0910G【try best】第二组 第三次作业 argument242 by seraphy1986

seraphy1986UID: 2629743

TOPIC: ARGUMENT242 - The following appeared as an editorial in the student newspaper of Groveton College.

"To combat the recently reported dramatic rise in cheating among college and university students, these institutions should adopt honor codes similar to Groveton's, which calls for students to agree not to cheat in their academic endeavors and to notify a faculty member if they suspect that others have cheated. Groveton's honor code replaced an old-fashioned system in which students were closely monitored by teachers and an average of thirty cases of cheating per year were reported. The honor code has proven far more successful: in the first year it was in place, students reported twenty-one cases of cheating; five years later, this figure had dropped to fourteen. Moreover, in a recent survey conducted by the Groveton honor council, a majority of students said that they would be less likely to cheat with an honor code in place than without."
WORDS: 453
TIME: 大约一个半小时
DATE: 2009-6-10 18:59:49

In this argument, the arguer claims that in order to reduce the cheating among college and university students, institutions should adopt honor codes similar to Groveton's.
To justify this claim, the arguer provides the envidence that in the first year 21casts was reported cheating in Groveton while five years later the figure has dropped to fourteen. The argument is unconvicing for several flaws.
Firstly, the arguer didn’t provide evidences to explain why cheating among college and university dramatically rised. It’s quite possible that more cheating actions did happen before, but not all of them are discovered by the teachers. Recently, the teachers monitoring the students are serious and the cheating cases are more noticed by them. Or in the past years the monitoring teachers had found the students cheating, but they didn’t report the case. What’s more, the rise of cheating concerns about a lot of other factors except for the suspecting in the test. The quality of the education might get worse these years in many college and university, or the courses for the students might become more difficult now. All these factors can be the reasons why the cheating among colleges and universities rise. Before further investigation is carried out, we could not conclude that cheating among colleges and universities rises and the rise results from old-fashioned system.
Secondly, other factors could also explain the decreasing mumber of cases of cheating at Groveton. It’s likely that the students in Groveton are easier than before. There’s no need for the students to cheat. Then the honor codes doesn’t play so important role in the cheating decreasing sa the arguer imagine.
Last but not the least, the assumption that the students will keep their promise rnder the existence of the codes is unwarranted. Honor codes is based on the trust and honest. If one student intends to cheat, he/she probably will do no matter monitored by the teachers or suspected by other students. Even if the honor code will take effect in decreasing the cheating, the negative effects are not considered by the arguer. In this circumstance, the action of the cheaters might get even worse because of lacking suspection of the teachers. Furthermore, is there any other methods that could help get cheating cases down besides the adoption of honor codes?
In sum, the conclusion reached in this argument is invalid and misleading. Before we accept the conclusion, the arguer must present more facts to demonstrate that the honor codes will actually lead to the decreasing of cheating. And to solidify the argument, the arguer would have to produce more evidence concerning the reasons of the decreasing cases of cheating in Groveton and the rising cases of cheating in colleges and universities.

提纲：1、大学里cheating增加了这个现象是否可靠？可能以前老师不那么严厉，有了作弊的情况不上报或者今年老师注意关注cheating现象，于是发现了更多作弊的情况。又或者，今年的课程较多，科目较难，还有教学水平下降导致cheating的增加
2、Groveton的cheating减少也许是honor codes外的其他原因，比如今年Groveton的学生花了更多的时间在学习上。那么honor codes的作用也许不像想象的那样大。
3、最后，推论学生们在honor codes这种管理下会不再cheat是没有道理的。Honor codes的负面影响也没有考虑，再者，降低作弊率也可有其他的方法。

tianshi02UID: 2362794

我觉得你举反例的思维很活跃，如果能对arguer的逻辑问题进行更透彻的分析会更好。
比如你的第二段说we could not conclude that cheating among colleges and universities rises and the rise results from old-fashioned system. 人家Arguer也没要conclude这个啊， 是你猜得，如果你非要这样说，应该用充分的理由说明arguer的说理建立在这个conclusion上的，而这个conclusion是推不出的。
我觉得你4段说Honor codes is based on the trust and honest. 这个point很好，很多人可能会忽视honor code的特点，而这个特点和作弊联系起来，很有说服力。