The following appeared in a memo from the mayor of Brindleburg to the city council.
"Two years ago, the town of Seaside Vista opened a new municipal golf course and resort hotel. Since then, the Seaside Vista Tourism Board has reported a 20% increase in visitors. In addition, local banks reported a steep rise in the number of new business loan applications they received this year. The amount of tax money collected by Seaside Vista has also increased, allowing the town to announce plans to improve Seaside Vista's roads and bridges. We recommend building a similar golf course and resort hotel in Brindleburg. We predict that this project will generate additional tax revenue that the city can use to fund much-needed public improvements."
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 memo from the mayor of Brindleburg to the city council, the mayor recommends that Bridnleburg council needs to build a golf course and resort hotel to generate much revenue that the city can use to fund much-needed public improvement. To justify his recommendation, the mayor points out that the town of Seaside Vista collected more tax revenue to support its roads and bridges' improvement due to a newly opened municipal golf course and resort hotel, therefore a golf course and resort hotel in Brindleburg will lead to a similar stimulation to tax revenue increases, which may be plausible at a cursory glance. With a streak of dubious and poor evidence and holes, however, the recommendation is in fact ill-conceived. To buttress the mayor’s recommendation, the following questions need to be answered.
To begin with, the mayor assumes that Tourism of Seaside Vista is stimulated with a 20% increase in the number of visitors due to a golf course and resort hotel built in the past two years. Although it is entirely possible, the mayor offers no evidence to corroborate this crucial assumption. It is very likely that the number of visitors increasing in Seaside Vista comes from other burgeoning businesses rather than a golf course and resort hotel. An appropriate example is not very far to seek. For example, a series of culture parks or theme parks, such as Disneyland and Lego Discovery park, are attractive for all-ages tourists and drag most families with kids or teenagers to visit. To fortify his recommendation, the mayor should provide an answer to the question of whether it is true that a golf course increases the tourists for the Seaside Vista. If the mayor can convince me that it is real that the proliferation of the number of visitors is indeed related to a golf course and resort hotel, the trustworthiness of this recommendation should be significantly strengthened. Otherwise, the recommendation is far-fetched.
In addition, the mayor assumes that increasing business application and tax revenue in Seaside Vista is the result of a golf course and resort hotel. Nevertheless, there is no guarantee that it is necessarily the case, and the mayor does not provide any reliable evidence. What is of equal possibility is that the tax revenue increasing of Seaside Vista is attributed to the boom of traditional industry and high technology business. In order to support the mayor's recommendation, the mayor must give the answers of whether there is no other business and industry to bloom the tax revenue increasing and whether this increase is related to the result of a golf course and resort hotel built. Otherwise, without accounting for and ruling out these and other alternative explanations, the mayor cannot bolster this recommendation.
The last but not the least important, even the evidence turns out to support the aforementioned assumptions, the mayor just simply predicts that a similar golf course and resort hotel in Brindleburg can bring the same result as that in Seaside Vista, and neither any conclusive scientific evidence nor any anecdotal evidence is supplied to affirm this assumption. It is very reasonable to doubt that what the mayor assumes may not happen in reality. It is very possible that it is very difficult to bring more visitors and increase the tax revenues even a golf course and resort hotel in Brindleburg due to the traffic condition is much worse than that of Seaside Vista. For example, Seaside Vista is a beautiful city near the sea that is enjoyable for people to spend a holiday or is a convenient place that is connected with the major cities with the express train and highway. In contrary, Brindleburg has few motorways and a small train station and it takes a big effort to arrive from the major cities. Consequently, a new golf course and resort hotel are not interesting for people from the major cities to come over. To get a more convincing argument, the mayor has to explain and answer either why none of these alternative scenarios, such as the development of national parks development and theme parks, are available or why none of them are able to sustain.
To sum up, the arguer’s argument mentioned above is not based on valid evidence or sound reasoning, none of which is dispensable for a conclusive argument. In order to draw a better conclusion, the arguer should reason more convincingly, cite some evidence that is more persuasive, and take every possible consideration into account.
Comments
e-rater score report
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: 24 15
No. of Words: 746 350
No. of Characters: 3672 1500
No. of Different Words: 296 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.226 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.922 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.867 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 255 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 195 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 136 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 91 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 31.083 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 18.741 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.542 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.331 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.506 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.088 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 760, Rule ID: WHETHER[3]
Message: Wordiness: Shorten this phrase to the shortest possible suggestion.
Suggestion: whether; the question whether
..., the mayor should provide an answer to the question of whether it is true that a golf course increases...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 459, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'mayors'' or 'mayor's'?
Suggestion: mayors'; mayor's
...ology business. In order to support the mayors recommendation, the mayor must give the...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, consequently, however, if, may, nevertheless, so, then, therefore, as to, for example, in addition, in fact, such as, it is true, to begin with, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 36.0 19.6327345309 183% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 38.0 11.1786427146 340% => Less conjunction wanted
Relative clauses : 21.0 13.6137724551 154% => OK
Pronoun: 41.0 28.8173652695 142% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 95.0 55.5748502994 171% => OK
Nominalization: 33.0 16.3942115768 201% => Less nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3753.0 2260.96107784 166% => OK
No of words: 746.0 441.139720559 169% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.0308310992 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.22618413065 4.56307096286 115% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.97102502517 2.78398813304 107% => OK
Unique words: 308.0 204.123752495 151% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.412868632708 0.468620217663 88% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 1188.9 705.55239521 169% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 20.0 8.76447105788 228% => Less articles wanted as sentence beginning.
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 13.0 4.22255489022 308% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 26.0 19.7664670659 132% => OK
Sentence length: 28.0 22.8473053892 123% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 80.667967657 57.8364921388 139% => OK
Chars per sentence: 144.346153846 119.503703932 121% => OK
Words per sentence: 28.6923076923 23.324526521 123% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.11538461538 5.70786347227 107% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.67664670659 150% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.391735571451 0.218282227539 179% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.110099576437 0.0743258471296 148% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.105062359038 0.0701772020484 150% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.21597250959 0.128457276422 168% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.11231369475 0.0628817314937 179% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.6 14.3799401198 115% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.06 48.3550499002 89% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.2 12.197005988 116% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.49 12.5979740519 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.28 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 154.0 98.500998004 156% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 28.0 12.3882235529 226% => Linsear_write_formula is high.
gunning_fog: 13.2 11.1389221557 119% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 30 minutes.
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.