The following appeared in a memorandum from the manager of WWAC radio station.
"To reverse a decline in listener numbers, our owners have decided that WWAC must change from its current rock-music format. The decline has occurred despite population growth in our listening area, but that growth has resulted mainly from people moving here after their retirement. We must make listeners of these new residents. We could switch to a music format tailored to their tastes, but a continuing decline in local sales of recorded music suggests limited interest in music. Instead we should change to a news and talk format, a form of radio that is increasingly popular in our area."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
According to the reading passage, it argues that the current rock-music format has to be changed to a popular format such as news or talk. However, in order to evaluate the argument properly, several aspects have to be considered.
Firstly, the decrease in local recorded music sales does not necessarily mean a lack of interest in music. The form to listen to music has been dramatically changed: records, cassette tapes, CDs, and mp3 files. As more and more people use smartphones, fewer people go to music stores to listen to music. Hence, it is hard to think the decline of music sales implies a limited interest in must, as result, the conclusion derived from this fault idea cannot hold water.
Secondly, the increase in the news and talk format can be a not persisting phenomenon. Perhaps a present election was going on, so more people were interested in listening to a news and talk format than usual. Or perhaps the newcomers shortly wanted to get some information about the area in politics, economics, and weathers to adjust to the new circumstance well. If these kinds of special situations terminate, the listeners of that format can be reduced. Then, WWAC will fail to increase the number of listeners. Therefore, in this case, the argument cannot hold water.
Thirdly, the decreased variety of contents on a radio channel is detrimental. If WWAC changes their less popular formats to popular ones, listeners might think the channel is only concentrated on a few formats. Then, only those who want a news or talk format will keep listening to it while others look for another one, which sounds more interesting to them. If then, the goal to increase the number of listeners of WWAC cannot be met, as result, the argument is weakened.
To sum up, the argument, as it stands now, is considerably flawed due to its lack of evidence regarding the three points mentioned above. If the writer fails to provide valid evidence to prove WWAC’s facing case is irrelevant to those, the argument cannot be persuasive.
Comments
Essay evaluations by e-grader
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, firstly, hence, however, if, look, regarding, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, third, thirdly, well, while, as to, such as, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 4.0 13.6137724551 29% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 14.0 28.8173652695 49% => OK
Preposition: 50.0 55.5748502994 90% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1690.0 2260.96107784 75% => OK
No of words: 344.0 441.139720559 78% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.91279069767 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.30665032142 4.56307096286 94% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.65841870953 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 192.0 204.123752495 94% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.558139534884 0.468620217663 119% => OK
syllable_count: 528.3 705.55239521 75% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 31.0631078076 57.8364921388 54% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 93.8888888889 119.503703932 79% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.1111111111 23.324526521 82% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.11111111111 5.70786347227 142% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => 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: 0.204317631906 0.218282227539 94% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0588844608798 0.0743258471296 79% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0419707099201 0.0701772020484 60% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.104226440495 0.128457276422 81% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0360732690977 0.0628817314937 57% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.3 14.3799401198 79% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 60.65 48.3550499002 125% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.5 12.197005988 78% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.2 12.5979740519 89% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.62 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 88.0 98.500998004 89% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 54.17 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.25 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.
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, firstly, hence, however, if, look, regarding, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, third, thirdly, well, while, as to, such as, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 15.0 19.6327345309 76% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 4.0 13.6137724551 29% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 14.0 28.8173652695 49% => OK
Preposition: 50.0 55.5748502994 90% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1690.0 2260.96107784 75% => OK
No of words: 344.0 441.139720559 78% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.91279069767 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.30665032142 4.56307096286 94% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.65841870953 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 192.0 204.123752495 94% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.558139534884 0.468620217663 119% => OK
syllable_count: 528.3 705.55239521 75% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 31.0631078076 57.8364921388 54% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 93.8888888889 119.503703932 79% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.1111111111 23.324526521 82% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.11111111111 5.70786347227 142% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => 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: 0.204317631906 0.218282227539 94% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0588844608798 0.0743258471296 79% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0419707099201 0.0701772020484 60% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.104226440495 0.128457276422 81% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0360732690977 0.0628817314937 57% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.3 14.3799401198 79% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 60.65 48.3550499002 125% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.5 12.197005988 78% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.2 12.5979740519 89% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.62 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 88.0 98.500998004 89% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 10.0 11.9071856287 84% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 54.17 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.25 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.