Argument Topic: "The following is taken from a memo from the advertising director of the Super Screen Movie Production Company. "According to a recent report from our marketing department, during the past year, fewer people attended Super Screen-produced movies than in any other year. And yet the percentage of positive reviews by movie reviewers about specific Super Screen movies actually increased during the past year. Clearly, the contents of these reviews are not reaching enough of our prospective viewers. Thus, the problem lies not with the quality of our movies but with the public's lack of awareness that movies of good quality are available. Super Screen should therefore allocate a greater share of its budget next year to reaching the public through advertising."
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.
While it is true that the Production Company should come up with an action plan to increase the viewership of movies that they produce, the arguments made by the director in this particular memo are flawed and does not hold any ground when analyzed critically.
Firstly, he bases his whole claim on a recent report from the company's marketing department, according to which, fewer people attended the movies that they produced than in any other year and uses this argument to bolster his claim that the movies were probably not advertised enough. However, it fails to answer if it was only the lack of advertising that resulted in a loss of viewership. It could have been a general trend in the movie industry last year that resulted in a loss of viewership. Only if more comprehensive data regarding the overall number of movie-goers last year is available, then this claim will hold any ground.
Secondly, he makes a suggestion that movies that get positive reviews from movie reviewers will succeed in the box office. There are several movies, that even go on to win movie awards, that fail at the box office since the audience taste varies a great deal from those of movie critics. Further, the report also says that, even these positive reviews were for specific movies. The report does not give any indication as to how well these movies, which received a positive review did at the box office. It is unclear whether these movies did really well at the box-office, while other movies flopped miserably. Then, the average audience for all the movies produced by the Super screen companies would have gone down. Since, enough data is not available in this regard, this argument by the director cannot be validated.
Finally, the claim goes on to make a questionable assumption that since some movies received a positive review, their quality is good. And, it is the public's lack of awareness that movies of good quality are available is what that is resulting in loss of viewers. And hence, the company should allocate a greater share of its budget for advertising. This argument, completely fail to mention what exactly is the content that the author wishes to be advertised. It does not mention if he wants the movie to be advertised via teasers, trailers or promotional events or if wants the critic's reviews to be advertised. If it is the former, then all the arguments that he made earlier in the memo will fail to support this particular claim and if it is indeed that latter, the argument is still flawed to make for a cogent appeal to increase budget for advertising.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
flaws:
1. need to mention that only special movies (and maybe there are few) got positive reviews, other movies may get bad or normal reviews.
2. maybe ads worked well and have reached people, like by DVD, phone, Internet...
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 445 350
No. of Characters: 2093 1500
No. of Different Words: 209 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.593 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.703 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.442 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 149 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 100 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 69 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 39 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.722 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.354 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.722 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.324 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.515 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.166 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, finally, first, firstly, hence, however, if, really, regarding, second, secondly, so, still, then, well, while, as to, it is true
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 20.0 13.6137724551 147% => OK
Pronoun: 47.0 28.8173652695 163% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 51.0 55.5748502994 92% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2138.0 2260.96107784 95% => OK
No of words: 445.0 441.139720559 101% => OK
Chars per words: 4.80449438202 5.12650576532 94% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.59293186426 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.5402663069 2.78398813304 91% => OK
Unique words: 216.0 204.123752495 106% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.485393258427 0.468620217663 104% => OK
syllable_count: 679.5 705.55239521 96% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 12.0 4.96107784431 242% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => 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: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 57.8458199777 57.8364921388 100% => OK
Chars per sentence: 118.777777778 119.503703932 99% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.7222222222 23.324526521 106% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.5 5.70786347227 131% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 0.0 4.67664670659 0% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.196334716363 0.218282227539 90% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0570404448453 0.0743258471296 77% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0589761506727 0.0701772020484 84% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.114569384768 0.128457276422 89% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0549076812244 0.0628817314937 87% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.5 14.3799401198 94% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 55.58 48.3550499002 115% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.86 12.5979740519 86% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.45 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 102.0 98.500998004 104% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 18.0 12.3882235529 145% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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.