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.
The author in the letter concludes that the high school should be providing driving programs to educate teenagers in driving with providing various reasons advocating such conclusion. However, the author should be more clear and provide additional information to maintain such claim. The letter lacks justification due to rife holes and assumptions which will be discussed below.
First of all, the author should provide more information to justify its claim. He/she implicates that there has been several accidents among teenage drivers in the past two years. However, we do not know whether there were more accidents caused by teenagers in the more previous years. The number of accidents could have actually declined since then and which will not actually be a significant issue anymore. Furthermore, the letter indicates that a number of parents complained about not being able to instruct their teenagers in driving due to being too busy. However, we yet do not know how many complaints is a "number" of complaints. There could have been just two complaints which obviously is not a critical amount.
Moreover, the author assumes that the reason teenagers are being involved in such car accidents is due to busy parents who were not able to teach teenagers how to drive or are not capable of affording driving instructions. However, we do not even know if the teenagers who were involved in car accidents were from parents who are too busy or are going through poverty. They could actually be from parents who are wealthy enough to afford driver instructors and have taught their kids how to drive. For the author to use such reason to justify his/her claim, he/she needs to be more clear of which parents the teenagers are from and the specific causes of teenagers involving in car accidents.
To sum up, the letter seems plausible and the conclusion seems justifiable. However, through thorough investigation and looking at the letter in various angles, the author does not stand a chance of a warranty. The author should provide us more information and needs to eliminate lack of clarification to maintain such claim.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 7 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 353 350
No. of Characters: 1740 1500
No. of Different Words: 157 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.335 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.929 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.616 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 127 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 96 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 61 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 45 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.765 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.487 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.647 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.349 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.539 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.159 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
The author in the letter concludes that ...
^^
Line 2, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...mptions which will be discussed below. First of all, the author should provide ...
^^
Line 2, column 616, Rule ID: EN_A_VS_AN
Message: Use 'an' instead of 'a' if the following word starts with a vowel sound, e.g. 'an article', 'an hour'
Suggestion: an
... yet do not know how many complaints is a 'number' of complaints. There...
^
Line 3, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ch obviously is not a critical amount. Moreover, the author assumes that the re...
^^
Line 3, column 204, Rule ID: AFFORD_VBG[1]
Message: This verb is used with infinitive: 'to drive'.
Suggestion: to drive
...o drive or are not capable of affording driving instructions. However, we do not even k...
^^^^^^^
Line 4, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...teenagers involving in car accidents. To sum up, the letter seems plausible an...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, first, furthermore, however, if, look, moreover, so, then, first of all, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 18.0 28.8173652695 62% => OK
Preposition: 49.0 55.5748502994 88% => OK
Nominalization: 6.0 16.3942115768 37% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1789.0 2260.96107784 79% => OK
No of words: 350.0 441.139720559 79% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.11142857143 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.32530772707 4.56307096286 95% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.76709676191 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 158.0 204.123752495 77% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.451428571429 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 543.6 705.55239521 77% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 41.6344281279 57.8364921388 72% => OK
Chars per sentence: 105.235294118 119.503703932 88% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.5882352941 23.324526521 88% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.41176470588 5.70786347227 95% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 6.0 5.25449101796 114% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => 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: 0.133805663385 0.218282227539 61% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0508415177494 0.0743258471296 68% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0367226212985 0.0701772020484 52% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0896640404721 0.128457276422 70% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0395515505995 0.0628817314937 63% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.9 14.3799401198 90% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.36 12.5979740519 98% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.74 8.32208582834 93% => OK
difficult_words: 69.0 98.500998004 70% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.