18. The following is a memorandum from the business manager of a television station.
"Over the past year, our late-night news program has devoted increased time to national news and less time to weather and local news. During this period, most of the complaints received from viewers were concerned with our station's coverage of weather and local news. In addition, local businesses that used to advertise during our late-night news program have canceled their advertising contracts with us. Therefore, in order to attract more viewers to our news programs and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should expand our coverage of weather and local news on all our news programs."
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 argument talks about a solution provided by the business manager of a television station. The station has received complaints about reducing their time devoted to weather and local news and local businesses have also canceled their advertising contract with the station. The business manager suggests that to avoid any further loss they should restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level. However, this argument is not cogent and requires some specific pieces of evidence in order to evaluate it properly.
Firstly, the argument does not talk about the viewership of the late-night program. As the percentage of the audience that an advertisement reach depends on the viewership of the show, it is an important factor and cannot be neglected. If the overall viewership has increased then there is no need to make any change in the program schedule.
Secondly, the argument just states that 'most of the complaints' received are concerned with the station's coverage of weather and local news. The argument fails to provide a concrete figure of the complaints received. If the number of complaints received is low like 25% or 30%, then late-night news program can continue to work as it is working now.
Thirdly, it is important to know when those complaints are received. It is understandable to receive more complaints regarding a change immediately after the change. However, if the number of complaints has not decreased over the past one year, then it would be a good decision to restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level.
Fourthly, the television station needs to investigate why exactly the local business canceled their advertising contract. There is a possibility that the local business might be facing some problems cannot afford this advertisement or the businesses might have shut down. Assuming they canceled the contract because of advertisements not reaching to a larger audience will be a flawed assumption.
In conclusion, there are multiple pieces of evidence that the author can provide in order to make his argument more persuasive and cogent. Having these pieces of evidence will help the committee to make a well-informed decision.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
samples:
https://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-argument-task-essays/over-past-year-our…
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: ??? out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 359 350
No. of Characters: 1819 1500
No. of Different Words: 166 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.353 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.067 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.779 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 140 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 116 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 85 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 39 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.944 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.231 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.556 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.325 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.625 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.104 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 276, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
... advertising contract with the station. The business manager suggests that to avoid...
^^^
Line 3, column 237, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” 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.
...portant factor and cannot be neglected. If the overall viewership has increased th...
^^
Line 5, column 96, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
...plaints received are concerned with the stations coverage of weather and local news. The...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, firstly, however, if, regarding, second, secondly, so, then, third, thirdly, well, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 6.0 13.6137724551 44% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 47.0 55.5748502994 85% => OK
Nominalization: 19.0 16.3942115768 116% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1868.0 2260.96107784 83% => OK
No of words: 359.0 441.139720559 81% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.20334261838 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.35284910392 4.56307096286 95% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.82703595256 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 168.0 204.123752495 82% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.467966573816 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 586.8 705.55239521 83% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 33.114513248 57.8364921388 57% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 103.777777778 119.503703932 87% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.9444444444 23.324526521 86% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.05555555556 5.70786347227 106% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.88822355289 174% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.267204084782 0.218282227539 122% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0798712671891 0.0743258471296 107% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0839895735416 0.0701772020484 120% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.125583328252 0.128457276422 98% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0931276311853 0.0628817314937 148% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.0 14.3799401198 90% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 52.19 48.3550499002 108% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.88 12.5979740519 102% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.01 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 78.0 98.500998004 79% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.