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 author of the memorandum concludes that more time should be devoted to weather and local news to attract more viewers and make more business revenue considering the number of complaints from the viewers and declining advertisement contracts. Even though seems plausible at first glance, this is a hurried conclusion that requires further examination of the evidence. The author neither knows the constituent of the complaints nor the exact number and its distribution among other issues. Also, the evidence regarding the declining advertisement revenues is insufficient for such a conclusion. Under the light of more evidence different conclusions might also be made.
First of all, number of complaints solely does not that audience wants to see more weather and local news. The complaints might be regarding to some other issue such as the harmful language used during show or the inappropriate clothing of the presenter. If this is the case warning the production team would be a more sound action rather than changing the late show. Without knowing what exactly are the viewers complaining about jumping into this conclusion would not increase the viewers therefore remain ineffective.
Secondly, the distribution of the complaints is also important. Unless the late night show received significantly higher complaints than the other shows of the station the proposal would not be effective. If all subjects have receive close number of complaints but weather and local news received slightly higher, this might indicate a general quality problem about the station. Sound quality or the visual quality might be one of them and again rather than focusing on the late night show, the station must take suitable actions to solve a broader problem.
The final evidence required is related to the advertisement revenue. We should know the other stations advertisement revenues to take a logical decision. There might be a national trend among business to cut or divert their advertisement budget. Business might have decide that internet advertising is more profitable than television advertising thus choose to divert funds. If this is the case, there is no fault in late show. Rather than blaming the weather and local news coverage station should revise its advertisement proposals.
To conclude, the television stations obviously needs to attract more audience and increase revenue but the way of doing so is still debatable without careful scrutiny of the evidence.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- duplicated to argument 1
argument 3 -- OK
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Need to argue against the conclusion always. For this topic it is:
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.
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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: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 389 350
No. of Characters: 2053 1500
No. of Different Words: 192 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.441 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.278 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.76 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 155 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 126 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 85 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 49 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.45 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.433 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.6 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.315 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.523 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.077 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 256, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “If” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...nappropriate clothing of the presenter. If this is the case warning the production...
^^
Line 5, column 65, Rule ID: SENTENCE_FRAGMENT[1]
Message: “Unless” at the beginning of a sentence requires a 2nd clause. Maybe a comma, question or exclamation mark is missing, or the sentence is incomplete and should be joined with the following sentence.
...on of the complaints is also important. Unless the late night show received significan...
^^^^^^
Line 5, column 227, Rule ID: HAVE_PART_AGREEMENT[1]
Message: Use past participle here: 'received'.
Suggestion: received
... not be effective. If all subjects have receive close number of complaints but weather ...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 95, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
...ement revenue. We should know the other stations advertisement revenues to take a logica...
^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 267, Rule ID: HAVE_PART_AGREEMENT[1]
Message: Use past participle here: 'decided'.
Suggestion: decided
...vertisement budget. Business might have decide that internet advertising is more profi...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, if, regarding, second, secondly, so, still, therefore, thus, such as, first of all
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 : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 4.0 13.6137724551 29% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 14.0 28.8173652695 49% => OK
Preposition: 41.0 55.5748502994 74% => OK
Nominalization: 21.0 16.3942115768 128% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2097.0 2260.96107784 93% => OK
No of words: 389.0 441.139720559 88% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.39074550129 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.44106776838 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.80856770446 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 195.0 204.123752495 96% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.501285347044 0.468620217663 107% => OK
syllable_count: 646.2 705.55239521 92% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 46.5923813515 57.8364921388 81% => OK
Chars per sentence: 104.85 119.503703932 88% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.45 23.324526521 83% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.0 5.70786347227 88% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.88822355289 174% => 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: 0.182238117414 0.218282227539 83% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0525777391772 0.0743258471296 71% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.053552689549 0.0701772020484 76% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0986959407193 0.128457276422 77% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0221545478542 0.0628817314937 35% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.7 14.3799401198 95% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 43.73 48.3550499002 90% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.98 12.5979740519 111% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.27 8.32208582834 99% => OK
difficult_words: 91.0 98.500998004 92% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 75.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.5 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.