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.
12:04
The author of the letter claims that the high school should sponsor a mandatory driving program and provides several reasons that upholds his/her claim. However, the letter is rife with holes and assumptions and the mistakes should be eliminated in order for the author to maintain his claim with warrant. The flaws the author made would be discussed with further details below.
First of all, the author assumes that the teenagers lack of driving education because their parents are too busy to instruct their children themselves. However, the author needs to clarify how he/she collected such information. If the author conducted an online survey only for parents who were known to be busy, the data may not be representative for all parents who have teenagers. Furthermore, the parents who complained that they are busy may already have applied their children for a driving education course that are provided from a driving related institution. Also, the teenage drivers who caused traffic accidents may not come from a household whose parents are busy. It may actually be an opposite situation. Maybe the parents who were not busy and had enough time to instruct their children about driving simply did not do so due to lack of interest. Children coming from such household could be the majority of the causes of teenage accidents.
Furthermore, the author of the letter also assumes that parents who are tight in their budget are the reason why teenagers are causing such accidents in and around Centerville. However, maybe the children who come from such household don't even have a car to drive and did not cause any traffic accidents. Or else, even if they did own a car, their parents might have been cautious and already instructed their children not to cause any accidents because it would require extensive amount of money. If this is the case, high school providing driving lessons for these teenagers is not necessary. There is also a possibility that the two driving schools in Centerville are actually free and teenagers coming from a tight budget household already applied for driving lessons. Maybe, teenagers who have rich parents were the actual main cause of accidents that involve teenage drivers because their parents were okay with paying for all repair costs.
Last but foremost, the accidents that involve teenage drivers for the past two years may not have been due to teenagers receiving lack of driving education. Maybe the actual causes of such accidents were because the road condition deteriorated and it became much harder to drive properly. Or maybe, numerous number of cars started to pour in and around Centerville, which makes the possibility of cars being involved in accidents increase. The author would have to investigate the reason why the number of teenage car accidents occurred during the past two years.
To sum up, even though the author's claim and evidences upholding the claim might seem plausible, through thorough investigation and reading the letter from various points of view, it is confirmed that the claim is unwarranted. For the author to bolster his/her claim with clear warrant, he/she would have to eliminate the flaws of haste assumptions and provide clear information about the actual causes of the teenage car accidents.
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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: 11 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 545 350
No. of Characters: 2700 1500
No. of Different Words: 221 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.832 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.954 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.473 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 203 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 155 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 87 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 61 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.696 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.327 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.652 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.334 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.334 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.121 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 4, column 235, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: don't
...e children who come from such household dont even have a car to drive and did not ca...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, furthermore, however, if, may, so, first of all, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 28.0 19.6327345309 143% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 20.0 13.6137724551 147% => OK
Pronoun: 36.0 28.8173652695 125% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 60.0 55.5748502994 108% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2756.0 2260.96107784 122% => OK
No of words: 539.0 441.139720559 122% => OK
Chars per words: 5.11317254174 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.81833721656 4.56307096286 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.54027827681 2.78398813304 91% => OK
Unique words: 226.0 204.123752495 111% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.419294990724 0.468620217663 89% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 843.3 705.55239521 120% => 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: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 44.436867134 57.8364921388 77% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.826086957 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.4347826087 23.324526521 100% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.73913043478 5.70786347227 66% => 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 : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.158555145618 0.218282227539 73% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0527611236367 0.0743258471296 71% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.036323720151 0.0701772020484 52% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0932405604957 0.128457276422 73% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.042941775195 0.0628817314937 68% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.4 14.3799401198 100% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 48.13 48.3550499002 100% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.65 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.79 8.32208582834 94% => OK
difficult_words: 103.0 98.500998004 105% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4 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.