The following is taken from a memo from the advertising director of the Super Screen Movie Production Company.
According to a recent report from our marketing department, during the past year, fewer people attended Super Screen-produced movies than in any other year. And yet the percentage of positive reviews by movie reviewers about specific Super Screen movies actually increased during the past year. Clearly, the contents of these reviews are not reaching enough of our prospective viewers. Thus, the problem lies not with the quality of our movies but with the public's lack of awareness that movies of good quality are available. Super Screen should therefore allocate a greater share of its budget next year to reaching the public through advertising.
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The writer of the memorandum asserts that the Super Screen Movie Production Company should increase its budget for publicly advertising its movies. Though his claim might be true eventually, before admitting his assertion it is needed to address some issues first, considering than with only information given in the memo it is impossible to determine whether the conclusion is valid or not.
He suggests that movie qualities remain great from the fact that there is a high proportion of reviewers for some of the movies produced by the company. The natural question for this reasoning is that whether the reviewers represent the general opinions of public; the reviews might have been too scarce to evaluate the whole body of public, or the predilection of the reviewing site might have favored the movies, which would have distorted the public's feelings toward the movies. If these are the case, the claim that the movies' qualities are still acceptable may not be true, but the writer does not give any evidence to buttress this alleged fact.
If this presumption collapses, it is highly uncertain whether the current low attendance of the company's movie is indeed due to the lack of customer's acquaintance to the movies. This assumption may be true, as the writer says, but he is silent about the very reason why there are fewer number of viewers compared to last year, though providing some speculations. If, for instance, despite public's full-recognition about the film produced by the company, the decrease is from decreased quality of castings and staffs, then it had better spend more money to rehabilitate the quality of movies, rather than touting them to people.
Other explanations for the decreased attendance remain plausible. For instance, it is possible that the decrease in the number of viewers arose from current economic recession this year. Then the pool of people desiring to watch a movie would have shrunken at the outset, which exculpate the company's any decision from the decreased number of viewers. Considering that it is often the case that a business's success is highly decided by macroeconomic factors, the writer would reinforce his argument by showing that the decreased attendance is independent of such factors.
Even assuming that, though unverified, the decreased number of viewers is because of least acquaintance of public to the movies of the company, whether it should increase its budget for advertisements requires further justifications. For instance, public may not respond to the ads since there are to many competitions of advertisements to capture people's attention these days. This implies that new advertisements will possibly consume production cost without any fruits. Other than advertisements, an event for the visitors may be more effective since it will generate positive impressions on them, and local newspapers may cover it, which result in similar effect to the ads. Hence, the writer should give a reason why it should be advertisements to save the company.
As seemingly correct proposals often contains some flaws, this argument, though we can feel that the writer concerns about the company's future, also possesses reasoning without justifications. Therefore, to maintain his idea further, he should provide more facts and logics regarding the issue.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
samples:
https://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-argument-task-essays/following-taken-me…
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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: 529 350
No. of Characters: 2738 1500
No. of Different Words: 255 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.796 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.176 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.808 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 212 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 154 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 111 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 73 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.842 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.609 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.632 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.325 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.586 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.121 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 111, Rule ID: SOME_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'some'.
Suggestion: some
...e is a high proportion of reviewers for some of the movies produced by the company. The nat...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 83, Rule ID: THE_SUPERLATIVE[3]
Message: A determiner is probably missing here: 'of the least'.
Suggestion: of the least
... decreased number of viewers is because of least acquaintance of public to the movies of...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, hence, if, may, regarding, so, still, then, therefore, for instance
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 19.0 12.9520958084 147% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 44.0 28.8173652695 153% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 64.0 55.5748502994 115% => OK
Nominalization: 22.0 16.3942115768 134% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2801.0 2260.96107784 124% => OK
No of words: 529.0 441.139720559 120% => OK
Chars per words: 5.29489603025 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.79583152331 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.851403633 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 266.0 204.123752495 130% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.502835538752 0.468620217663 107% => OK
syllable_count: 864.0 705.55239521 122% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 9.0 2.70958083832 332% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 27.0 22.8473053892 118% => OK
Sentence length SD: 64.5548146905 57.8364921388 112% => OK
Chars per sentence: 147.421052632 119.503703932 123% => OK
Words per sentence: 27.8421052632 23.324526521 119% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.47368421053 5.70786347227 78% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.180817743228 0.218282227539 83% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0606981882809 0.0743258471296 82% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0549223792002 0.0701772020484 78% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0912723235933 0.128457276422 71% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0427397849388 0.0628817314937 68% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.4 14.3799401198 121% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 44.07 48.3550499002 91% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.7 12.5979740519 109% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.01 8.32208582834 108% => OK
difficult_words: 135.0 98.500998004 137% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.8 11.1389221557 115% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => 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.