Two years ago, radio station WCQP in Rockville decided to increase the number of call-in advice programs that it broadcast; since that time, its share of the radio audience in the Rockville listening area has increased significantly. Given WCQP's recent success with call-in advice programming, and citing a nationwide survey indicating that many radio listeners are quite interested in such programs, the station manager of KICK in Medway recommends that KICK include more call-in advice programs in an attempt to gain a larger audience share in its listening area.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The author of the passage claims that KICK in Medway should increase the number of call-in advice programs in order to gain larger audiences, and suggests several reasons that seem to uphold his/her claim. However, the passage is rife with holes and assumptions, which need to be eliminated for the author to uphold his/her claim with clear warrant. Such flaws will be discussed with further details below.
First of all, the author assumes that the increase in the number of call-in advice programs is the only cause of in the increase in the share of the radio audience. However, there could be many reasons that can enable the same consequence. Maybe Rockville experienced a significant growth in population for two years and fortunately, they were serious fans in call-in advice programs. If so, even though the number of audiences from the usual residents have been the same, it would seem as if it increased. Moreover, the author needs to clarify what type of call-in advice programs they were. If the programs mainly considered providing advice about parental issues, then there is also a possibility that maybe the number of new parents who were facing various problems in nurturing their babies increased in two years. The author would have to clarify the exact types of call-in advice programs that increased, and the cause of the increase in the share of the radio audience.
Secondly, the author asseverates that the result of the nationwide survey upholds his/her claim. However, there is lack of clear and substantial information provided in the passage about the survey. First, the passage does not indicate for how long the survey was open to receiving responses. If the survey was accessible only for a few hours during daytime, certain types of people who enjoy listening to radios, such as young mothers or people who have retired, would have been the only available people to respond to the survey. If this is the case, then the respondents would be highly unreliable to represent the whole nation. Moreover, if only a few people responded, such as ten people among billions of possible respondents, then the amount would be negligible enough, making the result of the survey unwarranted to uphold the author's claim.
Furthermore, even though the survey was conducted nationwide, this is just a general data and is incapable of being specified to certain areas. There is a possibility that while people generally enjoy call-in advice programs, residents in Medway do not favor such programs. Even if the residents in Medway responded that they do not favor call-in advice programs, people from other regions' response, those who chose that they favor the programs, could have been predominant. The author would have to specifically target the residents in Medway and conduct the survey in order to clarify that there are demands for call-in advice programs also in this region.
Last but not least, the author assumes that because the alteration in Rockville was successful, Medway should show the same consequence. However, this is clearly unfounded. There is a high possibility that the residents in Rockville and in Medway have different interests. Even though there is an increase of the radio audience in Rockville, people in Medway may not actually enjoy call-in advice programs. There is also a possibility that majority of the people in Rockville are seniors and enjoy listening to radios during the day, while people in Medway are assiduous young workers who does not have enough time to listen to radios, or actually prefers watching Youtube videos instead of listening to radios. The author would have to further investigate whether the propensity of the residents in both regions are the same.
To sum up, even though the author's claim might seem plausible, through thorough investigation and reading the passage from various points of view, it is confirmed that his/her claim is clearly unwarranted. In order for the author to maintain his/her claim with upholding reasons, he/she would have to eliminate flaws of making haste assumptions, providing lack of clear and substantial information, unreliable generalizations, and lack of thorough investigation.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 9 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 5 2
No. of Sentences: 28 15
No. of Words: 686 350
No. of Characters: 3431 1500
No. of Different Words: 252 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.118 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.001 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.556 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 265 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 178 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 120 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 80 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.5 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.531 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.75 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.322 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.322 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.13 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 4, column 383, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'regions'' or 'region's'?
Suggestion: regions'; region's
...l-in advice programs, people from other regions response, those who chose that they fav...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, furthermore, however, if, may, moreover, second, secondly, so, then, while, such as, first of all, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 34.0 19.6327345309 173% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 21.0 13.6137724551 154% => OK
Pronoun: 40.0 28.8173652695 139% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 98.0 55.5748502994 176% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3514.0 2260.96107784 155% => OK
No of words: 680.0 441.139720559 154% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.16764705882 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.10654576214 4.56307096286 112% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.6662636662 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 266.0 204.123752495 130% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.391176470588 0.468620217663 83% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 1086.3 705.55239521 154% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 11.0 2.70958083832 406% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 28.0 19.7664670659 142% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 63.189866147 57.8364921388 109% => OK
Chars per sentence: 125.5 119.503703932 105% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.2857142857 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.85714285714 5.70786347227 85% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 15.0 8.20758483034 183% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 9.0 4.67664670659 192% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.170778628619 0.218282227539 78% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0558708319586 0.0743258471296 75% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0753617263735 0.0701772020484 107% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0949628728353 0.128457276422 74% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.100799371767 0.0628817314937 160% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.1 14.3799401198 105% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.0 12.5979740519 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.96 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 135.0 98.500998004 137% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 12.3882235529 105% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 30 minutes.
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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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.