The following appeared in a memorandum from the planning department of an electric power company.
"Several recent surveys indicate that home owners are increasingly eager to conserve energy. At the same time, manufacturers are now marketing many home appliances, such as refrigerators and air conditioners, that are almost twice as energy efficient as those sold a decade ago. Also, new technologies for better home insulation and passive solar heating are readily available to reduce the energy needed for home heating. Therefore, the total demand for electricity in our area will not increase — and may decline slightly. Since our three electric generating plants in operation for the past twenty years have always met our needs, construction of new generating plants will not be necessary."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The author asserts that additional construction of generating plants is not necessary, due to assumptions that are both stated and unstated in the memorandum. Although the evidence suggested seems cogent at first glance, the conclusion should undergo significant revision unless it evaluates the reliability of the given reasons. This essay will demonstrate several issues of incongruous factors that are intended to buttress the author’s idea, by clarifying and examining the assumptions.
To begin with, the author depends on the assumption that homeowners who are eager to conserve energy are likely to implement change in terms of their actual usage of electricity. The given surveys provide only the growing tendency of fondness in energy preservation, which does not mean that the home owners will apply their thoughts into practice. Furthermore, if we ponder upon the uncertainty whether the home owners are actual residents of the area, it becomes even more ambiguous in terms of how much energy conservation shall be held. Thus, only given an indication of a growing desire, the assumption shall rather result in fallacies and misleading prescriptions of the potential actions of energy preservation.
Secondly, the author implies that homeowners will play a significant role in purchasing the home appliances being currently marketed by manufacturers, but it is still possible that they will not. That is, even though home appliances that are energy efficient are visible and attractive to the homeowners, it is unlikely that this will directly lead to purchasing actions. There are still other possibilities that hamper the realization of purchase, such as the well-equipped conditions of original home appliances, or an unaffordable amount of price of the newly marketed ones. Therefore, the author should have provided additional evidence in terms of linking the availability of energy efficient home appliances and the rise of actual purchase.
Thirdly, notwithstanding the fact that new technologies that reduce energy of home heating have been developed, we can never be certain whether the technologies can be applied to the residual area. If the housing does not afford the newly developed home devices and if the technologies are only able to be applied to future constructed housings, then the assumption shall be neglected.
Furthermore, more importantly, even though we acknowledge the above assumptions as bare facts, the author does not give any detailed evidence in terms of the exterior factors that are likely to impact the demand for electricity. That is, if the population of the residual area has been constantly growing, then the usage of electricity will be intensified as well. Thus, the author should have made it clear that the evidence mentioned are the only influential factors that result in the change of electric usage.
It is therefore crucial to clarify the aforementioned assumptions that lack tenable evidence and reasons. In order to evaluate the memorandum more discernibly, the author should have undergone a thorough review of what is being argued.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 5 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 482 350
No. of Characters: 2566 1500
No. of Different Words: 231 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.686 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.324 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.964 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 196 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 147 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 115 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 81 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.778 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 4.779 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.722 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.326 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.616 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.094 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, furthermore, if, second, secondly, so, still, then, therefore, third, thirdly, thus, well, such as, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 28.0 19.6327345309 143% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 20.0 13.6137724551 147% => OK
Pronoun: 32.0 28.8173652695 111% => OK
Preposition: 55.0 55.5748502994 99% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2624.0 2260.96107784 116% => OK
No of words: 482.0 441.139720559 109% => OK
Chars per words: 5.44398340249 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.68556276237 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.04575903993 2.78398813304 109% => OK
Unique words: 239.0 204.123752495 117% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.495850622407 0.468620217663 106% => OK
syllable_count: 837.0 705.55239521 119% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 28.5207310349 57.8364921388 49% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 145.777777778 119.503703932 122% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.7777777778 23.324526521 115% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.94444444444 5.70786347227 122% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.169056511894 0.218282227539 77% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0534964730175 0.0743258471296 72% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0363410066995 0.0701772020484 52% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0768819426361 0.128457276422 60% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0597095732745 0.0628817314937 95% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.6 14.3799401198 122% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 36.63 48.3550499002 76% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.6 12.197005988 120% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.57 12.5979740519 116% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.55 8.32208582834 115% => OK
difficult_words: 141.0 98.500998004 143% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 15.0 12.3882235529 121% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => 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.