The following is a memorandum from the business manager of a television station.
"Over the past year, our late-night news program has devoted increased time to national news and less time to weather and local news. During this period, most of the complaints received from viewers were concerned with our station's coverage of weather and local news. In addition, local businesses that used to advertise during our late-night news program have canceled their advertising contracts with us. Therefore, in order to attract more viewers to our news programs and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should expand our coverage of weather and local news on all our news programs."
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 argument is logically presented, but conclusively plausible.
It is not clearly indicated as to why the late-night program has devoted more time to national news and reduces the time allotted for the local and business news. The fact that most complaints recieved from viewers were concerned with the stations' coverage of weather and local news is not sound enough to justify why local business cancelled their advertising contracts.
Local businesses may cancelled their advertising contracts simply because, people are not watching late-night news or perhaps the number of viewers of the program decreases over the past year.
Restoring the time devoted to weather and local news is ineffective of safeguarding any further loss of advertising revenue, because, even if the time is restored, most people complained that the are concerned about the station's coverage and so they may likely not patronize the station as viewers talk less of attracting more viewers.
Moreover, restoring the weather and local news time alone is not a guarantee to attract more viewers, the station may have to launch a campaign or perhaps improve the standardization of its program presentation, which is not explicitly stated in the argument.
The premises of the argument were not in agreement with each other and so it is not cogent to conclude that restoring the time allotted to weather and local news will prevent the station from losing any further advertising revenues.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 2 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 5 2
No. of Sentences: 7 15
No. of Words: 234 350
No. of Characters: 1211 1500
No. of Different Words: 115 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 3.911 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.175 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.753 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 93 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 83 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 53 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 34 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 33.429 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 13.243 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.857 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.513 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.932 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.177 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 240, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
...ed from viewers were concerned with the stations coverage of weather and local news is n...
^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 193, Rule ID: A_INFINITVE[1]
Message: Probably a wrong construction: a/the + infinitive
...s restored, most people complained that the are concerned about the stations coverage a...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 221, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
...lained that the are concerned about the stations coverage and so they may likely not pat...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, if, may, moreover, so, as to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 12.0 19.6327345309 61% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 4.0 12.9520958084 31% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 4.0 13.6137724551 29% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 9.0 28.8173652695 31% => OK
Preposition: 25.0 55.5748502994 45% => More preposition wanted.
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1245.0 2260.96107784 55% => More number of characters wanted.
No of words: 234.0 441.139720559 53% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.32051282051 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 3.91114542567 4.56307096286 86% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.81485122011 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 115.0 204.123752495 56% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.491452991453 0.468620217663 105% => OK
syllable_count: 386.1 705.55239521 55% => syllable counts are too short.
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 1.0 4.96107784431 20% => OK
Article: 4.0 8.76447105788 46% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 7.0 19.7664670659 35% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 33.0 22.8473053892 144% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 77.8383987922 57.8364921388 135% => OK
Chars per sentence: 177.857142857 119.503703932 149% => OK
Words per sentence: 33.4285714286 23.324526521 143% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.71428571429 5.70786347227 83% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 2.0 8.20758483034 24% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 0.0 4.67664670659 0% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.424948661272 0.218282227539 195% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.207324182652 0.0743258471296 279% => Sentence topic similarity is high.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.114041563198 0.0701772020484 163% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.206026962084 0.128457276422 160% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.124511496537 0.0628817314937 198% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 20.3 14.3799401198 141% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 29.52 48.3550499002 61% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 17.3 12.197005988 142% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.17 12.5979740519 112% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.19 8.32208582834 110% => OK
difficult_words: 58.0 98.500998004 59% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 15.2 11.1389221557 136% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Minimum 250 words wanted.
Rates: 33.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 2.0 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.