accidents involving teenage drivers only account for a small proporation. Under such circumstances, with the attempt to reduce accidents involving unskilled students, it would not be useful to training students compared with improving the traffic condition.
In addition, even if the assumption mentioned above is true, it is also assumed that the teenagers in the accident are from Centerville High School. However, this might not hold water for the following reasons. Maybe most teenage drivers around this high school are from other schools and they would like to visit their friends in Centerville High School. Or perhaps, these teenagers are even not students. If any of the aforementioned conditions is the case, the training cources to students in Centerville will definitely not help reducing the accidents involving other teenagers.
In addition, even if the training is effective to help reduce the possibilities of accidents, another assumption being made is that the students in Centerville will be willing to learn in the traning course. Although the course is mandatory, it is still likely that the students are reluctant to dedicate to learn. If this is the case, the mandatory training course will not transform them to a safe driver. Likewise, even if they take the course, it is equally possible that the students would like to take risk to drive for fun. If so, they may not apply the knowledge they learn in the course into practice. Consequently, it is of paramount importance to scrutinize this assumption before we can accept the argument.
In conclusion, it is understandable that the author would like to reduce the number of accidents involving teenagers. But this argument, as it stands now, is extremely flawed as it depends on a number of unwarranted assumptions mentioned above.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 458 350
No. of Characters: 2316 1500
No. of Different Words: 193 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.626 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.057 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.763 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 177 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 140 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 104 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 69 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.81 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.022 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.762 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.316 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.527 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.09 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 534, Rule ID: ADVISE_VBG[5]
Message: The verb 'help' is used with infinitive: 'to reduce' or 'reduce'.
Suggestion: to reduce; reduce
...in Centerville will definitely not help reducing the accidents involving other teenagers...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, consequently, first, however, if, likewise, may, regarding, so, still, for example, in addition, in conclusion, as a result, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 16.0 12.9520958084 124% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 33.0 28.8173652695 115% => OK
Preposition: 66.0 55.5748502994 119% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2383.0 2260.96107784 105% => OK
No of words: 458.0 441.139720559 104% => OK
Chars per words: 5.20305676856 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.62611441266 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.85610301315 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 205.0 204.123752495 100% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.447598253275 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 742.5 705.55239521 105% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 12.0 4.96107784431 242% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 9.0 2.70958083832 332% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 50.0615041225 57.8364921388 87% => OK
Chars per sentence: 113.476190476 119.503703932 95% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.8095238095 23.324526521 94% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.09523809524 5.70786347227 124% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.88822355289 174% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.301013885626 0.218282227539 138% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0858540930121 0.0743258471296 116% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0731071720286 0.0701772020484 104% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.164667028709 0.128457276422 128% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.088114700217 0.0628817314937 140% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.0 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.88 12.5979740519 102% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.92 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 94.0 98.500998004 95% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => 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.