Essay topics:
"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 may be true that the Super Screen Movie Production Company should allocate a greater share of its budget next year to advertising itself and its movies, the director's argument fails to address some important questions and lacks supporting evidence. Increasing spendings on advertising may be beneficial to the company, but this argument is plagued with assumptions and unanswered questions, and therefore, not strong enough to convince me.
The director assumes that the all of the company's movies are of high quality because the percentage of positive reviews about specific movies by movie reviewers increased. Several questions need to be answered to justify this claim. Do the positive reviews about specific movies speak for the entirety of a company's movies? It is possible that only a few of them get positive reviews, and the rest of them are considered terrible. Do the movie reviewers represent the audience of Super Screen? It is could be that while professional reviewers enjoy certain movies, most people do not. Does the increase in the percentage of positive reviews necessarily mean that Super Screen's movies would outperform their competitors? Other movies may have got much more positive reviews and become much more popular.
In addition, the director, building upon his or her judgement that Super Screen's movies need more publicity, suggests larger portions of next year's budget to be spent on advertising. However, it remains questionable whether spending more on advertisements would not have negative impacts on the quality of Super Screen's movies. It is very likely that by spending more on publicity, budget for filming or purchasing movies would be reduced. If this is the case, the overall competitiveness of Super Screen may decrease despite getting known to more people. Moreover, it can be questioned whether more expenditure on advertising is necessary. It could be that the way they reach to the public can be improved and more efficient ways can be discovered to advertise next year's movies cheaply yet more effectively.
In sum, the advertising director's reasoning is rife with speculations and one can challenge it with many questions. It may be true that spending more on reaching the public through advertising is an excellent idea, but the director fails to offer a compelling argument.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 5 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 373 350
No. of Characters: 1935 1500
No. of Different Words: 184 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.395 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.188 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.807 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 152 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 121 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 91 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 54 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.722 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.887 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.344 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.532 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.114 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 167, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'directors'' or 'director's'?
Suggestion: directors'; director's
... advertising itself and its movies, the directors argument fails to address some importan...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 31, Rule ID: ALL_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'all the'.
Suggestion: all the
...ce me. The director assumes that the all of the companys movies are of high quality bec...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 498, Rule ID: IS_SHOULD[1]
Message: Did you mean 'it'?
Suggestion: it
...resent the audience of Super Screen? It is could be that while professional review...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, however, if, may, moreover, so, therefore, while, in addition
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 43.0 55.5748502994 77% => OK
Nominalization: 8.0 16.3942115768 49% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1971.0 2260.96107784 87% => OK
No of words: 373.0 441.139720559 85% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.28418230563 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.39467950092 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.8615557515 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 190.0 204.123752495 93% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.509383378016 0.468620217663 109% => OK
syllable_count: 617.4 705.55239521 88% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
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: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 49.8845580897 57.8364921388 86% => OK
Chars per sentence: 109.5 119.503703932 92% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.7222222222 23.324526521 89% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.66666666667 5.70786347227 64% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.20758483034 158% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.20957627762 0.218282227539 96% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0800170824991 0.0743258471296 108% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0633373993756 0.0701772020484 90% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.127387497339 0.128457276422 99% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0430491468889 0.0628817314937 68% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.8 14.3799401198 96% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 42.72 48.3550499002 88% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.34 12.5979740519 106% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.65 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 95.0 98.500998004 96% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => 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.