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."
The manager of WWAC radio station tries to explain how, based on a number of observations on local music tastes trends and on the number of citizens, he expects his radio to grow in listeners if it adopts a change from its current format. In particular, as population has increased in the listening area of the radio, and because, at the same time, local sales of recorded music have been going down lately, he thinks that switching from its current rock-music format to a news and talk format would be productive and lucrative. Unfortunately, though, there is a considerable number of flaws and holes in the entire reasoning chain, in particular related to some superficiality in the use of several terms (see mainly, decline, growth) and in some assumptions that, if proved wrong, would heavily weaken the argument.
To begin with, there is something opaque in the use of some words. Among the many unclear expressions also stated in the introduction of this essay, it seems witty to analyse the consequences of the erring use of the word "growth" used about the population. What is really crucial about this is the possibility that, after all, the growth itself is not that influent. How relevant is it? Has the local population grown that much to become undoubtedly pivotal for the conclusions of the argument? We need to have proved the evidence that the population growth is interesting in the aims of the author, otherwise it would be an unreasonable and useles element.
On the other hand, there are also evidently non-lucid passages in the argument. For instance, at a certain line the manager points out that the local interest in music is limited, "as evident" because of the continuing decline in local sales of recorded music. While this could be effectively true and germane, it is to be deemed inappropriate if it is not backed up with some concrete evidences. First of all, we do not know how substantial the mentioned decline is, nor we know when it has started and thus what "continuing" really means (it could be a continuig process that only began two weeks ago). What is more, the motivations for the decrease can be a plethora of different circumstances: people could be going through a local economic crisis, or, they could be having a new penchant for digital music. Namely, we cannot just state that because of the lowered number of sales, people do not like radio music anymore: the relation between the two things must be deepened by means of further evidences.
In the same way, by the view of the manager of WWAC radio station people is substituting rock-music with news and talks, and he derives this conclusion because of the "increasingly popularity" of the latter format. This is a possibly fallacious parallelism. In fact, it could a fact that the proposed increase is due to a general growth in the use of radio stations, so that every format is experiencing an increase in the number of listeners. Again, it could also be that the stated increase is basically immaterial, non-momentous in the interest of the manager, and it could even be so ephimeral as to last only a couple of days: we just do not know. Also in this case, there is a clear necessity of further investigations on the cited occurrences and on the evidences that ar behind the argument.
In conclusion, it is incontrovertible that the author of the argument did try to give explanations for his conclusions, but has neglected to furnish the reader with the necessary evidences that would strengthen the argument itself. In fact, we are given no information about the reasons behind the above-mentioned trends, and, to sum up, we cannot conclude that the argument is trust-worthy if we do not learn more about them. Nonetheless, it could be the case that the author holds somewhat true: it all depends on the missing evidences.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- not OK. need to argue :
The decline has occurred despite population growth in our listening area, but that growth has resulted mainly from people moving here after their retirement.
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 656 350
No. of Characters: 3086 1500
No. of Different Words: 288 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.061 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.704 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.781 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 207 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 149 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 105 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 73 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 28.522 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.054 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.783 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.298 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.493 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.14 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 573, Rule ID: BE_INTEREST_IN[1]
Message: Did you mean 'interested'?
Suggestion: interested
... evidence that the population growth is interesting in the aims of the author, otherwise it...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, if, nonetheless, really, so, then, thus, while, after all, as to, for instance, in conclusion, in fact, in particular, first of all, to begin with, to sum up, what is more, in the same way, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 35.0 19.6327345309 178% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 18.0 13.6137724551 132% => OK
Pronoun: 56.0 28.8173652695 194% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 97.0 55.5748502994 175% => OK
Nominalization: 19.0 16.3942115768 116% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3224.0 2260.96107784 143% => OK
No of words: 656.0 441.139720559 149% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.91463414634 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.06087906887 4.56307096286 111% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.04229645867 2.78398813304 109% => OK
Unique words: 311.0 204.123752495 152% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.474085365854 0.468620217663 101% => OK
syllable_count: 1026.9 705.55239521 146% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 15.0 4.96107784431 302% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 3.0 8.76447105788 34% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 5.0 1.67365269461 299% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 16.0 4.22255489022 379% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 28.0 22.8473053892 123% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 71.4969826323 57.8364921388 124% => OK
Chars per sentence: 140.173913043 119.503703932 117% => OK
Words per sentence: 28.5217391304 23.324526521 122% => OK
Discourse Markers: 9.78260869565 5.70786347227 171% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.148968282871 0.218282227539 68% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0396365928211 0.0743258471296 53% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0697474809739 0.0701772020484 99% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0845270310758 0.128457276422 66% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0860317367255 0.0628817314937 137% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.0 14.3799401198 111% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.06 48.3550499002 89% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.2 12.197005988 116% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.49 12.5979740519 91% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.66 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 151.0 98.500998004 153% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 18.5 12.3882235529 149% => OK
gunning_fog: 13.2 11.1389221557 119% => 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: 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.