'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 time 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 just canceled their advertising contracts with us. Therefore, in order to attract more viewers to the program and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level.”
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence would be needed in order to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The author recommends that his television station restore "the time devoted to weather and local news". Before implementing this recommendation, a number of factors should be explored.
First, the author mentions the fact that last year the television station at issue received complaints and most of them were about the time devoted to weather and local news. Therefore, he concludes that the television station should meet the requests of the public by restoring the old coverage of weather and local news. However, in order to strengthen his argument the author has to provide information about complaints received before last year. What if before last year there were a great number of complaints about the coverage of weather and local news? If this was the case, implementing the solution offered by the author would not be effective.
However, for the sake of argument, suppose that there was not such a plethora of complaints before last year. The author cites the fact that last year local business canceled their advertising contracts. He therefore argues that in order to avoid that any other future adverting contract will be canceled, the television station should restore its coverage of weather and local news. Here the implicit assumption is that there is a causal relationship between the policy introduced last year and the cancellation of advertising contracts. However, this is may be not the case: perhaps, last year, local businesses failed and they were not able to meet the condition in their advertising program anymore. If this was the case, the position of the author should be weakened: why should the television station restore the old coverage of weather and local news if the factors that are responsible for the cancelation of advertising contracts did not concern the policy adopted?
There is another implicit belief of the author: restoring the old policy will not have negative effects. However, in order to support this assumption the author should provide more information. For example, he should exclude that the public's opinion has not changed. If this was the case, current public might be satisfied with the same coverage of national news introduced last year.
In conclusion, the author's position seems convincing at first glance. However, more information are required to enhance it. First, the author should make sure that there were not complaints about the coverage of weather and local news before last years. Second, he has to substantiate the relationship between the policy introduced last year and the cancellation of advertising contracts. Third, he has to exclude that restoring the old policy does not implies negative consequences.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 430 350
No. of Characters: 2209 1500
No. of Different Words: 160 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.554 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.137 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.664 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 167 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 129 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 83 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 53 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.545 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.083 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.773 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.37 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.528 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.125 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 7, column 235, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'publics'' or 'public's'?
Suggestion: publics'; public's
...For example, he should exclude that the publics opinion has not changed. If this was th...
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 454, Rule ID: DOES_X_HAS[1]
Message: Did you mean 'imply'? As 'do' is already inflected, the verb cannot also be inflected.
Suggestion: imply
... that restoring the old policy does not implies negative consequences.
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 454, Rule ID: DID_BASEFORM[3]
Message: The verb 'does' requires base form of the verb: 'imply'
Suggestion: imply
... that restoring the old policy does not implies negative consequences.
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, however, if, may, second, so, then, therefore, third, as to, for example, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 48.0 55.5748502994 86% => OK
Nominalization: 21.0 16.3942115768 128% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2282.0 2260.96107784 101% => OK
No of words: 430.0 441.139720559 97% => OK
Chars per words: 5.30697674419 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.55372829156 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.74826657596 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 165.0 204.123752495 81% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.383720930233 0.468620217663 82% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 703.8 705.55239521 100% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 46.5498044842 57.8364921388 80% => OK
Chars per sentence: 103.727272727 119.503703932 87% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.5454545455 23.324526521 84% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.27272727273 5.70786347227 75% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => 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: 0.229636227709 0.218282227539 105% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0802748715482 0.0743258471296 108% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0926130948822 0.0701772020484 132% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.164737215403 0.128457276422 128% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.086248808038 0.0628817314937 137% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.4 14.3799401198 93% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 52.19 48.3550499002 108% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.7 12.197005988 88% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.52 12.5979740519 107% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.66 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 84.0 98.500998004 85% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => 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.