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 is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.
The given argument makes a recommendation to restore the time devoted to weather and local news to it’s former level in the late-night programs based on many unwarranted assumptions. Unless there is some evidence to prove these assumptions, the recommendation will not hold true. The assumptions held by the argument are delineated in the body paragraphs.
First of all, the author’s point that there have been complaints from viewer whose concern was station’s coverage of weather and local news is pretty vague and doesn’t provide a necessary stand for him. It is not clear from the claim that concern of viewers was the decrease timing for local news and weather programs or the impertinence of airing them even for the little time. Even though, if the concerns were around the shortening of period for which those shows were aired on television, we don’t know that if multiple complaints came from one person or multiple complaints came from many people. Therefore, in order to make a cogent case, author must provide a detailed survey report to showcase the sample space of people’s complaints and also what their concerns were.
Another highlighting assumption present in argument’s assertion is that the there is a slump in revenue due to lesser time devoted to weather and local news. We have no evidence stating that the overall revenue decreased over the past year because of the aforementioned structure. There is a possibility that increased timing for national news proliferated the revenue by greater amount than the reduction in local news could have reduced. There is no clear evidence that mentions about the contribution towards revenue of each show aired on the television. Henceforth, it is farcical to just assume that the overall revenue slumped over past year because reduction in the time for which the local news and weather were aired.
Furthermore, germane evidences will be needed to bring out the reason behind losing contracts will local businesses. Currently, the argument fails to suffice this. Multiple possibilities are possible that could have caused the local businesses to retract the contract. One of them could be that they would have got exciting and better offers from another competing television station. Until, pertinent evidences are provided, argument stand on this assumption won’t hold true.
In summary, although the argument’s recommendation might be true, but it can’t be proved with the points that argument bases its recommendation on. In order to prove the veracity of its position, it must provide the aforementioned evidences.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- not OK
argument 3 -- OK
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here goes a sample:
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: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 418 350
No. of Characters: 2132 1500
No. of Different Words: 210 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.522 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.1 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.749 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 149 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 118 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 82 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 51 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.227 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.263 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.303 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.555 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.113 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, furthermore, hence, if, so, therefore, in summary, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 22.0 19.6327345309 112% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 53.0 55.5748502994 95% => OK
Nominalization: 24.0 16.3942115768 146% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2232.0 2260.96107784 99% => OK
No of words: 415.0 441.139720559 94% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.37831325301 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.51348521516 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.98366774108 2.78398813304 107% => OK
Unique words: 214.0 204.123752495 105% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.515662650602 0.468620217663 110% => OK
syllable_count: 695.7 705.55239521 99% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 5.0 8.76447105788 57% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 47.403320477 57.8364921388 82% => OK
Chars per sentence: 117.473684211 119.503703932 98% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.8421052632 23.324526521 94% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.26315789474 5.70786347227 75% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 7.0 8.20758483034 85% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.314319583223 0.218282227539 144% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0943015783204 0.0743258471296 127% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.103705744917 0.0701772020484 148% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.154657948824 0.128457276422 120% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0894789971071 0.0628817314937 142% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.8 14.3799401198 103% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 41.7 48.3550499002 86% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.92 12.5979740519 110% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.75 8.32208582834 105% => OK
difficult_words: 107.0 98.500998004 109% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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.