8. The following appeared in a memorandum from the planning department of an electric power company.
"Several recent surveys indicate that home owners are increasingly eager to conserve energy. At the same time, manufacturers are now marketing many home appliances, such as refrigerators and air conditioners, that are almost twice as energy efficient as those sold a decade ago. Also, new technologies for better home insulation and passive solar heating are readily available to reduce the energy needed for home heating. Therefore, the total demand for electricity in our area will not increase — and may decline slightly. Since our three electric generating plants in operation for the past twenty years have always met our needs, construction of new generating plants will not be necessary."
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.
As per the recommendation by the planning department, there is no need to construct new electricity generating plant as energy consumption may reduce in the coming future. This recommendation is based on the facts that new technology has produced more efficient products which consume less energy and developed methods which don’t require electricity in some processes (which was earlier required). However, this recommendation is not based on a comprehensive evidence and many assumptions have been taken into account while doing so. Thus, there are some questions which needs to answered with concrete evidence to validate this recommendation.
Firstly, it is mentioned in the surveys that people want to conserve energy, but why? If there is already less consumption of energy due to new technologies, then why people want to conserve energy? Perhaps people want to conserve energy because their recent electricity consumption has been high and thus costing them more. So, they want to reduce their electricity bill by trying to minimize the use of various electrical equipments. Also it is mentioned that energy consumption is low because of new efficient devices, but in recent years there are a number of extra electrical equipments that have become a part of our households which were not present a decade earlier. A decade earlier there was not a microwave or an AC in every house, but today these things are counted as basic necessities in house. So, maybe this increase in equipments may lead to more energy consumption despite the increased efficiency of the equipments. If this case is true, then the argument will not hold water. The survey must be more specific about the reasons by the people regarding their eagerness to conserve energy.
Secondly, the argument has only taken into account the energy usage in households. Is electrical energy consumption only limited to households? No, it is used everywhere whether it is in industries, in agriculture, in corporate offices. Maybe energy consumption will reduce in households but it cannot be guaranteed that it will reduce in other places as well. Due to continuous industrialization, now there are more industries coming than ever and will be even more in the future. The planning department has just completely overlooked these facts and thus not provide a holistic view of the argument.
In conclusion, I want to say that the argument is based on a lot of assumptions and thus pose some unwarranted questions. So, questions regarding the validity of the survey and actual usage of the electrical energy must be answered. Some specific data must be presented if energy consumption is actually reducing in households or not.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 436 350
No. of Characters: 2213 1500
No. of Different Words: 200 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.57 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.076 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.947 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 160 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 121 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 95 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 67 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.818 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.978 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.818 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.316 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.482 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.102 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 437, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Also,
...e use of various electrical equipments. Also it is mentioned that energy consumption...
^^^^
Line 3, column 782, Rule ID: BASIC_FUNDAMENTALS[1]
Message: Use simply 'necessities'.
Suggestion: necessities
..., but today these things are counted as basic necessities in house. So, maybe this increase in eq...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, firstly, however, if, look, may, regarding, second, secondly, so, then, thus, well, while, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 26.0 28.8173652695 90% => OK
Preposition: 53.0 55.5748502994 95% => OK
Nominalization: 21.0 16.3942115768 128% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2270.0 2260.96107784 100% => OK
No of words: 435.0 441.139720559 99% => OK
Chars per words: 5.2183908046 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.56690854021 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.01411134857 2.78398813304 108% => OK
Unique words: 206.0 204.123752495 101% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.473563218391 0.468620217663 101% => OK
syllable_count: 738.0 705.55239521 105% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 42.455737768 57.8364921388 73% => OK
Chars per sentence: 103.181818182 119.503703932 86% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.7727272727 23.324526521 85% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.0 5.70786347227 105% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 14.0 8.20758483034 171% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => 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: 0.138126286086 0.218282227539 63% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0451214283637 0.0743258471296 61% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0315673546857 0.0701772020484 45% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0810467441219 0.128457276422 63% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0342293213573 0.0628817314937 54% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.0 14.3799401198 90% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 43.73 48.3550499002 90% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.0 12.5979740519 103% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.1 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 97.0 98.500998004 98% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => 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: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.