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 argument claims that allocating a greater share of its budget next year to reaching the public through advertising and make them aware of good quality movies based on reviews will increase viewership in Super Screen-produced movies. Stated in this way the argument manipulates facts and present a distorted view of the situation as there are many questions which need to be answered in order to reach to an conclusion. The conclusion of the argument relies on lot of assumptions and there is no clear evidence. Hence, the argument is weak and unconvincing without answers to questions like, how drastic was the viewership drop as compared to last year? What the does author mean by fewer people attended Super Screen-produced movies? Does viewership depend on ratings?
Firstly, the question which is most crucial to this argument is what does author mean by fewer? He mentioned that "fewer people attended Super Screen-produced movies than in any other year", but fewer may have multiple definition. There may be a case where the number of viewership decreased by 2 - 3 number of people as compared to past years than the argument fails. So, in order to access the situation and come to a conclusion we must be aware of the exact number or clear definition of the stated "fewer" in the argument.
Secondly, the author has assumed that people follow movie review and the viewership directly depends on it. But is there a direct correlation between movie review and the viewership? Has there been any survey or analysis conducted on this? Without clear answer to these questions, the conclusion will be flawed as the company may lose a lot of money on advertisement without any increase in viewership if there is no correlation between these two.
Thirdly, the author has mentioned that "the percentage of positive reviews by movie reviewers about specific Super Screen movies actually increased during the past year. But there is an important question which need to be answered to connect this to the conclusion of the argument, Which were these specific Super Screen movies? Was the viewership of these movies with good reviews also lower? What is the ratio of these movies to all movies produced by Super Screen movies last year? The answer to these questions will give us crucial information to evaluate the indirect impact of reviews and viewership. Also, these answers will give us information on number of movies with good reviews compared to others and this will help us in making a conscious decision to reach the stated conclusion. As, there may be a situation that the viewership of the movies with good ratings was already higher or such movies were very less compared to movies with average/bad reviews than the conclusion drawn from these argument will be flawed.
In conclusion, the argument is flawed due to lack of answer to the above mentioned questions and therefore unconvincing. It could be considerably strengthened if the author provide answers to these questions.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- not OK
argument 2 -- not OK
argument 3 -- not OK
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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: 23 15
No. of Words: 497 350
No. of Characters: 2448 1500
No. of Different Words: 201 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.722 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.926 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.699 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 180 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 125 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 93 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 57 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.609 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.453 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.652 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.328 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.524 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.132 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 409, Rule ID: EN_A_VS_AN
Message: Use 'a' instead of 'an' if the following word doesn't start with a vowel sound, e.g. 'a sentence', 'a university'
Suggestion: a
...eed to be answered in order to reach to an conclusion. The conclusion of the argum...
^^
Line 7, column 1005, Rule ID: THIS_NNS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'this argument' or 'these arguments'?
Suggestion: this argument; these arguments
... reviews than the conclusion drawn from these argument will be flawed. In conclusion, the a...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, firstly, hence, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, third, thirdly, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 79.0 55.5748502994 142% => OK
Nominalization: 23.0 16.3942115768 140% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2531.0 2260.96107784 112% => OK
No of words: 496.0 441.139720559 112% => OK
Chars per words: 5.10282258065 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.71922212354 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.84622279076 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 212.0 204.123752495 104% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.427419354839 0.468620217663 91% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 775.8 705.55239521 110% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 55.3231441944 57.8364921388 96% => OK
Chars per sentence: 110.043478261 119.503703932 92% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.5652173913 23.324526521 92% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.26086956522 5.70786347227 92% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.199154633595 0.218282227539 91% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.06739405934 0.0743258471296 91% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0812735737984 0.0701772020484 116% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.106367609782 0.128457276422 83% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0663128998571 0.0628817314937 105% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.4 14.3799401198 93% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.3 12.5979740519 98% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.64 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 93.0 98.500998004 94% => 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.