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 above draws the conclusion that expanding their coverage of weather and local news will attract more viewers and advertising revenues. However, this conclusion is based on several assumptions and the argument is wanting in strong evidences to support its stated conclusion.
The above passage bases its conclusion on the facts that viewers have registered complaints regarding the station's coverage of weather and local news. However, it does not state what these complaints were. As far as we know, the viewers might have complained about the fallacies and inaccuracies in the weather reports. It is also possible that the people might be concerned regarding the telecast of petty issues that have taken place in the locality while ignoring the large and demanding ones. It is unclear what exactly the viewers are upset about and the argument might have falsely assumed that spending more time in covering the local news and weather might solve the issue. It is necessary to fathom the complaints people have regarding the coverage of local news and weather in detail and take necessary steps to abate this issue.
Also, there is ambiguity regarding the number of people that have lauched the complaints. It is possible that only five out of the thousands of viewers might have complained out of which four might be regarding the low coverage of local news and weather. Thus, it cannot be assumed based on the views of few people that covering more local news will attract more customers. A more detailed analysis and survey of all the viewers is necessary before taking such any further steps.
In addition, the argument further moves on to attribute the loss of advertising revenue on the lack of local news coverage. It assumes that the local businesses have cancelled their advertising contracts due to the less display of local news and weather reports at night. However, the argument ignores the possibility that the local businesses might not want to spend the revenues advertising at night since people rarely watch television at night. The local businesses might be convinced that people do not watch the televsion especially news late into the noght. According to some surveys conducted, they might have found that advertisisng at night does little to bolster their sales and hence find no use in unnecessarily wasting their resources.
Hence, as clearly implied by the above statements, the argument has several loop holes and is based on several assumptions which might not hold true. In such cases, the conclusion of the argument is severly undermined and thus, it needs to be corroborated with irrefutable facts and evidences.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Sentence: Also, there is ambiguity regarding the number of people that have lauched the complaints.
Error: lauched Suggestion: laughed
Sentence: The local businesses might be convinced that people do not watch the televsion especially news late into the noght.
Error: noght Suggestion: night
Error: news Suggestion: No alternate word
Error: televsion Suggestion: television
Sentence: According to some surveys conducted, they might have found that advertisisng at night does little to bolster their sales and hence find no use in unnecessarily wasting their resources.
Error: advertisisng Suggestion: advertising
Sentence: In such cases, the conclusion of the argument is severly undermined and thus, it needs to be corroborated with irrefutable facts and evidences.
Error: severly Suggestion: No alternate word
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samples:
https://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-argument-task-essays/over-past-year-our…
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 8 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 434 350
No. of Characters: 2187 1500
No. of Different Words: 189 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.564 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.039 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.559 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 144 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 126 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 57 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.842 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.613 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.684 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.357 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.568 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.122 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 223, Rule ID: PROGRESSIVE_VERBS[1]
Message: This verb is normally not used in the progressive form. Try a simple form instead.
...on several assumptions and the argument is wanting in strong evidences to support its stat...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 107, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
...ave registered complaints regarding the stations coverage of weather and local news. How...
^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 683, 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.
...news and weather might solve the issue. It is necessary to fathom the complaints p...
^^
Line 4, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...e necessary steps to abate this issue. Also, there is ambiguity regarding the n...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, hence, however, regarding, so, thus, while, in addition
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 17.0 19.6327345309 87% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 17.0 11.1786427146 152% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 57.0 55.5748502994 103% => OK
Nominalization: 8.0 16.3942115768 49% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2235.0 2260.96107784 99% => OK
No of words: 434.0 441.139720559 98% => OK
Chars per words: 5.14976958525 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.56428161445 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.60534285238 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 194.0 204.123752495 95% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.447004608295 0.468620217663 95% => OK
syllable_count: 699.3 705.55239521 99% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 10.0 4.96107784431 202% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => 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: 22.0 22.8473053892 96% => OK
Sentence length SD: 33.1890413446 57.8364921388 57% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 117.631578947 119.503703932 98% => OK
Words per sentence: 22.8421052632 23.324526521 98% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.47368421053 5.70786347227 61% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 14.0 6.88822355289 203% => Less negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.19342040617 0.218282227539 89% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0704313155457 0.0743258471296 95% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0642017122271 0.0701772020484 91% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.105186663386 0.128457276422 82% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0648685435059 0.0628817314937 103% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.2 14.3799401198 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 49.15 48.3550499002 102% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.89 12.5979740519 102% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.11 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 93.0 98.500998004 94% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.8 11.1389221557 97% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
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.