"In a recent survey of more than 5,000 adolescents, the teens who reported eating the most meals with their families were the least likely to use illegal drugs, tobacco, or alcohol. Family meals were also associated with higher grades, better self-esteem, and lower rates of depression. Almost 30 percent of the teens said they ate at least seven meals per week with their families. Clearly, having a high number of family meals keeps teens from engaging in bad behaviors."
The author states that having meals with family keeps adolescents from bad behaviours based on the survey conducted with a sample set of 5000 teens. It is also stated that almost 30 percent teens said that they have one meal per day on an average with their families. However, before this conclusion can be properly evaluated, there is a need to answer three questions.
Adolescents can be considered the most incomprehensible minds of all age groups, so is taking a small set of 5000 teens really a dependable survey to begin with? There could be a significant number of teens in the survey who might have lied about their use of drugs or alcohol. It is rather unlikely that teens who are engaging in bad behaviors would be willing to take part in a survey like the one discussed in the prompt, hence making the set considered for the survey imbalanced. So, if the teens who took part in the survey are already the ones with 'good behavior', it defeats the whole point the author is trying to make.
Is 30% a big enough number to make a correlation between the number of meals and scoring higher grades or having better self-esteem? The author presents statistics from the survey as supporting evidence, which by itself seems to be weak since it talks only about one-third of the set and fails to address about the situation of the rest 70% of the teens considered. It could have been the case that there were teens among the rest 70% that were having significantly less (or no) meals with their family, but are still performing good with grades and self-esteem.
Is there a direct correlation between the usage of drugs, tobacco or alcohol to higher grades, better self-esteem and lower rates of depression? There is a sudden shift in the conclusions made, where grades and self-esteem of a teen were associated to alcohol or drug abuse without any supporting evidence. Perhaps, there is no relation between the usage of drugs to higher grades, and are two mutually exclusive issues to address. There could be adoloscents who are abusing alcohol and still scoring good, and teens who stay away from tobacco but still fail to overcome their depression. If the answer to any of these questions is no, the argument does not hold water.
The argument as it is presented here is flawed in many ways. The author needs to provide answers to the three questions posed above in order to draw a conclusion about the argument discussed in the prompt.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-09-26 | killer | 70 | view |
| 2022-09-07 | Emmanuel John | 78 | view |
| 2022-09-07 | Emmanuel John | 66 | view |
| 2022-06-21 | Soumyadip Kar | 68 | view |
| 2021-08-11 | Adefisoye | 60 | view |
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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: 17 15
No. of Words: 427 350
No. of Characters: 1972 1500
No. of Different Words: 200 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.546 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.618 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.5 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 128 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 78 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 54 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 40 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.118 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.161 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.471 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.326 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.58 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.073 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...is a need to answer three questions. Adolescents can be considered the most i...
^^^^
Line 3, column 241, Rule ID: HAVE_PART_AGREEMENT[1]
Message: Use past participle here: 'lain'.
Suggestion: lain
...r of teens in the survey who might have lied about their use of drugs or alcohol. It...
^^^^
Line 4, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...le point the author is trying to make. Is 30% a big enough number to make a...
^^^^^^
Line 6, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ming good with grades and self-esteem. Is there a direct correlation betwee...
^^^^^^
Line 8, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... no, the argument does not hold water. The argument as it is presented here...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, hence, however, if, really, so, still, third, 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: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 20.0 28.8173652695 69% => OK
Preposition: 65.0 55.5748502994 117% => 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: 2023.0 2260.96107784 89% => OK
No of words: 427.0 441.139720559 97% => OK
Chars per words: 4.73770491803 5.12650576532 92% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.54576487731 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.56969821016 2.78398813304 92% => OK
Unique words: 212.0 204.123752495 104% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.496487119438 0.468620217663 106% => OK
syllable_count: 624.6 705.55239521 89% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 25.0 22.8473053892 109% => OK
Sentence length SD: 41.8066069843 57.8364921388 72% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.0 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 25.1176470588 23.324526521 108% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.11764705882 5.70786347227 72% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => 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: 0.345177254705 0.218282227539 158% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.102625926983 0.0743258471296 138% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0788384511993 0.0701772020484 112% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.166859024456 0.128457276422 130% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0849533553473 0.0628817314937 135% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.5 14.3799401198 94% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 54.56 48.3550499002 113% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.51 12.5979740519 83% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.65 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 75.0 98.500998004 76% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.0 11.1389221557 108% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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.