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 cancelled 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 author of the memorandum concludes that the television station should increase its time devoted to weather and local news instead of national news in order to attract more viewers and advertising contracts. The author's conclusion is potentially valid, but before the conclusion can be adequately assessed, he must provide following three pieces of evidence.
First of all, the largest leap in the argument is the assumption that the trend of reducing viewers and advertising contracts might continue for the future. Here, the author is too much pessimistic about the future and quickly jumped to the conclusion without deliberate thinking. However, this might not be the case. Perhaps the television viewers are busy now these days and have not much time to view the late night shows. Also, it is possible that in near upcoming days, the new business corporations would be established in the city and consequently the advertising contracts may increase. If either of above scenarios are true, the conclusion drawn by author is significantly weakened.
Secondly, the author lacks depth of details on the assumption of causal relationship between reduced time to weather and local news and number of television viewers and advertising contracts. However, this might not be true. Maybe the increased national news volume did not contain reliable news contents or the contents of national news were not interesting to the audience. Such that the number of viewers got reduced. In addition, local businesses - that used to advertise regularly before- might have bad business issues with the owner of the television, or those businesses might have bankrupted. If these cases prove to be true, the argument does not hold water.
Last but not least, the author assumes that complaints on station's weather and local news received from viewers are solely regarded to less time devoted to these programs. But, it might not be true. It is possible that they had complained not for increasing the time allocation rather for including relevant and accurate contents. If this is true, the author's contention is seriously weakened.
To sum up, the author's conclusion seems like a plausible argument at first glance, but, on closer scrutiny, it falls apart. The author must provide above mentioned evidence to buttress his argument.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 7 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 371 350
No. of Characters: 1906 1500
No. of Different Words: 186 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.389 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.137 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.688 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 139 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 116 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 88 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 49 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.55 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.291 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.65 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.314 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.505 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.036 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 216, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
... viewers and advertising contracts. The authors conclusion is potentially valid, but be...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 353, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...accurate contents. If this is true, the authors contention is seriously weakened. To...
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 16, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...s seriously weakened. To sum up, the authors conclusion seems like a plausible argum...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, consequently, first, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, in addition, first of all, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 22.0 28.8173652695 76% => OK
Preposition: 46.0 55.5748502994 83% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1962.0 2260.96107784 87% => OK
No of words: 371.0 441.139720559 84% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.2884097035 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.38877662729 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.74304215491 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 193.0 204.123752495 95% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.520215633423 0.468620217663 111% => OK
syllable_count: 602.1 705.55239521 85% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 56.0772681218 57.8364921388 97% => OK
Chars per sentence: 98.1 119.503703932 82% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.55 23.324526521 80% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.4 5.70786347227 95% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => 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: 0.277922646515 0.218282227539 127% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0753448423492 0.0743258471296 101% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.107148403488 0.0701772020484 153% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.160948056952 0.128457276422 125% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.104424030556 0.0628817314937 166% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.8 14.3799401198 89% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 53.21 48.3550499002 110% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.4 12.5979740519 106% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.32 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 89.0 98.500998004 90% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.