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 Theatre 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."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The argument above is about an email sent by the director of marketing at of the classical Shakespeare Theatre. The marketing director suggests instituting a “Shakespeare in the Park program” that will help to increase profit by attracting more audience. The director has mentioned a nearby Avon Repertory Company that started similar program two years ago and increased the sales by 10 percent, so he is thinking of extrapolating same idea to Shakespeare theatre. Before this recommendation be evaluated, three questions must be answered.
First, will “Shakespeare in the Park program” applied by the nearby Avon Repertory be lucrative to the theatre? The director is making an assumption that the nearby company’s strategy will be beneficial to his Theatre too. The audience of Shakespeare might not like such a program to be applied because this might affect the perception of Shakespeare in their mind as a Classical theatre show. If this scenario merit, then the conclusion drawn in the original argument is significantly weakened.
Second, Will the increase in the advertisement increase the audience? There might be problem with the advertisement content that the company is using. Therefore, there is no positive result of the increase in the advertisement due to poor contents the company is representing. In addition, if the increased advertisement is not targeted to the right target market, the decline would be predicted. If examples proven is true then the argument does not hold water.
Third, was the 10 percent increase of Avon Repertory Company a direct result of applying the recommended program? The Avon Repertory Company might have started another advertisement campaign in parallel to the mentioned program, which was the result of the 10 percent increase of profit in for two years. If this scenario was correct, then the program did not contribute into the increase in profit.
In conclusion, the argument as it stands now, is considerably flawed due its reliance on several unwarranted assumptions. If the author is able to give more information about assumptions stated, then it will be possible to fully evaluate the viability of the proposed recommendation.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 347 350
No. of Characters: 1800 1500
No. of Different Words: 165 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.316 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.187 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.002 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 140 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 119 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 87 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 49 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.278 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.657 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.611 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.322 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.57 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.094 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 157, Rule ID: EN_A_VS_AN
Message: Use 'an' instead of 'a' if the following word starts with a vowel sound, e.g. 'an article', 'an hour'
Suggestion: an
...marketing director suggests instituting a 'Shakespeare in the Park program&a...
^
Line 1, column 266, 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.
...ase profit by attracting more audience. The director has mentioned a nearby Avon Re...
^^^
Line 9, column 398, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...market, the decline would be predicted. If examples proven is true then the argume...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, if, second, so, then, therefore, third, in addition, in conclusion
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 : 1.0 11.1786427146 9% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 5.0 13.6137724551 37% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 14.0 28.8173652695 49% => OK
Preposition: 45.0 55.5748502994 81% => OK
Nominalization: 19.0 16.3942115768 116% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1894.0 2260.96107784 84% => OK
No of words: 347.0 441.139720559 79% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.45821325648 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.31600926901 4.56307096286 95% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.24780921001 2.78398813304 117% => OK
Unique words: 171.0 204.123752495 84% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.492795389049 0.468620217663 105% => OK
syllable_count: 588.6 705.55239521 83% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 39.8176398653 57.8364921388 69% => OK
Chars per sentence: 105.222222222 119.503703932 88% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.2777777778 23.324526521 83% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.33333333333 5.70786347227 76% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.163251093395 0.218282227539 75% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0557267974371 0.0743258471296 75% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0781407564376 0.0701772020484 111% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.087876875594 0.128457276422 68% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0834268454599 0.0628817314937 133% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.9 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.73 48.3550499002 90% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.39 12.5979740519 114% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.67 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 90.0 98.500998004 91% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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.