The following appeared in a letter to the editor of a journal on environmental issues.
"Over the past year, the Crust Copper Company (CCC) has purchased over 10,000 square miles of land in the tropical nation of West Fredonia. Mining copper on this land will inevitably result in pollution and, since West Fredonia is the home of several endangered animal species, in environmental disaster. But such disasters can be prevented if consumers simply refuse to purchase products that are made with CCC's copper unless the company abandons its mining plans."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
In the passage, we are informed that margarine replacement with butter has little impact on customer of Happy Pancake House restaurants. By citing that feedbacks from both customers and servants, the author ascribes this phenomenon to the reason that customers either cannot distinguish difference between them or term "butter" is indiscriminately used by customers. Quite convincing though such explanation appears at first glance, we cannot safely draw a conclusion that it is the unique one that accounts for the facts presented in the argument. Therefore, we need more explanations which could rival with the one given in the argument.
To start off, the author attributes little customers' complains to their satisfaction about such change. While this may be true, such situation may result from other reasons as well. First of all, it is possible that most of customers lack available channels to vent their angry about this sudden product change. If this is the case, just 2 percent of negative feedbacks could have nothing to do with customers' real attitudes. Thus, the seemingly less complains could be explained as stemming from no way to send their dissatisfactions back to the company. Second, while such statistics appear optimistic at fist glance, it is of equal probability that the survey had been conducted with limited responders. If we can prove that only a small proportion of end customers had joined such survey, the underlying logic of the author will be weakened, namely: 2 percent of customers' complains well demonstrate their contentment about such replacement.
Furthermore, the servants' report may lend more support to the author's conclusion about less deleterious results caused by this product change. However, few negative message from servants may presumably originate from other factors as well. For example, customers hurried up with their own business, having no time for whining this unreasonable change. And their indifferent attitudes has been misrepresented by servants as a kind of satisfaction. Moreover, servants in Happy Pancake House restaurants may distort or even conceal the fact of customers' frustrations in order to please their senior management team. Without additional investigations, we cannot decide which factor could finally lead to such positive feedback from servants. It is even likely that all of the aforementioned factors have conspired to this phenomenon.
Last but not least, while customers from Happy Pancake House restaurants are contented with such replacement, it is reckless to claim that this attitude results from their inability from discriminating those two products, or their understanding about the term 'butter'. Other factors may lead to the aforementioned situation. For example, they are extremely busy with their own business so that the replacement of butter seems inconsequential. Or, they intended to try with different alternatives instead of sticking to a single product. If either of two is true, then the author's explanation may become untenable.
In summary, while the two reasons given by the author seem compelling to some degree, in the absence of sufficient information, we cannot establish a causal relationship between them and little complain from customers in Happy Pancake House restaurants. Therefore, the root cause of the aforementioned phenomenon is such a case that we should consider more explanations which could account for the facts presented in the argument.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 7 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 431 350
No. of Characters: 1996 1500
No. of Different Words: 187 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.556 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.631 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.346 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 154 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 90 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 57 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 32 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.938 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 13.112 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.812 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.373 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.586 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.121 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 50, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...e author assumes that the customers have to refuse buying the products made from...
^^
Line 3, column 61, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...sumes that the customers have to refuse buying the products made from the CCC’s ...
^^
Line 3, column 110, Rule ID: GOT_SHUTDOWN[1]
Message: Did you mean 'to shut down'?
Suggestion: to shut down
...the products made from the CCC’s copper to shutdown the West Fredonig plant. But the author...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 151, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ace inevitably results in pollution. But the government or the local mining depar...
^^
Line 9, column 146, Rule ID: NON3PRS_VERB[2]
Message: The pronoun 'we' must be used with a non-third-person form of a verb: 'do'
Suggestion: do
...’s sales in West Fredonig, but we still does not have enough evidences or informatio...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, furthermore, however, if, may, so, still, then, as to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 9.0 19.6327345309 46% => More to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 16.0 13.6137724551 118% => OK
Pronoun: 25.0 28.8173652695 87% => OK
Preposition: 42.0 55.5748502994 76% => OK
Nominalization: 5.0 16.3942115768 30% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2048.0 2260.96107784 91% => OK
No of words: 431.0 441.139720559 98% => OK
Chars per words: 4.75174013921 5.12650576532 93% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.55637350225 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.40932927282 2.78398813304 87% => OK
Unique words: 190.0 204.123752495 93% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.440835266821 0.468620217663 94% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 627.3 705.55239521 89% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 6.0 1.67365269461 358% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 16.0 19.7664670659 81% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 73.9466657463 57.8364921388 128% => OK
Chars per sentence: 128.0 119.503703932 107% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.9375 23.324526521 115% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.0 5.70786347227 88% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 9.0 4.67664670659 192% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.218926661758 0.218282227539 100% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0795280341143 0.0743258471296 107% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0453765132936 0.0701772020484 65% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.135117011326 0.128457276422 105% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0267076542326 0.0628817314937 42% => 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: 14.4 14.3799401198 100% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 53.55 48.3550499002 111% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.57 12.5979740519 84% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.75 8.32208582834 93% => OK
difficult_words: 77.0 98.500998004 78% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => 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.