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 author of the memo has alleged that there is a direct relation between the reduction of local news and weather news and the number of viewers and advertising contracts. Although his reasoning looks cogent at the first glance and it may have such direct relation, when delve deeper into the reasoning of the memo, we could find that the memo stayed on some assumptions that may not always correct. Thus, I could not accept this memo as it is for three reasons that I explain now.
First of all, the author alleged that the number of viewers decreased due to changing in the programs from local concentration to international ones. He mentioned the number of complains as a sign of his reasoning but he did not mention any statistical information about the number of complains. We can imagine other possibilities for this issue. For instance, the number of different people who complain could make clear the situation. It is possible that a few persons complain thousands times and complains are not done by different people. If this is the case, it is possible that people may not satisfied by other part of programs but if we conduct changes in the television program according this complains, it means we just consider the opinions of a few persons that complain for thousands times instead of considering majority of audiences.
Moreover, even we accept the reasoning of the writer in above, we again could not accept canceling advertisement contract is necessarily is related to the changing program. For instance, it may that another television suggest an attractive contract to companies and their manager prefer to work with them. If this is the case, the manager of the television should concentrate of advertising price and contract instead of changing the program.
Finally, the author assumes that there is just one way for increasing the number of viewers and it is increasing the time of local news and weather. Although this way may work, it is possible that they can find other options for attracting audience. For instance, they may find adding talk show or comedy show could incline the number of viewers. To find best way to increase the viewers of the television, the company should conduct a scientific investigation and then according to the result they could decide what they can do to change the situation in both the number of viewer and advertising contracts.
In conclusion, the reasoning that provided by the author has several holes and assumptions that may not hold true for all of the time. To make the memo more persuasive and reliable, the author should provide additional information to eliminate other possibilities. The readers would find it more cogent if they see other options would not work.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 8 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 460 350
No. of Characters: 2234 1500
No. of Different Words: 195 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.631 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.857 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.674 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 162 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 124 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 85 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 56 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.211 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.67 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.789 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.331 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.331 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.156 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 4, column 350, Rule ID: THE_SUPERLATIVE[4]
Message: A determiner is probably missing here: 'find the best'.
Suggestion: find the best
...could incline the number of viewers. To find best way to increase the viewers of the tele...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 119, Rule ID: ALL_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'all the'.
Suggestion: all the
... assumptions that may not hold true for all of the time. To make the memo more persuasive ...
^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, if, look, may, moreover, so, then, thus, for instance, in conclusion, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 12.0 19.6327345309 61% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 21.0 12.9520958084 162% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 47.0 28.8173652695 163% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 52.0 55.5748502994 94% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2280.0 2260.96107784 101% => OK
No of words: 460.0 441.139720559 104% => OK
Chars per words: 4.95652173913 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.6311565067 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.7418033887 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 201.0 204.123752495 98% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.436956521739 0.468620217663 93% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 693.9 705.55239521 98% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 11.0 4.96107784431 222% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => 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: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 62.5544416628 57.8364921388 108% => OK
Chars per sentence: 120.0 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.2105263158 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.42105263158 5.70786347227 95% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.133666432026 0.218282227539 61% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0491950678589 0.0743258471296 66% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0626864662329 0.0701772020484 89% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0738478038933 0.128457276422 57% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0253908512255 0.0628817314937 40% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.0 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 55.58 48.3550499002 115% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.78 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.98 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 92.0 98.500998004 93% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 12.3882235529 105% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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.