"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.
In the memo, the author has concluded that Super screen should allocate a greater share of its budget for advertising. The author has come to this conclusion based on the fact that inspite of good movie reviews, fewer people are attending movies. Therefore, movies reviews are not reaching the prospective audience. Quite convincing though such a statement appears at first glance, closer scrutiny reveals that the argument lacks crucial support. Therefore, before the director's recommendation can be accepted, the following questions need to answered.
Firstly, does increase in percentage of positive reviews actually imply increase in number of positive reviews? In other words, it is possible that the total number of reviews has declined and due to which percentage of positive reviews has increased. In addition to this, the author has not provided any details about the reviews. Like who gave these reviews, movie reviewing body like IMBD or Rotten Tomatoes? Or are these reviews from actual people? If these reviews are from public who watched the movie, then it is clearly evident that the total number of reviews has declined. If any of the above is true, the argument is significantly weakened.
Secondly, even if we assume that the number of postive reviews have increased, does really these reviews are not reaching the viewers? It is possible that people read the reviews but still chose to avoid the new movie because they did not like the genre of the movie or some other movie released at the same time. Hence, the conclusion of the author that contents of these reviews are not reaching audience is flawed. Therefore, the argument does not hold water.
Lastly, even if we assume that both of the above issues does not exist, and the reviews are actually not reaching the audience, is there any gurantee that after advertisements, the number will go up? There are certain other possible factors because of which, people may still avoid the movie. Maybe the economy is down and people cannot afford movie tickets or there is a pandemic going on in the country because of which people are maintaining social distancing and avoiding movie theater. Therefore, the recommendation cannot be accepted without considering numerous other factors.
To sum up, the argument as it stands now is flawed due to its reliance on several unwarranted assumptions. If the author is able to answer the above three questions and provide more concrete details then it might be possible to evaluate the viability of accepting advertising director's recommendation.
Comments
e-rater score report
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: 22 15
No. of Words: 417 350
No. of Characters: 2094 1500
No. of Different Words: 196 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.519 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.022 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.56 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 162 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 121 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 78 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 35 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.955 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.271 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.773 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.326 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.521 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.106 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 470, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'directors'' or 'director's'?
Suggestion: directors'; director's
... crucial support. Therefore, before the directors recommendation can be accepted, the fol...
^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 200, Rule ID: LESS_MORE_THEN[1]
Message: Did you mean 'than'?
Suggestion: than
...tions and provide more concrete details then it might be possible to evaluate the vi...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, first, firstly, hence, if, lastly, may, really, second, secondly, so, still, then, therefore, in addition, in other words, to sum up
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 27.0 28.8173652695 94% => OK
Preposition: 51.0 55.5748502994 92% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2153.0 2260.96107784 95% => OK
No of words: 417.0 441.139720559 95% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.16306954436 5.12650576532 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.5189133491 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.65322553235 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 207.0 204.123752495 101% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.496402877698 0.468620217663 106% => OK
syllable_count: 682.2 705.55239521 97% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 6.0 4.22255489022 142% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 45.0130375971 57.8364921388 78% => OK
Chars per sentence: 97.8636363636 119.503703932 82% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.9545454545 23.324526521 81% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.68181818182 5.70786347227 117% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.144667506574 0.218282227539 66% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0441206408484 0.0743258471296 59% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0481774072922 0.0701772020484 69% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.078828907947 0.128457276422 61% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0413427054514 0.0628817314937 66% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 12.3 14.3799401198 86% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 53.21 48.3550499002 110% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.65 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.32 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 100.0 98.500998004 102% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 7.5 12.3882235529 61% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => 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.