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 from the Advertising Director of the Super Screen Movie Production company, the main recommendation is to allocate a greater share of the budget for the next year to advertising to combat the observed drop in number of people attending Super Screen-produced movies in the past year. The evidence provided in support of this is a recent report by the marketing department documenting the decrease in footfall to Super Screen-produced movies juxtaposed with the increase in the percentage of positive reviews about specific Super Screen movies. The recommendation as provided is quite weak. It makes quite a few unwarranted assumptions and there are at least three questions that need to be answered to evaluate it effectively.
The first question is, how many Super Screen-produced movies were released in the past year when compared to previous years? It is possible that there were simply fewer Super Screen movies released when compared to past years, leading to the observed drop in footfall. Maybe, the numbers are actually in line with past years when the ratios of the number of movies to the number of people attending them are compared. If either of these were true, the entire basis of the argument would be destroyed, leaving it very much weakened.
The second question is, what is the ratio of the percentage of positive reviews to the percentage of negative reviews for Super Screen movies from the past year? Perhaps, the number of negative reviews has also increased, countering any impact from the percieved jump in the percentage of positive reviews. It could also be that there are now many new forums to provide reviews that simply did not exist before, leading to a higher number of reviews in general, irrespective of whether they are positive or negative. If either of these were to stand true, the supporting evidence of increased positive reviews would be voided, making the argument lose a lot of weight.
The third is, how do we know that the contents of the positive reviews are not reaching prospective viewers? It is possible that the content of the films released in the past year was not having widespread appeal, so it was loved by a niche audience but most people were not interested in it in spite of the positive reviews. Maybe, the points highlighted by the positive reviews are not what the masses look for in a movie, therefore they do not feel inclined to watch it upon reading the reviews. If either of these were to be true, it would imply that the awareness about the good quality Super Screen movies is not the cause for the decrease in people watching these movies, making the argument lose a lot of water.
In conclusion, this recommendation as it stands is quite flawed and makes quite a few unwarranted assumptions. If answers to the aforementioned three questions could be provided, it would be possible to evaluate it effectively and decide if it is reasonable or not.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 497 350
No. of Characters: 2389 1500
No. of Different Words: 194 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.722 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.807 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.734 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 172 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 122 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 94 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 43 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.611 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.122 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.778 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.353 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.353 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.142 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 178, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ioned three questions could be provided, it would be possible to evaluate it effe...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, if, look, may, second, so, therefore, third, at least, in conclusion, in general, in spite of
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 34.0 19.6327345309 173% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 78.0 55.5748502994 140% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2438.0 2260.96107784 108% => OK
No of words: 497.0 441.139720559 113% => OK
Chars per words: 4.90543259557 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.72159896747 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.78413975193 2.78398813304 100% => OK
Unique words: 205.0 204.123752495 100% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.412474849095 0.468620217663 88% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 775.8 705.55239521 110% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 27.0 22.8473053892 118% => OK
Sentence length SD: 57.8793978144 57.8364921388 100% => OK
Chars per sentence: 135.444444444 119.503703932 113% => OK
Words per sentence: 27.6111111111 23.324526521 118% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.72222222222 5.70786347227 118% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 14.0 8.20758483034 171% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.316014993338 0.218282227539 145% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0985433711498 0.0743258471296 133% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.128098577155 0.0701772020484 183% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.17740908938 0.128457276422 138% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.150392871646 0.0628817314937 239% => More connections among paragraphs wanted.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.5 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 44.07 48.3550499002 91% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.49 12.5979740519 91% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.18 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 101.0 98.500998004 103% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 15.0 12.3882235529 121% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.8 11.1389221557 115% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.