The following appeared in a memo from a budget planner for the city of Grandview.
"It is time for the city of Grandview to stop funding the Grandview Symphony Orchestra. It is true that the symphony struggled financially for many years, but last year private contributions to the symphony increased by 200 percent, and attendance at the symphony's concerts-in-the-park series doubled. In addition, the symphony has just announced an increase in ticket prices for next year. For these reasons, we recommend that the city eliminate funding for the Grandview Symphony Orchestra from next year's budget. We predict that the symphony will flourish in the years to come even without funding from the city."
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 given memo suggests stopping funding the Symphony Orchestra in the coming years as it is burgeoning and received private contributions, along with attention from audiences. Stated in this way, the argument fails to take many pivotal factors into consideration for which no transparent evidence is provided. Therefore, the argument remains fallacious and open for debate. However, before this recommendation can be properly evaluated, the following three questions must be answered.
First of all, the argument readily assumes that as the symphony last year achieved 200 percent more private contributions, it no longer needs any funding from the government. This is merely an assumption made without much solid ground. For example, what if the symphony used to be given 300 dollars from private contributors, but they received 900 dollars last year, which may not enough for them to survive. If that is what is occurring here, then the assertion in the original memo is at best premature and at worst entirely invalid. Thus, before a proper evaluation of the argument can proceed, how much money the symphony used to receive should be mentioned.
Moreover, it is pointed out in the memo that the attendance at the symphony's concert has doubled. This again is a weak and unsupported claim as it does not demonstrate any clear correlation between stopping the funding and increased audience at symphony's concerts-in-the-park series. Were these attendees from the city of Grandview? Are they permanent audiences? Were they charged for that very concert? Perhaps, they came over due to the concert was free, or last year the attendance was doubled does not mean that in the following years, the same will happen. If either of these scenarios has merit, the conclusion drawn by the strongly-worded memo does not hold true.
Finally, another assumption is that as the ticket prices have increased, the symphony will no longer need any funding. As mentioned in the memo, the symphony has been struggling financially for many years; due to the increase in ticket prices, the attendance may dwindle; as a result, they might face difficulty. So, solid statistics should be present that in the coming years, the number of attendees will not decrease. Otherwise, the recommendation of stopping funding will be a hasty decision.
In conclusion, the argument, as it stands now, is considerably flawed due to its reliance on several unwarranted assumptions. If the author is to answer the three questions above and offer more evidence (perhaps in the form of a systematic research study), then it will be possible to fully assess and bolster the viability of the proposed recommendation to stop funding.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 4 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 435 350
No. of Characters: 2200 1500
No. of Different Words: 226 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.567 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.057 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.819 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 160 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 132 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 92 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 58 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.773 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.288 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.591 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.274 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.484 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.039 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 83, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... that as the symphony last year achieved 200 percent more private contributions, ...
^^
Line 3, column 250, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... without much solid ground. For example, what if the symphony used to be given 30...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, however, if, may, moreover, so, then, therefore, thus, for example, in conclusion, as a result, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 26.0 28.8173652695 90% => OK
Preposition: 48.0 55.5748502994 86% => OK
Nominalization: 23.0 16.3942115768 140% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2269.0 2260.96107784 100% => OK
No of words: 434.0 441.139720559 98% => OK
Chars per words: 5.22811059908 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.56428161445 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.96722757228 2.78398813304 107% => OK
Unique words: 231.0 204.123752495 113% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.532258064516 0.468620217663 114% => OK
syllable_count: 692.1 705.55239521 98% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 54.3305805553 57.8364921388 94% => OK
Chars per sentence: 103.136363636 119.503703932 86% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.7272727273 23.324526521 85% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.86363636364 5.70786347227 103% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 13.0 6.88822355289 189% => 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: 0.31631381759 0.218282227539 145% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0783951046938 0.0743258471296 105% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0734331704952 0.0701772020484 105% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.153065502274 0.128457276422 119% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0752535139123 0.0628817314937 120% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.1 14.3799401198 91% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 52.19 48.3550499002 108% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.05 12.5979740519 104% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.51 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 108.0 98.500998004 110% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => 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.