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.
The argument claims that Adams Realty is superior that Fith Realty and thus if people want to sell their homes, they should use Adams Realty. Stated in this way, the argument fails to acknowledge diverse pivotal aspects, on the basis of which it could be evaluated. It reveals several instances of poor reasoning and bad extrapolation. It tries to persuade the reader by distorting the view of the situation by manipulating facts and providing weak pieces of evidence. In support fo the stated conclusion, the letter notes that time required to sell a home using Adams is much less than with Fitch and hence, one should use Adams. The author generalizes this assumption in a broader view with inattention towards other varying factors. Nevertheless, careful scrutiny of the evidence reveals that it provides little credible support for the conclusion. Hence, the argument can be considered as uncorroborated and incomplete.
First of all, the letter effortlessly states that Adams Realty is superior to the Fitch Realty on the basis of facts surveyed a year ago. This is merely a belief without much solid ground. For example, Fitch's employees are more capable as a real estate agents and thus only 25 of them would be equivalent to the 40 of Adams and that count was too a year back. The letter also compares the revenue generated previous year but does not mention its current status. In real state agency companies, a year would make a huge difference between its popularity and revenue generation. It is possible that Fitch's has allotted discounts on home sales previous year to become more popular than its competitor Adams and in the current year, people are more preferring Fitch that Adams. Hence, the argument would have been much more convincing if it explicitly stated the comparison of different aspects in the present year.
The argument readily claims that due to the superiority of Adams that Fitch in revenue, people would be more profitable by selling their homes to Adams than to Fitch. The author shares his experience of selling homes with Fitch ten years back and with Adams one month ago. This again is a weak extrapolation as it does not demonstrate any clear correlation between their present capabilities of selling homes and benefits to use their services. To illustrate, it is possible that if the author had used Fitch a month ago to sell his home, it had taken only 15 days and with more profit earned as compared to the Adams. If the author provided evidence of their present quality of service to sell homes, then it would have been a lot more convincing to the reader.
Finally, the author claims that Adams is much better than the Fitch for selling homes quickly. However, careful examination of the assumption reveals that it provides a little credible support to the conclusion and raises several skeptical questions. For example, the city where the author's home was present has more immigrants than other cities which will result in a quicker selling of homes. The author has only mentioned the time it took for the Adams to sell his home and never stated the profit he earned by using the service of Adams. For those who want more profit and can compromise the time to sell their home, Adams may not be beneficial to them. Without convincing answers to these questions, the reader is left with an impression that the claims made in the letter are more of a wishful thinking rather than substantive evidence.
In conclusion, the author's argument is unpersuasive as it stands. To bolster it further, the author must provide better analysis results using the statistics of the present year. Finally, to better assess the argument, it would be necessary to know more information about requirements of the people who want to sell their homes.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
flaws:
not well organized.
this is argument 1:
Adams has 40 real estate agents; in contrast, Fitch has 25, many of whom work only part-time.
this is argument 2:
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.
this is argument 3:
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.
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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: 29 15
No. of Words: 639 350
No. of Characters: 3082 1500
No. of Different Words: 257 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.028 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.823 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.54 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 215 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 155 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 96 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 61 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.034 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.28 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.552 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.294 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.465 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.085 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 20, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...tantive evidence. In conclusion, the authors argument is unpersuasive as it stands. ...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, hence, however, if, may, nevertheless, so, then, thus, as to, for example, in conclusion, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 19.0 13.6137724551 140% => OK
Pronoun: 52.0 28.8173652695 180% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 74.0 55.5748502994 133% => OK
Nominalization: 24.0 16.3942115768 146% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3148.0 2260.96107784 139% => OK
No of words: 639.0 441.139720559 145% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.92644757433 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.02776782673 4.56307096286 110% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.6057564578 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 267.0 204.123752495 131% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.417840375587 0.468620217663 89% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 981.9 705.55239521 139% => 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: 17.0 8.76447105788 194% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 29.0 19.7664670659 147% => OK
Sentence length: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 36.5678233901 57.8364921388 63% => OK
Chars per sentence: 108.551724138 119.503703932 91% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.0344827586 23.324526521 94% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.44827586207 5.70786347227 78% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 18.0 8.20758483034 219% => Less positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
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: 0.181817317056 0.218282227539 83% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0539485999865 0.0743258471296 73% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0804373397464 0.0701772020484 115% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.104380211368 0.128457276422 81% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0691622578134 0.0628817314937 110% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.8 14.3799401198 89% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 57.61 48.3550499002 119% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.31 12.5979740519 90% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.11 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 137.0 98.500998004 139% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 30 minutes.
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.