The following appeared in a memorandum from the manager of WWAC radio station.
"To reverse a decline in listener numbers, our owners have decided that WWAC must change from its current rock-music format. The decline has occurred despite population growth in our listening area, but that growth has resulted mainly from people moving here after their retirement. We must make listeners of these new residents. We could switch to a music format tailored to their tastes, but a continuing decline in local sales of recorded music suggests limited interest in music. Instead we should change to a news and talk format, a form of radio that is increasingly popular in our area."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The manager of WWAC radio station suggests to change the format of the station from rock-music to news and talk. While the suggestion may sound plausible he fails to provide strong arguments supporting it.
First of all, the manager doesn’t provide clear evidence that lack of interest to rock-music format is the main cause of a decline in listener numbers. There might be alternatives explanations to it, such as too many advertisements or the content - songs and artists - might not being updated for a long time. For example, making a survey amongst listeners can provide valuable feedback on ways to improve the current situation without changing the station format.
Secondly, the argument that interests in music is limited is not entirely convincing. The manager bases it on continuing decline in local sales of recorded music. However, this doesn’t necessarily implies that the same situation persists with the demand for music from a radio station. Of course, there might be easier and more convenient ways to listen music rather than CDs or DVDs when you’re interested in a particular album or an artist. But a radio station allows you to explore and find new unknown tracks and follow latest music trends. The manager is well advised to do more metilous analysis before making conclusion on the interest in music in the area.
Lastly, the manager should consider the overhead of switching the station specialization - he might have to find completely a new team and build new programs from scratch. That will definitely take a lot of time and resources. There is a danger that the renovated radio station wouldn’t become popular after all, for example, since the interest in news and talk format might not necessary hold that long. The manager should consider possible risks and provide additional arguments why he thinks it’s still worth investing in.
In this regard, the suggestion is not well supported. Additional evidences might be required and some questions need to be answered in order to make the suggestion more appealing.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
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flaws:
No. of Words: 339 350
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 339 350
No. of Characters: 1671 1500
No. of Different Words: 187 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.291 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.929 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.608 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 126 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 97 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 60 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 37 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.941 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.458 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.765 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.316 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.556 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.078 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 114, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “While” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...ation from rock-music to news and talk. While the suggestion may sound plausible he f...
^^^^^
Line 5, column 528, Rule ID: THE_SUPERLATIVE[2]
Message: A determiner is probably missing here: 'follow the latest'.
Suggestion: follow the latest
...explore and find new unknown tracks and follow latest music trends. The manager is well advis...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Discourse Markers used:
['but', 'first', 'however', 'lastly', 'may', 'second', 'secondly', 'so', 'still', 'well', 'while', 'after all', 'as to', 'for example', 'of course', 'such as', 'first of all']
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.264935064935 0.25644967241 103% => OK
Verbs: 0.142857142857 0.15541462614 92% => OK
Adjectives: 0.0831168831169 0.0836205057962 99% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0519480519481 0.0520304965353 100% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0233766233766 0.0272364105082 86% => OK
Prepositions: 0.109090909091 0.125424944231 87% => OK
Participles: 0.038961038961 0.0416121511921 94% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.76093843921 2.79052419416 99% => OK
Infinitives: 0.0311688311688 0.026700313972 117% => OK
Particles: 0.0 0.001811407834 0% => OK
Determiners: 0.0987012987013 0.113004496875 87% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0285714285714 0.0255425247493 112% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.0103896103896 0.0127820249294 81% => OK
Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 2082.0 2731.13054187 76% => OK
No of words: 338.0 446.07635468 76% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 6.15976331361 6.12365571057 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.28774723029 4.57801047555 94% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.387573964497 0.378187486979 102% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.319526627219 0.287650121315 111% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.210059171598 0.208842608468 101% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.127218934911 0.135150697306 94% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.76093843921 2.79052419416 99% => OK
Unique words: 189.0 207.018472906 91% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.559171597633 0.469332199767 119% => OK
Word variations: 61.1965603464 52.1807786196 117% => OK
How many sentences: 17.0 20.039408867 85% => OK
Sentence length: 19.8823529412 23.2022227129 86% => OK
Sentence length SD: 38.5708353884 57.7814097925 67% => OK
Chars per sentence: 122.470588235 141.986410481 86% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.8823529412 23.2022227129 86% => OK
Discourse Markers: 1.0 0.724660767414 138% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.14285714286 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 3.58251231527 56% => OK
Readability: 51.8350156631 51.9672348444 100% => OK
Elegance: 1.89285714286 1.8405768891 103% => OK
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.446522349684 0.441005458295 101% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.0650589991799 0.135418324435 48% => Sentence sentence coherence is low.
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0271837908433 0.0829849096947 33% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.54337025018 0.58762219726 92% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.13073128728 0.147661913831 89% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.177004549024 0.193483328276 91% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.109434372855 0.0970749176394 113% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.364467012562 0.42659136922 85% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0811890073705 0.0774707102158 105% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.294647853748 0.312017818177 94% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0769686450227 0.0698173142475 110% => OK
Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.33743842365 84% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.87684729064 58% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.82512315271 124% => OK
Positive topic words: 6.0 6.46551724138 93% => OK
Negative topic words: 3.0 5.36822660099 56% => OK
Neutral topic words: 5.0 2.82389162562 177% => OK
Total topic words: 14.0 14.657635468 96% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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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.