"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."
An argument is put forth by an advertising director wherein it is recommended that a greater share of budget be allocated to advertising by a production company named Super Screen since the director has identified recent trends of fewer people attending Super Screen movies. However, the argument is flawed and is based on various unstated assumptions and unanswered questions.
The first and the most important statement is that fewer people have attended Super Screen movies in the last year. What the director fails to mention is the number of Super Screen movies released in the last year as compared to the years before that. If fewer movies were released last year than the rest of the years, it could be possible that the decrease in number of movie attendants has nothing to do with a lack of awareness about the movies as assumed by the advertising director.
The director also mentions the increase in the percentage of positive reviews about Super Screen movies to support his claim that it is not the movie quality that has been lacking but the advertising strategy. However, one needs to look at other metrics such as the percentage of movie attendants who reviewed the movie. There is a chance that a larger number of people who attended the movie also reviewed the movie in the last year as compared to previous years. There is also a chance that the percentage of people who disliked the movie and wrote a review has decreased this year which would fail to conclude that the movies were of better quality in the last year.
Even if there has been a fall in the number of people attending Super Screen movies despite them being of good quality, it does not necessarily imply that this trend is caused due to a lack of awareness. People might have lost interest in watching movies in the past year due to external factors like an ongoing economic crisis or internal conflicts in the country.
Finally, a greater share of budget to advertising does not necessarily translate to people being better aware of good quality movies. There can be better advertising done with smaller budgets. The correlation between the amount spent on advertising and the advertising outreach is not made evident in the argument.
For the above reasons, the advertising director's argument is unreasonable and fallacious and requires further data and clarifications to assess its validity.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 1 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 15 15
No. of Words: 402 350
No. of Characters: 1954 1500
No. of Different Words: 176 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.478 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.861 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.588 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 145 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 101 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 72 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 37 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.8 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.199 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.6 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.386 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.692 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.176 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, however, if, look, so, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 4.0 12.9520958084 31% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 19.0 28.8173652695 66% => OK
Preposition: 57.0 55.5748502994 103% => OK
Nominalization: 8.0 16.3942115768 49% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1994.0 2260.96107784 88% => OK
No of words: 402.0 441.139720559 91% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 4.96019900498 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.47771567384 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.62724725858 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 181.0 204.123752495 89% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.450248756219 0.468620217663 96% => OK
syllable_count: 625.5 705.55239521 89% => 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: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 19.7664670659 76% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 55.5719353631 57.8364921388 96% => OK
Chars per sentence: 132.933333333 119.503703932 111% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.8 23.324526521 115% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.8 5.70786347227 67% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 0.0 5.25449101796 0% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.339047965783 0.218282227539 155% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.125523279641 0.0743258471296 169% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0864624917203 0.0701772020484 123% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.170117327723 0.128457276422 132% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0945253441525 0.0628817314937 150% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.3 14.3799401198 106% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 45.09 48.3550499002 93% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.78 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.3 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 86.0 98.500998004 87% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => 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.