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.
According to the passage, the author concluded that the movie production company should allocate a greater share of the budget to an advertisement if the company wants to increase the attendance. The author had come to this conclusion based on the recent decrease in the number of viewers in spite of increasing the positive reviews from reviewers. However, the conclusion was based on several unfounded assumptions. There are questions that need to be answered in order to evaluate the argument.
First of all, the author concluded that if they allocate more budget on advertising they can revive the number of viewers. However, he/she did not mention whether the lack of advertising was the main reason for decreasing or not? It is possible that there are other reasons. It is possible that people prefer to watch movies on the internet and the marketing department did not put it into consideration. Or it is possible that the company did not use professional directors for their advertisements and there is a low attraction in the previous advertising. So, if they fix the problem with the advertisements, there is no need to allocate more money.
Secondly, the author mentioned that the contents of positive reviews were not reaching enough to the viewers. There is no reason to conclude that viewers could not access these reviews. It is possible that the interest of viewers of Super Screen movies is not aligned with the interest of reviewers. Maybe, there were some critics who wrote negative reviews about the movies and their interests were fit the viewers and they abandoned reviewing and there are only positive reviews and as a consequence, the percentage of positive reviews increased. So, we cannot be confident about the quality of movies because of positive reviews. We need more information about reviewers and their interests.
Finally, the author cited that a recent report from the marketing department showed a decrease in the viewers during the past year. But he/she did not mention whether there were any other changes in the company or not. It is possible there are other factors which contributed to this decrease. For instance, it is possible that the company has weak coverage during the past year. Or maybe, they have changed the time of broadcasting movies from afternoons to late nights and most of the viewers prefer to watch movies in the afternoon. So, if there were other reasons in a few numbers of attendance, allocating more money in advertising is useless and has no effect.
To sum it all, the argument was based on several unfounded assumptions. The author should answer the issues which elaborated above. If we have more information, we can fully evaluate the persuasiveness of the conclusion.
Comments
e-rater score report
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: 25 15
No. of Words: 455 350
No. of Characters: 2236 1500
No. of Different Words: 186 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.619 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.914 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.723 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 167 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 129 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 86 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 52 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.2 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.414 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.52 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.293 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.492 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.112 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, for instance, first of all, in spite of
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 25.0 19.6327345309 127% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 38.0 28.8173652695 132% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 58.0 55.5748502994 104% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2296.0 2260.96107784 102% => OK
No of words: 453.0 441.139720559 103% => OK
Chars per words: 5.06843267108 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.61343653406 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.81218701914 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 191.0 204.123752495 94% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.421633554084 0.468620217663 90% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 731.7 705.55239521 104% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 10.0 4.96107784431 202% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 25.0 19.7664670659 126% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 45.6602409104 57.8364921388 79% => OK
Chars per sentence: 91.84 119.503703932 77% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.12 23.324526521 78% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.0 5.70786347227 70% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
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: 0.208421095294 0.218282227539 95% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0528171386021 0.0743258471296 71% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0675637081082 0.0701772020484 96% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.107513798222 0.128457276422 84% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0705663062977 0.0628817314937 112% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.5 14.3799401198 80% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 53.21 48.3550499002 110% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.83 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.88 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 96.0 98.500998004 97% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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.