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. Therefore, I recommend that we start a 'Shakespeare in the Park' program of our own. If we do so, I predict that our profits will also see a significant increase.
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.
In this argument, the marketing director explains how the best way to increase the average audience and profits is to institute a Shakespeare in the Park programme on that summer. In doing so, he brings as evidence a similar event organized by the Avon Repertory Company that has been followed by increasing profits.
However, it is not clear how the event organized by the nearby company has led to an increase in that company profits. The cause for that increase in revenues could have been a change in prices of their plays, such as a raise that would have made frequent viewers to continue attending shows while paying more. Since there is no mention about a difference in the average audience of the Avon Repertory company, they could instead have lowered prices in order to be more competitive and attract more people, maybe with the help of the 'Free Plays in the Park' program that publicized this change in prices. It is hence necessary asking ourselves if the change in that company's profits had to do only with their special program. And the possible answers already shown demonstrate how the assumption the director makes is not validated by enough evidence and could thus not lead to the predicted result.
Another important question that needs to be answered is about the attendance of the 'Free plays in the park' program, because it is not clear if it has increased the popularity of the nearby company or not. It could have been a failure in terms of advertisement and the profits could have come from other forms of publicity. They could have organized other special activities in order to attract more people.
Moreover, what is important to know about an event of that magnitude is its cost. It should be helpful to know how much it has costed to Avon Repertory to organize and hold their event. If it shows to be quite costly, other options should be considered in order to advertise the Theatre more efficiently. Whereas, if it results in a cheap option, that question would be very helpful in evaluating and comparing other proposals to this director's recommendation.
Finally, the best time for that event is assumed to be on summer, but we do not know when the nearby Company has held its own event. If their event has been successful and attracted more people, organizing that Shakespeare program on the sape period could be a valid option.
We can conclude that it is important for the director to know when the nearby company did their event, if it costed too much, if it had been a good attendance, and, the more important one, if they implemented other initiatives or changed their prices in order to get more profits.
Comments
i got 4 on the official gre…
i got 4 on the official gre e rater lol
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 129, 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
...ge audience and profits is to institute a 'Shakespeare in the Park' pro...
^
Line 7, column 436, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'directors'' or 'director's'?
Suggestion: directors'; director's
...g and comparing other proposals to this directors recommendation. Finally, the best ti...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, hence, however, if, may, moreover, so, thus, whereas, while, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 43.0 28.8173652695 149% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 59.0 55.5748502994 106% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2236.0 2260.96107784 99% => OK
No of words: 460.0 441.139720559 104% => OK
Chars per words: 4.86086956522 5.12650576532 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.6311565067 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.68354926785 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 203.0 204.123752495 99% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.441304347826 0.468620217663 94% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 711.0 705.55239521 101% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 27.0 22.8473053892 118% => OK
Sentence length SD: 61.4941975489 57.8364921388 106% => OK
Chars per sentence: 131.529411765 119.503703932 110% => OK
Words per sentence: 27.0588235294 23.324526521 116% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.82352941176 5.70786347227 85% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 15.0 8.20758483034 183% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 0.0 4.67664670659 0% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.0750136431564 0.218282227539 34% => The similarity between the topic and the content is low.
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0287603345888 0.0743258471296 39% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0319053188559 0.0701772020484 45% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0487796523862 0.128457276422 38% => Maybe some paragraphs are off the topic.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0379188269517 0.0628817314937 60% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.0 14.3799401198 104% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 52.53 48.3550499002 109% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.6 12.197005988 103% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.2 12.5979740519 89% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.34 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 98.0 98.500998004 99% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.8 11.1389221557 115% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => 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.