The following appeared in a letter from a homeowner to a friend.
"Of the two leading real estate firms in our town — Adams Realty and Fitch Realty — Adams Realty is clearly superior. Adams has 40 real estate agents; in contrast, Fitch has 25, many of whom work only part-time. Moreover, Adams' revenue last year was twice as high as that of Fitch and included home sales that averaged $168,000, compared to Fitch's $144,000. Homes listed with Adams sell faster as well: ten years ago I listed my home with Fitch, and it took more than four months to sell; last year, when I sold another home, I listed it with Adams, and it took only one month. Thus, if you want to sell your home quickly and at a good price, you should use Adams Realty."
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 given letter, the writer argues that Adams Realty is a better selection than Fitch Realty to sell homes in terms of the price and the duration. The writer is supporting this assertion with the number of workers, the major employment types (i.e. full-time or part-time), the average selling price, and the duration for selling the writer’s homes. However, in order to insist on the given argument, the validation of stated and unstated assumptions is essentially required.
Firstly, the commission of Adams Realty and Fitch Realty might have differences. When using Adams Realty is much more expensive than Fitch Realty, relatively poor people will be likely to hesitate to ask Adams for selling their homes. In contrast, relatively affluent people are more willing to prefer somewhere that seems to provide better services with little worries about the amount to pay. If Adams Realty investigates more money on making fancy advertisements about their proficient full-time agents, although the working type does not necessarily mean the quality of service, the affluent people might be more likely to choose them nonetheless the high commission. As a result, more affluent people use Adams Realty, while others prefer Fitch Realty, and the average cost of homes sold in the list of Adams will be higher. If the commission of two firms is different separating the users depending on the income levels, the argument is significantly weakened.
Secondly, the conditions and the selling seasons of the author’s two houses might be different. Perhaps the writer’s house sold with Adams was in the reasonable price range with good quality, while the price of the one sold with Fitch was absurdly high considering its quality. Since no one hopes to buy a house for a higher price than its own condition, the latter case might have taken a longer time to be sold. Or perhaps the writer tried to sell the home with Fitch during the rainy season when people are less likely to move. If then, although the agent was Adams Realty, it might have taken a similar period. Clearly, it is difficult to blame Fitch for a longer period to sell the home in either case, and the writer cannot hold water.
To sum up, the argument, as it stands now, is considerably uncertain due to its reliance on several unwarranted assumptions. In order to strongly insist on the superiority of Adams Realty to Fitch Realty, the writer will have to concretely explain the suspicions on the author’s stated and unstated assumptions.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 5 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 5 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 417 350
No. of Characters: 2038 1500
No. of Different Words: 191 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.519 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.887 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.509 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 148 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 90 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 66 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 41 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.529 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.03 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.588 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.358 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.546 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.092 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, firstly, however, if, nonetheless, second, secondly, so, then, while, in contrast, as a result, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 4.0 13.6137724551 29% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 13.0 28.8173652695 45% => OK
Preposition: 56.0 55.5748502994 101% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2103.0 2260.96107784 93% => OK
No of words: 417.0 441.139720559 95% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.04316546763 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.5189133491 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.62708710254 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 198.0 204.123752495 97% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.474820143885 0.468620217663 101% => OK
syllable_count: 655.2 705.55239521 93% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 11.0 2.70958083832 406% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 46.3884605625 57.8364921388 80% => OK
Chars per sentence: 123.705882353 119.503703932 104% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.5294117647 23.324526521 105% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.58823529412 5.70786347227 115% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.223909164829 0.218282227539 103% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0863937697076 0.0743258471296 116% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0922123380449 0.0701772020484 131% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.139742568025 0.128457276422 109% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0550375169205 0.0628817314937 88% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.6 14.3799401198 102% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.25 12.5979740519 97% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.5 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 97.0 98.500998004 98% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.