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 re | TOEFL IELTS GMAT GRE SAT ACT PTE ESL

Essay topics:

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 business manager of the television station wants to switch back to the original time that was dedicated to weather and local news. However the following three pieces of evidence is needed to gauge the strength of this argument and check if the business managers argument hold any water.

The evidence regarding the previous complaints is needed. The argument of the manager only mentions complaints of last year when they changed the times of various news segments. The types of complaints before the last year are missing. Maybe the users have always complained about the weather and local news and their complaints have nothing to do with the timing of the type of news. Maybe the manager has just specifically looked at the past one year complaints when he made the change and the complaints before that have not been looked at. If this is the case and the viewers have always complained then the change in time has nothing to do with it. Therefore, the managers argument to change back on basis of this does not hold water and he needs to figure this out before making a decision.

Another evidence that is needed is the kind of the complaints received. The viewers were concerned with the station's coverage of weather and local news but wether they wanted to increase their coverage is not evident. Maybe they just wanted the station to increase the quality of their coverage. Maybe they instead wanted the station to remove these segments entirely and just focus on the national news. If this is the case, the arugment of the manager does not stand. Therefore, this evidence needs to be collected and evaluated before a decision is made.

One other evidence that is needed is the reason the local businesses canceled their contracts. Maybe they canceled them because they do not need an advertisement service anymore. Maybe their businesses are doing well enough and have gained a loyal customer base that they don't feel the need to spend money on advertisement anymore. On the other hand, maybe it is financially a bad period for the local businesses and they are struggling to keep them open. They might not have been left with enough budget to spend on advertisement. Therefore, the manager needs to find the cause of their canceled contracts before basing his or her argument on this. If the cause is not related to the change to segment times then his or her argument is substantially weakend.

The above mentioned evidence is needed to evaluate the argument of the business manager of the television station. After the mentioned evidence is collected and evaluated, it would be possible to check if the argument stands.

Votes

Essay Categories

GMAT/GRE Argument Task

Comments

Essay evaluations by e-grader

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 136, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: However,
...as dedicated to weather and local news. However the following three pieces of evidence ...
^^^^^^^
Line 1, column 258, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...this argument and check if the business managers argument hold any water. The evidenc...
^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 179, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...ged the times of various news segments. The types of complaints before the last yea...
^^^
Line 3, column 670, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...s nothing to do with it. Therefore, the managers argument to change back on basis of thi...
^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 109, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
...ed. The viewers were concerned with the stations coverage of weather and local news but ...
^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 273, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: don't
... gained a loyal customer base that they dont feel the need to spend money on adverti...
^^^^

Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, however, if, look, may, regarding, so, then, therefore, well, kind of, on the other hand

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 4.0 12.9520958084 31% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 7.0 13.6137724551 51% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 39.0 28.8173652695 135% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 61.0 55.5748502994 110% => OK
Nominalization: 24.0 16.3942115768 146% => OK

Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2198.0 2260.96107784 97% => OK
No of words: 450.0 441.139720559 102% => OK
Chars per words: 4.88444444444 5.12650576532 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.6057793516 4.56307096286 101% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.50498367457 2.78398813304 90% => OK
Unique words: 182.0 204.123752495 89% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.404444444444 0.468620217663 86% => 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: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.

Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 31.4399780888 57.8364921388 54% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 91.5833333333 119.503703932 77% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.75 23.324526521 80% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.875 5.70786347227 68% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 6.0 5.25449101796 114% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 14.0 6.88822355289 203% => Less negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.263743459152 0.218282227539 121% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0841655879941 0.0743258471296 113% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0773824619503 0.0701772020484 110% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.163120223044 0.128457276422 127% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0831367998973 0.0628817314937 132% => OK

Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 10.9 14.3799401198 76% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 61.67 48.3550499002 128% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.1 12.197005988 75% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.02 12.5979740519 87% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.09 8.32208582834 85% => OK
difficult_words: 73.0 98.500998004 74% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => 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.

Essay evaluations by e-grader

Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, however, if, look, may, regarding, so, then, therefore, well, kind of, on the other hand

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments