The following appeared in a memo from the owner of Green Thumb Gardening Center, a small business serving a suburban town.
"There is evidence that consumers are becoming more and more interested in growing their own -vegetables. A national survey conducted last month indicated that many consumers were dissatisfied with the quality of fresh vegetables available in supermarkets. And locally, the gardening magazine Great Gardens has sold out at the Village News stand three months in a row. Thus, we at Green Thumb Gardening Center can increase our profits by greatly expanding the variety of vegetable seeds we stock for gardeners this coming spring." - GRE Argument 12
In this memo the owner of Green Thumb Gardening Center (GT) concludes that GT could increase its profits by expanding its stock of vegetable seeds. The owner cites a national survey showing growing dissatisfaction with supermarket vegetables, and points out that a certain gardening magazine has sold out at one local newsstand three months in a row. I find the owner's argument weak, for three reasons.
First, by relying on the national survey to support its conclusion the argument depends on the assumption that the level of satisfaction locally with store-bought groceries reflects national...
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Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 448 350
No. of Characters: 2387 1500
No. of Different Words: 198 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.601 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.328 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.803 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 182 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 149 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 106 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 73 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.579 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.782 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.421 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.355 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.566 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.129 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5