本帖最后由 tuziduidui 于 2009-3-11 17:20 编辑
头一次写,请多指教!
The argument is well presented,but not thoroughly well reasoned. The arguer thought the honor code similar to Groveton should be adopted in other universities and colleges, if they want to reduce the cheating phenomenon. The argument for reducing it through the honor code seems logical.
However, people need notice that adopting honor code have two pre-conditions: students agree not to cheat and students notify teachers others’ cheating behavior. Actually people do not know whether students agree about it. And, when the honor code is showed to students, they probably think teacher does not trust them. At the same time, notification other people has too much uncertain factors. For example, when one student finds his best friend is cheating, he probably will not report his friend to the faculty, because their friendship. Different universities or colleges have their own culture. In some places, they have rare cheating affairs, so the honor code will not be useful to them. The honor code maybe shows some benefits in Groveton College but not means there will be the same situation in other colleges. Thus, adopting honor code has some deficiencies.
Except those deficiencies, the arguer made a contrast about the number of the reported cheating cases after that the honor code was used. The arguer showed the amount of reported cheating has reduced from thirty to twenty-one at the first year of the honor code was used. But the twenty-one cases were just reported by students,the arguer did not reveal how much cases were reported by teachers, maybe ten,twenty or more.In this condition, twenty-one cannot compare with thirty. This change cannot support the honor code that has improved the cheating situation. After this, the statistical results in the second year, the third year and the fourth year were not given. So these data cannot fully support arguer's conclusion.
Finally,the survey is also untenable. At first, people who did the survey are unclear although arguer said they were a majority of students. There is one probability that students who are willing to study and will not need to cheat are more interested in responding the survey. At the mean time, the organization, which did the survey,is not neutral. The questions maybe misdirect the responders.
To sum up, the argument, while it seems logical at first, has several flaws as discusses in the body part. It is very complicated when the honor code is adopted. The arguer should consider it more comprehensively. Moreover, to evaluate the arguer's standpoint more authentic, more data and information about the comparison and survey need to be listed. |