"Five years ago, at a time when we had difficulties in obtaining reliable supplies of high quality wool fabric, we discontinued production of our alpaca overcoat. Now that we have a new fabric supplier, we should resume production. This coat should sell very well: since we have not offered an alpaca overcoat for five years and since our major competitor no longer makes an alpaca overcoat, there will be pent-up customer demand. Also, since the price of most types of clothing has increased in each of the past five years, customers should be willing to pay significantly higher prices for alpaca overcoats than they did five years ago, and our company profits will increase."
The author argues that the company should resume production of their alpaca overcoat. However, as discussed below, this argument relies on several critical assumptions which are based on unpersuasive and insufficient evidence.
To begin with, the author assumes that the company can resume production of the overcoat because they found a new fabric supplier who can support materials which were not supported for five years. However, there is no information about how many materials are available to be supported. If the new supplier doesn’t have capability to provide enough materials to meet the number of alpaca overcoats expected to be produced, resuming production of the overcoat might be radish decision. Also, cost information about the material should be presented because if the materials are supplied at unrealistic expensive cost, the company might not afford them. Therefore, before arguing the resume of the overcoat, the author needs to show more information about material supply including available quantity and cost.
Moreover, the author’s assumption on demand is questionable. According to the author, it is expected that there should be pent-up customer demand because no company have supplied alpaca overcoats after the company stopped its production. However, the author missed a point that there could be change in fashion trend. If people now think that this overcoat are outdated unlike their thought five years ago, the overcoats might not be successful even though they are able to be sold again. Also, if this is true, people will be more likely to avoid spending on this overcoat with higher price even though most other clothes are sold in higher prices. This contradicts the author’s another assumption on available price of the overcoats. Accordingly, more plausible evidence on demand and available price on this overcoat is required to make the author’s argument more agreeable.
Even if we assume that all above assumptions that the author made are true, still there are questions about profitability of this overcoat is remained. Although raw materials are ready to be supplied, if other costs including labor cost, utility cost, and other any related costs are increased to be enough to exceed current selling price of the overcoats, the company should not resume the production of this coat because it will mark lose on their income statements. Therefore, more careful assessment on cost analysis should be conducted to support the author’s argument.
In sum, as we discussed above, the author made assumptions according to evidence which is not enough and reliable to support his argument. Accordingly, more information about the raw material supply, customer demand, available price of the overcoat, and more research on cost analysis might be helpful to improve the argument’s persuasiveness.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 445 350
No. of Characters: 2339 1500
No. of Different Words: 190 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.593 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.256 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.652 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 189 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 140 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 107 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 60 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.421 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.038 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.789 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.368 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.368 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.128 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
accordingly, also, however, if, moreover, so, still, therefore, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 31.0 19.6327345309 158% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 27.0 28.8173652695 94% => OK
Preposition: 54.0 55.5748502994 97% => OK
Nominalization: 19.0 16.3942115768 116% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2407.0 2260.96107784 106% => OK
No of words: 444.0 441.139720559 101% => OK
Chars per words: 5.42117117117 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.5903493882 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.76921444027 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 199.0 204.123752495 97% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.448198198198 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 763.2 705.55239521 108% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 9.0 2.70958083832 332% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 57.8457208774 57.8364921388 100% => OK
Chars per sentence: 126.684210526 119.503703932 106% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.3684210526 23.324526521 100% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.05263157895 5.70786347227 71% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
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: 0.185348233052 0.218282227539 85% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0629619464818 0.0743258471296 85% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0517281078856 0.0701772020484 74% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.111055719294 0.128457276422 86% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.021740287447 0.0628817314937 35% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.8 14.3799401198 110% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 39.67 48.3550499002 82% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.45 12.5979740519 115% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.3 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 99.0 98.500998004 101% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.