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 | TOEFL IELTS GMAT GRE SAT ACT PTE ESL

Essay topics:

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.

Please help me improve this essay and if possible give me an idea of what score you would give it and why. Any and all help is very much appreciated so thank you in advance!

In recent years many cinema companies have seen a sharp decline in profits and patrons. With ticket prices still going up even though new competitors such as youtube and on-demand movies have appeared, there seems to be less and less reason to go to a physical theater. The argument presented by the advertising director ignores many possible reasons for declining attendees and assumes that the cause is poor advertising while there is not sufficient information to support this claim.

In order to evaluate this argument, it is crucial that the numerical facts presented are clear and accurately represented. The report states that "fewer people" attended the movies without explaining what qualifies as fewer. Was there a significant decrease? If 1,000 people attend the movies annually and only 950 attended this year that is surely less daunting that if 200 people attended last year and only 50 attended this year. Similarly, the increase in percentage of positive reviews needs to be explicitly stated. If the increase was from 10% positive reviews to 15% positive reviews, then it is improbable that it would have made a difference in attracting viewers.

Furthermore, the advertising director is assuming that people didn’t know about the positive movie reviews, but this many not have been the case. It's plausible that potential clients saw the movie reviews, but remained uninterested.
Additionally, he/she is assuming that movie reviews are the most influential factor in deciding what movie to watch. Perhaps viewers choose movies based primarily on the quality of their commercials or word of mouth recommendations from friends. The advertising director needs to answer the questions of movie review visibility and influence.

Lastly, so there are several other reasons that people may not be seeing movies this year; there may not actually be a lack of public awareness that there are good movies. The advertising director needs to uncover the true underlying reason that people are not watching films in their theater. With the advent of streaming services such as netflix and hulu, maybe people just aren't going to the movies anymore. It's possible movie ticket prices have gone up or the economy is in a recession and people are no longer willing to spend money to go to the movies.

There are too many unsupported claims and alternative explanations in the presented argument for it to be reasonable. The numbers used for justification are not clear, the claim that people don't know about positive movie reviews is based on no evidence, and the advertising director ignores the fact that things change from year to year and there could be outside factors deterring people from seeing movies at the current time. Unless that the questions addressed in this essay are answered in a way that corroborates the director's claims, there is not sufficient evidence that the recommendation will succeed in solving the problem of decreased viewers.

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GMAT/GRE Argument Task

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Essay evaluations by e-grader

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 8, column 377, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: aren't
... as netflix and hulu, maybe people just arent going to the movies anymore. Its possib...
^^^^^
Line 10, column 191, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: don't
...on are not clear, the claim that people dont know about positive movie reviews is ba...
^^^^

Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, furthermore, if, lastly, may, similarly, so, still, then, while, such as

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 28.0 19.6327345309 143% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 5.0 12.9520958084 39% => OK
Conjunction : 17.0 11.1786427146 152% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 34.0 28.8173652695 118% => OK
Preposition: 52.0 55.5748502994 94% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2505.0 2260.96107784 111% => OK
No of words: 478.0 441.139720559 108% => OK
Chars per words: 5.24058577406 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.67581127817 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.75700549289 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 236.0 204.123752495 116% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.493723849372 0.468620217663 105% => OK
syllable_count: 774.0 705.55239521 110% => 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: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 58.2315730491 57.8364921388 101% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.285714286 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.7619047619 23.324526521 98% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.14285714286 5.70786347227 73% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.260767695948 0.218282227539 119% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0746751608982 0.0743258471296 100% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0542420562395 0.0701772020484 77% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.14272543595 0.128457276422 111% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.036408598327 0.0628817314937 58% => OK

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.6 14.3799401198 102% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.41 12.5979740519 106% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.43 8.32208582834 101% => OK
difficult_words: 112.0 98.500998004 114% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => OK
What are above readability scores?

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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.

Essay evaluations by e-grader

Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, furthermore, if, lastly, may, similarly, so, still, then, while, such as

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments