"Over the past year, our late-night news program has devoted increasingly more time to covering national news and less time to covering weather and local news. During the same time period, most of the complaints we received from viewers were concerned with the station's coverage of weather and local news. In addition, several local businesses that used to run advertisements during our late-night news program have just cancelled their advertising contracts with us. Therefore, in order to attract more viewers to our news programs and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should expand the coverage of weather and local news on all our news programs."
The presented letter recommends expending the coverage of weather and local news on all their news programs in order to attract more viewers and increase advertisement revenue. As discussed below, the argument relies on several critical assumptions and is therefore unpersuasive without further evidence in support.
To begin with, the author’s argument is based on the assumption that there were complaints from viewers who concerning about their news program’s less coverage of weather and local news However, the author didn’t mention that how many viewers showed their concern on this issue. If the number of complaints is not significant, for example, less then 1%, it is not be considered that these complaints is an opinion accepted by major number of viewers of the program. In addition, complaints submitted for a year is not concrete evidence to support author’s opinion. If there were many critical weather and local issues, demands on news containing these issues would be temporally increased unlike past years. Therefore, further evidence pertaining to the number of complaints and long-term data are critical to strengthen the author’s argument.
Furthermore, the author assumed that cancellation of advertisement is happened due to less coverage of weather and local news. In stating this, the author makes a broad assumption without presenting any relevant data. For example, the author didn’t present any direct connection between the cancellation of advertisement contracts and contents of the news program. The cancellation could happen because of other reasons such as economic recession or finding better marketing method. Also, run rate of cancellation of advertisement could not be higher than past years. If the rate is not significantly higher than past year, it would be dangerous to argue that these cancellations are the evidence of the author’s argument. Accordingly, unless the author can corroborate direct reasons of cancellation of companies used to request advertisement through the news program and show trend of long-term cancellation statistics, these advertisement cancellations might not be conclusive evidence.
Even if the cancellations and complaints are admitted as solid proofs of the arguments, the author’s conclusion still hinges on the assumption that covering more weather and local news will bring new viewers and advertisement. As stated above, if demands on weather and local news are temporary and this year’s main interests of viewers are already changed from these topics, changing the program’s characteristic as the author argued would be dangerous. Also, due to cover more topics on weathers and local news, more reporters are needed to be hired, and additional allocation for resources are also required, which could deteriorate profit rate. Therefore, the author has to consider recent interests of viewers and costs causing from executing author’s solution before arguing expanse of weather and local news coverage.
In sum, the author rests his case on a number of assumptions that may not be accurate. Consequently, further evidences pointed above are required to strengthen the author’s argument substantially.
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: 20 15
No. of Words: 486 350
No. of Characters: 2639 1500
No. of Different Words: 218 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.695 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.43 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.952 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 209 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 172 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 120 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 78 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.3 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.939 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.9 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.368 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.368 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.095 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 346, Rule ID: COMP_THAN[2]
Message: Comparison requires 'than', not 'then' nor 'as'.
Suggestion: than
...s is not significant, for example, less then 1%, it is not be considered that these ...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
accordingly, also, consequently, furthermore, however, if, may, so, still, then, therefore, as to, for example, in addition, such as, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 19.0 11.1786427146 170% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 21.0 28.8173652695 73% => OK
Preposition: 66.0 55.5748502994 119% => OK
Nominalization: 31.0 16.3942115768 189% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2726.0 2260.96107784 121% => OK
No of words: 484.0 441.139720559 110% => OK
Chars per words: 5.63223140496 5.12650576532 110% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.69041575982 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.05183683706 2.78398813304 110% => OK
Unique words: 229.0 204.123752495 112% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.473140495868 0.468620217663 101% => OK
syllable_count: 827.1 705.55239521 117% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 57.1021890999 57.8364921388 99% => OK
Chars per sentence: 136.3 119.503703932 114% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.2 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.35 5.70786347227 129% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.251509015404 0.218282227539 115% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0872732553958 0.0743258471296 117% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0798416393059 0.0701772020484 114% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.151191395851 0.128457276422 118% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0954281475497 0.0628817314937 152% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.2 14.3799401198 120% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 38.66 48.3550499002 80% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.8 12.197005988 113% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.67 12.5979740519 124% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.0 8.32208582834 108% => OK
difficult_words: 128.0 98.500998004 130% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.5 12.3882235529 109% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => 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.