The following appeared in a memorandum from the manager of WWAC radio station.
"WWAC must change from its current rock-music format because the number of listeners has been declining, even though the population in our listening area has been growing. The population growth has resulted mainly from people moving to our area after their retirement, and we must make listeners of these new residents. But they seem to have limited interest in music: several local stores selling recorded music have recently closed. Therefore, just changing to another kind of music is not going to increase our audience. Instead, we should adopt a news-and-talk format, a form of radio that is increasingly popular in our area."
The manager of WWAC radio station suggests changing the rock-music format to something that might better apeal to general population. Because the population growth was mainly due to retirees joining the listening area, the plan is to reformat to a news and talk format. While the memorandum does a sufficient job outlining the argument's train of thought, there is more evidence needed to properly analyze this conclusion.
Firstly, the manager fails to give sufficient evidence for the decline in listener numbers being due to format. Have there been other fluctuations besides the seniors moving into the area? Could another rock-music station have begun to poach the former listeners? If this is the case, the proposed solution no longer seems to be the best course of action. There is no evidence stated that demonstates a lack of community interest in rock style music.
Second, the author does not give enough reason to believe the elderly residents would not have an affinity for music. As stated in the memorandum, many of these seniors are retired. Shopping for records may not be on their list of priorities at this stage in life. Any records they deemed worth having might already be in their inventory. To make such a general assumption on a whole demographic is an unwise reason to change the whole structure of a station.
Lastly, the manager does not provide any alternative explanations as to why the public interests have shifted. There are other equally plausable circumstances that could be at fault. The news might be a more popular choice for listeners because of political or pressing matters. Is it possible that this dip happened during an election or after some sort of natural disaster? Without the answers to these questions, the reader can not draw a conclusion based on vague and pointed evidence.
In conclusion, this argument does not hold water. There are many unanswered questions and the reasoning is one sided. While the writer explains where their conclusion comes from, they fail to entertain any other possibilities. This leaves too many holes to be considered a sound argument.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
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: 22 15
No. of Words: 349 350
No. of Characters: 1732 1500
No. of Different Words: 203 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.322 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.963 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.597 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 128 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 98 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 63 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 40 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 15.864 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 4.372 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.455 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.249 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.482 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.018 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
besides, first, firstly, if, lastly, may, second, so, while, as to, in conclusion, sort of
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 5.0 11.1786427146 45% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 5.0 13.6137724551 37% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 18.0 28.8173652695 62% => OK
Preposition: 43.0 55.5748502994 77% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1790.0 2260.96107784 79% => OK
No of words: 349.0 441.139720559 79% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.12893982808 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.32221490584 4.56307096286 95% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.67594164838 2.78398813304 96% => OK
Unique words: 203.0 204.123752495 99% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.581661891117 0.468620217663 124% => OK
syllable_count: 565.2 705.55239521 80% => 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: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 15.0 22.8473053892 66% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 26.4506401366 57.8364921388 46% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 81.3636363636 119.503703932 68% => OK
Words per sentence: 15.8636363636 23.324526521 68% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.09090909091 5.70786347227 72% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => 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: 0.191107144847 0.218282227539 88% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.048569835061 0.0743258471296 65% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0629355167808 0.0701772020484 90% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.104550934863 0.128457276422 81% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0851455306318 0.0628817314937 135% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 10.7 14.3799401198 74% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 56.25 48.3550499002 116% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.1 12.197005988 75% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.18 12.5979740519 97% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.0 8.32208582834 108% => OK
difficult_words: 102.0 98.500998004 104% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 8.0 11.1389221557 72% => OK
text_standard: 8.0 11.9071856287 67% => The average readability is low. Need to imporve the language.
What are above readability scores?
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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.