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 memo from the advertising director from Super Screen Movie Production Company attempts to convince its reader to allocate more share of the company's next year budget to increase public awareness through advertising. However, there are a number of unwarranted assumptions that does not make this conclusion a very convincing one.
The director makes reference to a recent report produced by the production company's marketing department to ascertain that fewer people have attended the movie screening of films produced by the company. However, there is no further information to corroborate this statement other than this vague reference to a report made by the own company. There is no further information on how the report results were generated. It gives rise to multiple questions in the reader's mind - was there a survey or interview conducted at movie theatres? If so how may people comprised of the sample? What was the population size and so on. Thus, there is little credibility on this report that is being referenced to by the advertising director. The argument would have been strengthened if the director had relied on an independent report prepared by a market research firm and if it had mentioned additional information on the methodology of the report to come to its conclusion.
In addition to the above, the director argues that percentage of positive reviews by movie reviewers have increased even though fewer people have attended the movie screening of movies. But how are the reviews provided by the reviewers categorized as positive or negative. Are the reviewers rating the movies based on a standard scale or are the reviews open ended opinions provided as a feedback. If the latter, then how can the company accurately categorize a feedback positive or negative since open ended answers tend to be broad and can be ambigious at times. Furthermore, there is no information on the reviewers - are they film critics, industry specialists, or simple movie goers who might not even have the slightest idea on how to judge a movie. Thus, the director should have included information on the type of people who constitute the reviewer panel and examples of a few reviews that they have provided. This would have further strengthened the director's contention.
Furthermore, the argument also mentions that not enough of the prospective viewers are being reached. This is a vague statement as what would constitute as "enough viewers" is open to multiple interpretation. Would 50% of a pool of 100 viewers be sufficient or 80% of viewers of the pool is required to meet this arbitrary threshold. The director also mentions that the percentage of positive reviews have also increased. However this does not necessarily indicate that more individuals have provided positive feedback than previous year. Thus the director should have included empirical data to corroborate such claims rather than just stating the premise.
Therefore, considering all of the above unwarranted assumptions made the director in his memo, he fails to successfully convince its readers to agree with him on increasing the advertising budget to increase public awareness.
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: ??? out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 508 350
No. of Characters: 2616 1500
No. of Different Words: 230 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.748 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.15 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.875 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 196 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 160 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 133 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 79 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.167 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.716 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.296 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.489 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.105 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 961, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'directors'' or 'director's'?
Suggestion: directors'; director's
...his would have further strengthened the directors contention. Furthermore, the argumen...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 433, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: However,
...f positive reviews have also increased. However this does not necessarily indicate that...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 550, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Thus,
...d positive feedback than previous year. Thus the director should have included empir...
^^^^
Line 9, column 24, Rule ID: ALL_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'all the'.
Suggestion: all the
... the premise. Therefore, considering all of the above unwarranted assumptions made the ...
^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, furthermore, however, if, may, so, then, therefore, thus, in addition
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 26.0 28.8173652695 90% => OK
Preposition: 65.0 55.5748502994 117% => OK
Nominalization: 18.0 16.3942115768 110% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2680.0 2260.96107784 119% => OK
No of words: 508.0 441.139720559 115% => OK
Chars per words: 5.27559055118 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.74751043592 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.96863263138 2.78398813304 107% => OK
Unique words: 237.0 204.123752495 116% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.466535433071 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 864.0 705.55239521 122% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 54.7701637147 57.8364921388 95% => OK
Chars per sentence: 111.666666667 119.503703932 93% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.1666666667 23.324526521 91% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.33333333333 5.70786347227 58% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 9.0 4.67664670659 192% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.230112158323 0.218282227539 105% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0604066100171 0.0743258471296 81% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0895446280197 0.0701772020484 128% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.129045868045 0.128457276422 100% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0903950200134 0.0628817314937 144% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.0 14.3799401198 97% => 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: 13.34 12.5979740519 106% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.63 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 127.0 98.500998004 129% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.