The following is a recommendation from the Board of Directors of Monarch Books.
"We recommend that Monarch Books open a café in its store. Monarch, having been in business at the same location for more than twenty years, has a large customer base because it is known for its wide selection of books on all subjects. Clearly, opening the café would attract more customers. Space could be made for the café by discontinuing the children's book section, which will probably become less popular given that the most recent national census indicated a significant decline in the percentage of the population under age ten. Opening a café will allow Monarch to attract more customers and better compete with Regal Books, which recently opened its own café."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
Merely based on groundless assumptions and plausible evidence, the statement draws a conclusion that the Monarch Books should open a cafe in its store. To justify this conclusion, the author indicates that the new cafe would attract more customers. Moreover, the author claims that space used for children’s book can be occupied to build cafe due to the decrease in percentage of children population. At first glance, this argument appears to be convincing, but further reflections reveals that it omits some substantial concerns that should be addressed to substantiate its reasonings. In my point of view, the author’s claim suffers from the following logical flaws:
The author proposes the advice by bridging the increase of customers with opening cafe. However, a concrete connection between the number of customers and new cafe is not effectively made. It might be the case that some people prefer a quite place to choose their favourite books, while introducing cafe areas would change this atmosphere. Additionally, the author plans to cut down the area for children’s books to open the cafe, since the proportion of children in national population is observed to be dropping. However, the scope of this statistics may be too large— when merely considering the region where the bookstore is located, the change of children population is unpredictable. Hence, once there’s less room for children’s books, the number of customers may even decrease.
Building upon the implication that its competitor benefited from opening cafes, the board of directors of Monarch suggests the company to follow the step. First of all, the proposition does not inform us that Regal Books gains more guests from opening new cafes, so the company should not blindly emulate this strategy. Moreover, even if Regal Books attracted more customers, the board of directors assumes, without justification, that the background conditions of these two bookstores are similar. There are likely all kinds of differences between these two competitors. For instance, the stores of Regal Books might be located in areas where people enjoy staying at cafe for reading, while the residents near Monarch’s stores may prefer reading at home. Any of these scenarios, if turns out to be true, would make the recommendation less persuasive.
By the analysis above, the author fails to substantiate that opening cafe would be beneficial, since the evidences cited in the justification do not yield strong support. To make the argument more convincing, the claimer is expected to provide more evidence that those potential customers really prefer a bookstore with a cafe. Moreover, the author need to demonstrate that opening cafe is unlikely to reduce the popularity of the bookstore among children, and the board also need to discriminate the differences between the conditions of Monarch and Regal Books. Without factors mentioned above, the argument is not reasonable and acceptable enough.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
flaws:
1. need more arguments for this:
Clearly, opening the café would attract more customers.
and this:
Space could be made for the café by discontinuing the children's book section, which will probably become less popular given that the most recent national census indicated a significant decline in the percentage of the population under age ten.
2. the introduction and conclusion are too long.
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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: 21 15
No. of Words: 467 350
No. of Characters: 2437 1500
No. of Different Words: 233 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.649 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.218 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.759 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 176 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 141 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 103 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 72 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.238 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.996 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.571 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.303 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.481 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.073 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 235, Rule ID: A_RB_NN[1]
Message: You used an adverb ('quite') instead an adjective, or a noun ('place') instead of another adjective.
...ght be the case that some people prefer a quite place to choose their favourite books, while ...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, hence, however, if, may, moreover, really, so, while, for instance, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 15.0 12.9520958084 116% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 29.0 28.8173652695 101% => OK
Preposition: 70.0 55.5748502994 126% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2534.0 2260.96107784 112% => OK
No of words: 467.0 441.139720559 106% => OK
Chars per words: 5.426124197 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.64867537961 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.99182323017 2.78398813304 107% => OK
Unique words: 237.0 204.123752495 116% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.507494646681 0.468620217663 108% => OK
syllable_count: 783.9 705.55239521 111% => 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: 18.0 8.76447105788 205% => Less articles wanted as sentence beginning.
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 9.0 4.22255489022 213% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 41.4166633132 57.8364921388 72% => OK
Chars per sentence: 126.7 119.503703932 106% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.35 23.324526521 100% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.9 5.70786347227 86% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.253288835685 0.218282227539 116% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.075144785936 0.0743258471296 101% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0669278602661 0.0701772020484 95% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.157981043952 0.128457276422 123% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0711421000784 0.0628817314937 113% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.8 14.3799401198 110% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 39.67 48.3550499002 82% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.51 12.5979740519 115% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.9 8.32208582834 107% => OK
difficult_words: 122.0 98.500998004 124% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.