READINGFirst examinees see the following reading passage on their computer screen for three minutes:In many organizations, perhaps the best way to approach certain new projects is toassemble a group of people into a team. Having a team of people attack a

Essay topics:

READING
First examinees see the following reading passage on their computer screen for three minutes:
In many organizations, perhaps the best way to approach certain new projects is to
assemble a group of people into a team. Having a team of people attack a project offers
several advantages. First of all, a group of people has a wider range of knowledge,
expertise, and skills than any single individual is likely to possess. Also, because of the
numbers of people involved and the greater resources they possess, a group can work
more quickly in response to the task assigned to it and can come up with highly creative
solutions to problems and issues. Sometimes these creative solutions come about because
a group is more likely to make risky decisions that an individual might not undertake.
This is because the group spreads responsibility for a decision to all the members and
thus no single individual can be held accountable if the decision turns out to be wrong.
Taking part in a group process can be very rewarding for members of the team. Team
members who have a voice in making a decision will no doubt feel better about carrying
out the work that is entailed by that decision than they might doing work that is imposed
on them by others. Also, the individual team member has a much better chance to
“shine,” to get his or her contributions and ideas not only recognized but recognized as
highly significant, because a team’s overall results can be more far-reaching and have
greater impact than what might have otherwise been possible for the person to
accomplish or contribute working alone.

LISTEN
They view:
A picture of a male professor standing in front of a class
They listen to:
(Professor) Now I want to tell you about what one company found when it decided that
it would turn over some of its new projects to teams of people, and make the team
responsible for planning the projects and getting the work done. After about six months,
the company took a look at how well the teams performed.
On virtually every team, some members got almost a “free ride” ... they didn’t
contribute much at all, but if their team did a good job, they nevertheless benefited from
the recognition the team got. And what about group members who worked especially
well and who provided a lot of insight on problems and issues? Well...the recognition for
a job well done went to the group as a whole, no names were named. So it won’t surprise
you to learn that when the real contributors were asked how they felt about the group
process, their attitude was just the opposite of what the reading predicts.
Another finding was that some projects just didn’t move very quickly. Why? Because
it took so long to reach consensus...it took many, many meetings to build the agreement
among group members about how they would move the project along. On the other hand,
there were other instances where one or two people managed to become very influential
over what their group did. Sometimes when those influencers said “That will never work”
about an idea the group was developing, the idea was quickly dropped instead of being
further discussed. And then there was another occasion when a couple influencers
convinced the group that a plan of theirs was “highly creative.” And even though some
members tried to warn the rest of the group that the project was moving in directions that
might not work, they were basically ignored by other group members. Can you guess the
ending to *this* story? When the project failed, the blame was placed on all the members
of the group

The reading passage and the professor both discuss the topic of effectiveness of teamwork on a project. However, the speaker discords with the ideas in the reading passage. She gives a research conducted by a company which was offering several points to oppose the article.

First, some members got free rides from those of who were hard-working, and the people who actually had great contributions to the success of a group would not be named. Although in the article it claims decision makers will be recognized as highly significant, according to the lecturer, the truth is opposite of what the reading indicates.

Second, the speaker refutes the reading by mentioning groups took so long to reach mutual agreement. Though the article states a group can work faster owing to they have more people and more resources to solve problems, she argues that the fact is groups took too much time on meetings. Therefore, the lecturer concludes that groups spent more time on decision making instead of behaving like what passage predicts.

Third, those powerful members can direct a group to the path what they want. While the article indicates groups can come up with highly creative solutions and spreads responsibility for a decision to all members, the speaker points whom have more influence will lead a subjective direction which might cause failure. Hence, the professor holds that group was controlled by few people rather than all members which could lead to completely success or failure and this phenomenon is contrast to the reading section.

Votes
Average: 8 (2 votes)
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2016-10-24 kitcat 80 view
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Comments

Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, first, hence, however, if, second, so, therefore, third, while

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 8.0 10.4613686534 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 5.04856512141 158% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 7.30242825607 82% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 12.0772626932 75% => OK
Pronoun: 11.0 22.412803532 49% => OK
Preposition: 30.0 30.3222958057 99% => OK
Nominalization: 4.0 5.01324503311 80% => OK

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1305.0 1373.03311258 95% => OK
No of words: 255.0 270.72406181 94% => OK
Chars per words: 5.11764705882 5.08290768461 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 3.99608801488 4.04702891845 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.57970668528 2.5805825403 100% => OK
Unique words: 152.0 145.348785872 105% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.596078431373 0.540411800872 110% => OK
syllable_count: 387.9 419.366225166 92% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.55342163355 97% => OK

A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 3.25607064018 92% => OK
Interrogative: 0.0 0.116997792494 0% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.23620309051 85% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 1.25165562914 240% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.51434878587 66% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 2.5761589404 39% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 11.0 13.0662251656 84% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 21.2450331126 108% => OK
Sentence length SD: 52.8761221869 49.2860985944 107% => OK
Chars per sentence: 118.636363636 110.228320801 108% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.1818181818 21.698381199 107% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.0 7.06452816374 99% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 4.09492273731 98% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 4.19205298013 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 4.33554083885 161% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 1.0 4.45695364238 22% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.27373068433 70% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.13202563436 0.272083759551 49% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.049393819565 0.0996497079465 50% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0276567730068 0.0662205650399 42% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0768231476633 0.162205337803 47% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0176890229301 0.0443174109184 40% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.3 13.3589403974 107% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 56.59 53.8541721854 105% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 5.55761589404 56% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 11.0289183223 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.71 12.2367328918 104% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.86 8.42419426049 105% => OK
difficult_words: 66.0 63.6247240618 104% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 10.7273730684 103% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 10.498013245 107% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.2008830022 98% => OK

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Rates: 76.6666666667 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 23.0 Out of 30
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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.