The following is a recommendation from the personnel director to the president of Acme Publishing Company.
"Many other companies have recently stated that having their employees take the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course has greatly improved productivity. One graduate of the course was able to read a 500-page report in only two hours; another graduate rose from an assistant manager to vice president of the company in under a year. Obviously, the faster you can read, the more information you can absorb in a single workday.
Moreover, Easy Read would cost Acme only $500 per employee—a small price to pay when you consider the benefits. Included in this fee is a three-week seminar in Spruce City and a lifelong subscription to the Easy Read newsletter. Clearly, to improve productivity, Acme should require all of our employees to take the Easy Read course."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the advice and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the advice.
In this argument, the author concludes that Acme need to require all of their employees to take Easy Read Speed- Reading Course to improve productivity. To bolster the argument, the author points out productivity of other companies have been improved after having their employees take the course. However, unless several questions being answered, it does not hold water.
Firstly, the author mentions that the faster a person can read, the more information he or she can absorb in a single workday based on the statements of two graduates of the course. But are the selected two respondents representative of all users? If the two graduates also take other lessons despite of the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course, and keep reading magazines like the New York Times and the Guardian, they may have tremendous improvement after taking this course. On the contrary, other users may not take other courses and never do additional reading after the course, and their improvement may be limited. Therefore, to back the statement, the author should provide more information about whether the two graduates are representative or not.
Secondly, the assumption that Easy Read is a small price to pay when users consider the benefits is not warranted. How huge are the benefits? It is possible that even the user of the course can be promoted from an assistant manager to vice president of the company in under a year, the increased salary can not make up for the cost of the course. Thus, without additional information of the accurate benefit of the course, it is difficult to access the merit of the assumption.
Thirdly, the author uses the positive consequence of other companies after urging their employees to take the course to back the recommendation that Acme need to require all of their employees to take Easy Read Speed- Reading Course. However, the author needs to answer additional questions to further bolster the recommendation. Are the other companies identical enough to Acme that Acme is comparable to other companies? If other companies provide additional training to their employees on reading ability, but there is no training of Acme, the employees in Acme may not do as good as employees in other companies. In conclusion, on order to further strengthen the recommendation, I could need more detailed information involving whether those companies are comparable to Acme.
In a nutshell, the argument is unconvincing as it fails to answer indispensable questions. If the argument had included more information about whether the two graduates are representative, whether those companies are comparable to Acme and the accurate benefit of the course, it would have been logically acceptable.
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Comments
Essay evaluation 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: 19 15
No. of Words: 437 350
No. of Characters: 2215 1500
No. of Different Words: 183 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.572 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.069 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.855 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 159 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 126 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 92 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 68 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.037 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.684 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.346 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.569 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.113 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, third, thirdly, thus, in conclusion, on the contrary
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 25.0 28.8173652695 87% => OK
Preposition: 61.0 55.5748502994 110% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2279.0 2260.96107784 101% => OK
No of words: 437.0 441.139720559 99% => OK
Chars per words: 5.21510297483 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.57214883401 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.95611788869 2.78398813304 106% => OK
Unique words: 191.0 204.123752495 94% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.437070938215 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 720.9 705.55239521 102% => 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: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 57.4529555834 57.8364921388 99% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.947368421 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.0 23.324526521 99% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.15789473684 5.70786347227 125% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => More negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.357111956178 0.218282227539 164% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.110162885035 0.0743258471296 148% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.12079281042 0.0701772020484 172% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.204821645996 0.128457276422 159% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.117078001029 0.0628817314937 186% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.7 14.3799401198 102% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 48.13 48.3550499002 100% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.29 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.03 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 90.0 98.500998004 91% => 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: 66.67 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.