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 letter adduces that the television station should return to give more attention to weather and local news in order to address its spectors complaints and to maintain its current sponsors. The evidences provided in the memorandum, however, are flimsy as they could be easily undermined by possible alternative explanations.
The letter starts by claiming that the majority of the spectors are carping the coverage of weather and local news. On the other hand, the contents of such critics were not detailed,. If so, they could have shown that people are insatisfied with the reporter, the edition or even the credibility of the news instead of the paltry time allotted to the programs. If weather forecasts are wrong, for instance, people may be frustrated and they may start to complain about it. Moreover, the magnitude of the complaints was not shown; thus, the relevance of such insatisfaction cannot be infered. In other words, in numbers, those complaints are really substantial to be taken for granted?
Second, the author says that local sponsors of the late-night news program are resigning their advertising contracts with the station. Other than the lack of coverage of weather and local news, there are other plausible reasons for this evasion: advertising prices have become more expensive in the station, other stations are attracting more audience or even a local crisis is affecting the local companies and forcing them to lessen the number of commercial advertisements in television.
Last, the manager suggests that the station should return to give more attention to weather and local news as it did in the past. With this statement, he is implying that the station used to have a stable relationship with enterprises and audience before programs`s redesigning. However, in order to strengthen that argument, he should have provided figures of the revenues and popularity of the station in the past comparet to its current situation.
To sum up, based on the evidences provided, the conclusion that the station is loosing revenues and is being criticized because it is devoting less time to weather and local news is feeble. In order to strengthen his point, the author should have provided details about the contents of the complaints and their relevance in numbers. Furthermore, he should have delineated if the economic situation of the region, the station`s audience and advertising prices are preserved. Finally, the financial conditions of the station prior to decreasing the weather and local news importance should also have been presented.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Sentence: However, in order to strengthen that argument, he should have provided figures of the revenues and popularity of the station in the past comparet to its current situation.
Error: comparet Suggestion: compared
----------------------
flaws:
The conclusion is too long. Don't need to paraphrase the arguments in the conclusion.
----------------------
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 16 15
No. of Words: 412 350
No. of Characters: 2109 1500
No. of Different Words: 189 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.505 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.119 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.726 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 162 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 131 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 92 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 56 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.75 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.341 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.625 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.369 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.586 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.129 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 1, 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.
...y possible alternative explanations. The letter starts by claiming that the majo...
^^^
Line 3, column 182, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Put a space after the comma
Suggestion: , .
...ntents of such critics were not detailed,. If so, they could have shown that peopl...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, finally, furthermore, however, if, may, moreover, really, second, so, then, thus, for instance, in other words, to sum up, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 27.0 28.8173652695 94% => OK
Preposition: 58.0 55.5748502994 104% => OK
Nominalization: 24.0 16.3942115768 146% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2181.0 2260.96107784 96% => OK
No of words: 412.0 441.139720559 93% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.29368932039 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.50530610838 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.87365008041 2.78398813304 103% => OK
Unique words: 194.0 204.123752495 95% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.470873786408 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 667.8 705.55239521 95% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 59.9627912307 57.8364921388 104% => OK
Chars per sentence: 128.294117647 119.503703932 107% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.2352941176 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 8.58823529412 5.70786347227 150% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => 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: 0.292380202791 0.218282227539 134% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0957305387948 0.0743258471296 129% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0758678577919 0.0701772020484 108% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.167971197105 0.128457276422 131% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0319477211999 0.0628817314937 51% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.6 14.3799401198 108% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.7 12.5979740519 109% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.89 8.32208582834 107% => OK
difficult_words: 106.0 98.500998004 108% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.