In surveys Mason City residents rank water sports (swimming, boating, and fishing) among their favorite recreational activities. The Mason River flowing through the city is rarely used for these pursuits, however, and the city park department devotes litt

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In surveys Mason City residents rank water sports (swimming, boating, and fishing) among their favorite recreational activities. The Mason River flowing through the city is rarely used for these pursuits, however, and the city park department devotes little of its budget to maintaining riverside recreational facilities. For years there have been complaints from residents about the quality of the river's water and the river's smell. In response, the state has recently announced plans to clean up Mason River. Use of the river for water sports is, therefore, sure to increase. The city government should for that reason devote more money in this year's budget to riverside recreational facilities.

The proposed argument contains some stated and unstated assumption which are need to be checked for the validity of claim.

First "in survey mason city residents" here there is ambiguous reference to the survey. Not much information given about the survey like how many people included in the survey or was it a city wide survey or only restricted to the downtown area or suburb. It might be possible that the survey included very few people and so from that it is inferred that the Mason city residents like the water sports as recreational activities. It may happen that if taken City wide survey the recreational activity might come different, So without giving much information about the nature of the survey the claim made is unwarranted.

Also, their is no information for supporting the claim that Mason River is rarely used for the water recreational activities. It may be possible that in some areas river might little bit rough precluding any water sports related activity.But it might be possible that in some other parts of the city the river might be used for recreational sports or even for the transport.

There is no enough information provided about how much budget did the City park facility have for fiscal. It might be possible that the overall budget of the City park department might be low that's the reason why budget is allocated is less. It is not possible to determine whether the currently allocated budget is not sufficient for maintaining riverside recreational activities,without the information about how the allocated budget is being used by the city Park department.

Argument also assumes that cleaning the river will increase the water sports level.Here, not enough information is provided to support the claim.It may be possible that even after the cleaning of the river the citizens may include only those groups included in the survey which will use the riverside recreational facilities. So, if that is the case then the investment made in for the river cleaning might not be recouped.

Another unstated assumption considered in the argument is that the river is potentially usable for the water sports. If the river flow is fast it won't be possible to conduct the water sports like boating fishing and swimming in the river. Also,river is not deep enough which will hobble the growth of these activities, So the unstated claim that river is usable for water sports needs to be supported with more information about the geographical structure of the part of river flowing through Mason City.

It is assumed that the city government already have additional funds available in order to increase the funding to city park department. It may be possible that even the state have announced the plans for cleaning the river city government but city government have already allocated funds to other pressing project and don't have enough funds available to increase the funding.Argument must support the claim by valid data about the remaining funds in the city government treasury or whether state government have provided them with some additional funds.

Although, Argument that state have announced to clean the river is well supported with the information about the citizen's complaints about the smell and quality of water the other arguments made are not well supported with the information required to validate the argument.

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Average: 5 (2 votes)
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Comments

the city government already have additional funds
the city government already has additional funds

argument 1 -- not OK

argument 2 -- not OK

argument 3 -- not OK

argument 4 -- OK

argument 5 -- OK

argument 6 -- not OK
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Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 1 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 561 350
No. of Characters: 2775 1500
No. of Different Words: 203 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.867 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.947 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.576 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 180 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 138 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 114 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 68 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 31.167 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 14.112 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.611 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.391 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.741 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.183 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 8 5