Written paragraph:
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.
Lecture transcription:
(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 lecturer talks about a research made by a company, in which the company studied the outcomes of assigning people on teams for certain projects. In theory, the outcome should have been what explained in the written paragraph, but what they saw was quite opposite.
First of all, the company found out that some members of the team didn’t participate as much as the others. Still, they were rewarded because the other members did achieve the objectives and finished the assignment. Consequently, the latter group felt unrewarded for their hard work because they did not get any individual recognition. This is quite the opposite of what I could read on the paragraph, in where all members felt rewarded because of the good outcome of the project.
Secondly, the researchers found out that some projects were not advancing as quickly as expected. The reason for it was the difficulty on reaching consensus between the members of the team. In the paragraph, the theory is the opposite: work made by a team should advance faster because its members would make riskier choices and find more creative solutions.
Lastly, the lecturer said that one factor that had some negative effects was that one or two members of the group were more influential than the others. Because of this, they convinced the rest to drop some ideas that could favor the project and executed others that were not so beneficial for its good outcome. What happened after is the opposite to what happened on the paragraph: the team members were all blamed when the project failed.
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- Population density 71
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, consequently, first, if, lastly, second, secondly, so, still, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 12.0 10.4613686534 115% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 5.0 5.04856512141 99% => OK
Conjunction : 5.0 7.30242825607 68% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 12.0772626932 83% => OK
Pronoun: 18.0 22.412803532 80% => OK
Preposition: 31.0 30.3222958057 102% => OK
Nominalization: 3.0 5.01324503311 60% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1305.0 1373.03311258 95% => OK
No of words: 262.0 270.72406181 97% => OK
Chars per words: 4.98091603053 5.08290768461 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.02323427807 4.04702891845 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.52288921479 2.5805825403 98% => OK
Unique words: 140.0 145.348785872 96% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.534351145038 0.540411800872 99% => OK
syllable_count: 397.8 419.366225166 95% => 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: 1.0 0.116997792494 855% => Less interrogative sentences wanted.
Article: 8.0 8.23620309051 97% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 1.25165562914 80% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.51434878587 66% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 2.5761589404 194% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 12.0 13.0662251656 92% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 21.2450331126 99% => OK
Sentence length SD: 23.9772751209 49.2860985944 49% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 108.75 110.228320801 99% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.8333333333 21.698381199 101% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.58333333333 7.06452816374 93% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 4.09492273731 98% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 4.19205298013 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 4.33554083885 115% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 4.45695364238 90% => OK
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: 0.171485964545 0.272083759551 63% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0642508723393 0.0996497079465 64% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0367478055386 0.0662205650399 55% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.107831853331 0.162205337803 66% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0186710416382 0.0443174109184 42% => 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: 12.9 13.3589403974 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 58.62 53.8541721854 109% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 5.55761589404 56% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 11.0289183223 93% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.6 12.2367328918 95% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.35 8.42419426049 99% => OK
difficult_words: 61.0 63.6247240618 96% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 10.7273730684 103% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 10.498013245 99% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.2008830022 98% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 78.3333333333 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 23.5 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.