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.
In the memo, the advertising director of the super screen movie production company has stated that, the budget for advertisement should be increased over the next year, in order to attract more viewers and profit the company. The director has come to this conclusion based on the assumption that, the content of the movie over the past year have produced positive reviews by the people who viewed it and disseminating this reviews to a wider audience would bring in more viewers. However, before this recommendation can be properly evaluated, following three questions must be answered.
Firstly, how is the percentage of positive reviews calculated ? In other words, if the total number of people who viewed the movie over the past year has reduced then the denominator in calculating the positive reviews percentage has reduced which results in a higher value even if the number of positive reviews remain the same as previous years. Perhaps, the positive reviewers are regular viewers who always leave behind a good note. Maybe, over the past year, the movies have lost more audience than the previous years because of its content and this reduction in total number has caused the rise of percentage of positive reviews. If either of these scenarios has merit, then the conclusion drawn in the original argument is significantly weakened.
Secondly, what was the major genre/content of the movie screened last year ? Was it focused on youth or the aged ? The working populace or the students ? Each individual is unique and the content of a movie percieved by a young man is very different from an aged man. Perhaps if the content of the movie was solely focused for aged individuals, it might be the reason for reduced number of viewers and advertising the movie would still not improve the number because of the disinterested viewers. Thus, the content of the movie and its focus group needs to be evaluated before reaching any conclusion. If the above is true, then the argument does not hold water.
Thirdly, the location of the movie screen and the theater surrounding environmental conditions might be infeasible for viewers to travel to the cinema hall. Perhaps, lately there has been construction surrounding the theater causing irritation to the viewers. Maybe, the increase in online movie screening platforms might be attractive to busy workers who cannot make time for the travel to movie theater. If these factors are true, then even if the budget for advertising is increased, the number of viewers will still remain the same or plummet.
In conclusion, the argument as it stands now is considerably flawed due to its reliance on several unwarranted assumptions. If the author is able to answer the questions above and offer more evidence ( perhaps in the form of a systematic research study ), then it will be possible to fully evaluate the viability of proposed recommendation to improve the budget for advertising over the next year in order to attract more viewers to the movie.
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: 21 15
No. of Words: 497 350
No. of Characters: 2447 1500
No. of Different Words: 215 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.722 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.924 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.66 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 177 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 136 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 84 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 51 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.667 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 13.664 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.571 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.306 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.524 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.067 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 212, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'reviews'' or 'review's'?
Suggestion: reviews'; review's
...denominator in calculating the positive reviews percentage has reduced which results in...
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 200, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... questions above and offer more evidence perhaps in the form of a systematic res...
^^
Line 9, column 224, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...er more evidence perhaps in the form of a systematic research study , then it wi...
^^
Line 9, column 253, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Put a space after the comma, but not before the comma
Suggestion: ,
...the form of a systematic research study , then it will be possible to fully evalu...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, firstly, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, still, then, third, thirdly, thus, in conclusion, in other words
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 16.0 28.8173652695 56% => OK
Preposition: 65.0 55.5748502994 117% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2508.0 2260.96107784 111% => OK
No of words: 496.0 441.139720559 112% => OK
Chars per words: 5.0564516129 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.71922212354 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.75429719588 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 225.0 204.123752495 110% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.453629032258 0.468620217663 97% => OK
syllable_count: 793.8 705.55239521 113% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 78.3906433863 57.8364921388 136% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.428571429 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.619047619 23.324526521 101% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.71428571429 5.70786347227 100% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 14.0 8.20758483034 171% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => More negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.208453684132 0.218282227539 95% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0574925750568 0.0743258471296 77% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0598917823962 0.0701772020484 85% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.111824378054 0.128457276422 87% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.059224351576 0.0628817314937 94% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.2 14.3799401198 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 48.13 48.3550499002 100% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.36 12.5979740519 98% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.15 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 106.0 98.500998004 108% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => 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.