The following appeared in an e-mail sent by the marketing director of the Classical Shakespeare Theatre of Bardville.
"Over the past ten years, there has been a 20 percent decline in the size of the average audience at Classical Shakespeare Theater productions. In spite of increased advertising, we are attracting fewer and fewer people to our shows, causing our profits to decrease significantly. We must take action to attract new audience members. The best way to do so is by instituting a 'Shakespeare in the Park' program this summer. Two years ago the nearby Avon Repertory Company started a 'Free Plays in the Park' program, and its profits have increased 10 percent since then. If we start a 'Shakespeare in the Park' program, we can predict that our profits will increase, too."
In this e-mail message, the marketing director of the Classical Shakespeare Theatre (CST) recommends that the theatre should launch a “Shakespeare in the Park” program, which is similar to a “Free Plays in the Park” program conducted by the nearby Avon Repertory Company (ARC), instead of relying on the traditional advertising in order to reverse its declining audience and profit. To support this recommendation, the director points out that (1) CST, despite the increasing advertising, has experienced the continuous declines in the audience and profit over the past ten years, and that (2) ARC has succeeded in increasing its profit since it started the free play program two years ago. This argument lacks critical information to support the whole course of reasoning, and is questionable as it stands.
First, with regard to the effectiveness of the present advertising, the director hastily assumes that it is almost futile simply because CST has had less audience and profit even with the advertising. However, it is unclear that the advertising was ineffective. In fact, it is possible that the size of the decline in the number of audience might have been greater than the average 10 percent if it had not been for the advertising. Without clearer information about the impact of the traditional advertising, we cannot properly evaluate the argument’s claim that CST should discontinue the present advertising and shift to a new marketing technique.
Second, with regard to the utility of the free play in the park, the director also assumes that the increase in profit of Avon can be explained solely by the launch of the “Free Play in the Park” program, resting only on the fact that the increase comes after the program. Although this might be true, the actual cause of the increase may reside in other factors. Perhaps, a wise selection of genres and works or the newly renovated theatre building can explain the increase of audience. Without eliminating this possibility, this recommendation is still dubious.
Thirdly, even conceding that the free program contributed to the increase to some degree, this recommendation is also problematic in that it assumes the former is essential to the latter. However, there could be lots of other theatres which successfully increase their profits even without implementing such free marketing programs.
Finally, this recommendation also relies on the assumption that CST is similar to ARC in their respective management conditions with which they can run the free programs. However, unlike ARC, CST might lack the sufficient financial resource to continue the costly free play program for a long time. Without providing information that the two theatres are comparable each other in this aspect, the recommendation cannot convince us.
Comments
Essay evaluation 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: 16 15
No. of Words: 446 350
No. of Characters: 2286 1500
No. of Different Words: 210 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.596 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.126 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.86 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 174 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 139 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 89 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 59 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.875 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 14.396 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.625 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.34 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.592 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.117 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 525, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Also,
...a new program. Free Plays in the Park. Also she assumes that imitating the company ...
^^^^
Line 5, column 301, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Put a space after the comma
Suggestion: , there
...nned program, SIP in the region. However,there is no guarantee that the new program wi...
^^^^^^
Line 5, column 442, Rule ID: HAVE_PART_AGREEMENT[1]
Message: Use past participle here: 'lost'.
Suggestion: lost
...erature and movies and performance have lose their popularity in public people. Ther...
^^^^
Line 9, column 384, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...ul to the finance state of the company. To evaluate better, we have to be given ad...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, finally, however, if, really, second, secondly, so, still, for example, as a result, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 5.0 11.1786427146 45% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 16.0 13.6137724551 118% => OK
Pronoun: 47.0 28.8173652695 163% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 61.0 55.5748502994 110% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2578.0 2260.96107784 114% => OK
No of words: 523.0 441.139720559 119% => OK
Chars per words: 4.9292543021 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.78217453174 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.5756727251 2.78398813304 93% => OK
Unique words: 211.0 204.123752495 103% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.4034416826 0.468620217663 86% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 795.6 705.55239521 113% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 9.0 2.70958083832 332% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 9.0 4.22255489022 213% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 74.9205018484 57.8364921388 130% => OK
Chars per sentence: 107.416666667 119.503703932 90% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.7916666667 23.324526521 93% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.75 5.70786347227 83% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 15.0 8.20758483034 183% => 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: 0.0624179898029 0.218282227539 29% => The similarity between the topic and the content is low.
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0193062542643 0.0743258471296 26% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0388683831402 0.0701772020484 55% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.04566713554 0.128457276422 36% => Maybe some paragraphs are off the topic.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0387499513169 0.0628817314937 62% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.7 14.3799401198 88% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 58.62 48.3550499002 121% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.31 12.5979740519 90% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.97 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 109.0 98.500998004 111% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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It is not exactly right on the topic in the view of e-grader. Maybe there is a wrong essay topic.
Rates: 16.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 1.0 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.