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.
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The author of this proposal to increase the budget for Mason city riverside recreational facilities offers an interesting argument but to move forward on the proposal would definitely require more information and thought. While the correlations stated are logical and probable, there are many hidden factors that prevent the city from diverting resources to this project.
First the argument assumes that recreational facilities will develop the city life. But, survey responses can hardly be used as indicator of actual behavior. Even the wording of the survey results remains ambiguous and vague. While water sports may be among the residents’ favorite activities, this allows for many other favorites. What remain unknown is the priorities of the general public. Do they favor these water sports above a softball field or soccer field? Indeed the survey hardly provides enough information to discern future use of improved facilities.
Second, The argument never addresses the idea behind a cleaner river will result in increased usage. While it is not illogical to expect some increase, at what level will people begin to use the river? The answer to this question requires a survey to find out the reasons our residents use or do not use the river. Government needs to survey whether people really interested in water sports than recreational activities that they are engaged in? These type of question will influence the city government forecast how much river usage will increase and to assign a promotional increase to the budget.
Likewise, the argument omits the legitimate cost and timeline of the cleaning process. As we can see there are several other effect of this process like there may be misuse of funds in renovating the riverside facilities only to watch the new buildings fall into dilapidation while the state drags the river clean-up. The author does not consider current budget situation and also where this additional money will be diverted from. The city people will not be willing to draw money away from other key projects from road improvements to schools and education. The author naively assumes that the money can simply appear without forethought on where it will come from.
Thus, the argument is not completely sound. Examining all the various angles and factors involved with improving riverside recreational facilities, the argument does not justify increasing the budget. However, this author’s argument is not likely significantly persuading the city government to allocate increased funding. While proposal does highlight a possibility, more information is required to warrant any action. Ultimately the argument might have been strengthened if the author could have shown that approximate budget of this project and also good or bad effects of this activity.
argument 1 -- Better to accept the survey, but the author simply assumes that it is the quality of the water in Mason River that prevents residents from using it for recreational activities. the author fails to consider if Mason River is suitable for those water sports favored by residents in Mason, and how much residents are willing to use the river for recreational activities.
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- better: No evidence could illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed plan, and how much time would it take for the plan to be effective, thus we cannot ensure that recreational use of the river will automatically increase.
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 442 350
No. of Characters: 2319 1500
No. of Different Words: 236 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.585 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.247 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.636 2.4
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No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 132 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 96 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 59 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.417 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.421 7.5
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Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.271 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.484 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.049 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5