Nature's Way, a chain of stores selling health food and other health-related products, is opening its next franchise in the town of Plainsville. The store should prove to be very successful: Nature's Way franchises tend to be most profitable in areas where residents lead healthy lives, and clearly Plainsville is such an area. Plainsville merchants report that sales of running shoes and exercise clothing are at all-time highs. The local health club has more members than ever, and the weight training and aerobics classes are always full. Finally, Plainsville's schoolchildren represent a new generation of potential customers: these schoolchildren are required to participate in a fitness-for-life program, which emphasizes the benefits of regular exercise at an early age.
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The author states that the next franchise of Nature's Way that is to be opened in the town of Plainsville should prove to be very successful as Nature's Way franchises tend to be most profitable in areas where residents lead healthy lives and the author is convinced that Plainsville is such an area. The author has provided a number of resons to support this argument. But the author has arrived at the conclusion by making a series of assumptions which if proven otherwise, will weaken the authors argument significantly. The following are few of the said assumptions that the author has made.
Firstly to support the conclusion that the residents of Plainsville lead a healthy life, the author states the fact that Plainsville merchants report that sales of running shoes and exercise clothing are at all-time highs. But what the author fails to see is that the increase in the sales might not be the result of the residents of the town becoming more health conscious and trying to lead a healthy life. There can be a number of reasons for the increase in the sales. One of the alternate reasons can be that a new brand of fittness equipment which sells running shoes and exercise clothing has opened in Plainsville and the merchants are exporting the equipment elsewhere. The author has failed to state whether the running shoes and exercise clothing are being bought by the residents of Plainsville or if they are being exported.
Secondly, the author states that the local health club has more members than ever, and the weight training and aerobics classes are always full which leads to assumption that the residents are trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle. But the author fails to mention the number of residents that have enrolled in these classes or are a part of the health club. If the town has a lot of these classes and a significant amount of it's population was enrolled in these classes for health benefits then assumption would have been correct.
Thirdly, the author mentions that Plainsville's schoolchildren represent a new generation of potential customers as these schoolchildren are required to participate in a fitness-for-life program, which emphasizes the benefits of regular exercise at an early age. While this program might be beneficial for the students but the author has made an assumption that because the students have to participate in this program, their parents will buy products from Nature's Way. But there is no guarantee of this and before the parents even buy products for their children they have to consider if they can afford Nature's Way products or not. If they can afford products from a local shop which has the same quality and is cheaper then they will prefer that option.
Hence, although the author presented his argument, he had based it on a series of assumptions which may or may not be true and if not then will weaken the author's argument.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 17 15
No. of Words: 493 350
No. of Characters: 2381 1500
No. of Different Words: 196 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.712 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.83 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.68 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 174 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 127 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 95 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 53 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 29 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.1 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.706 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.373 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.608 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.164 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 454, Rule ID: IF_IS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'is'?
Suggestion: is
...by making a series of assumptions which if proven otherwise, will weaken the autho...
^^
Line 2, column 491, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...ch if proven otherwise, will weaken the authors argument significantly. The following a...
^^^^^^^
Line 8, column 714, Rule ID: COMPARISONS_THEN[1]
Message: Did you mean 'cheaper than'?
Suggestion: cheaper than
... shop which has the same quality and is cheaper then they will prefer that option. Hence,...
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 8, column 722, Rule ID: COMP_THAN[3]
Message: Comparison requires 'than', not 'then' nor 'as'.
Suggestion: than
...ich has the same quality and is cheaper then they will prefer that option. Hence,...
^^^^
Line 10, column 156, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...be true and if not then will weaken the authors argument.
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, firstly, hence, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, third, thirdly, while
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 27.0 19.6327345309 138% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.9520958084 108% => OK
Conjunction : 21.0 11.1786427146 188% => OK
Relative clauses : 22.0 13.6137724551 162% => OK
Pronoun: 34.0 28.8173652695 118% => OK
Preposition: 53.0 55.5748502994 95% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2420.0 2260.96107784 107% => OK
No of words: 493.0 441.139720559 112% => OK
Chars per words: 4.90872210953 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.71206996034 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.70242548268 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 200.0 204.123752495 98% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.405679513185 0.468620217663 87% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 728.1 705.55239521 103% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 5.0 1.67365269461 299% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 29.0 22.8473053892 127% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 64.3613286286 57.8364921388 111% => OK
Chars per sentence: 142.352941176 119.503703932 119% => OK
Words per sentence: 29.0 23.324526521 124% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.05882352941 5.70786347227 89% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.239376911736 0.218282227539 110% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0773802774496 0.0743258471296 104% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.119184166118 0.0701772020484 170% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.127063632233 0.128457276422 99% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0987417784336 0.0628817314937 157% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.2 14.3799401198 113% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 50.5 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.79 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.93 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 89.0 98.500998004 90% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 12.3882235529 105% => OK
gunning_fog: 13.6 11.1389221557 122% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.