"Over the past year, our late-night news program has devoted increased time to national news and less time to weather and local news. During this period, most of the complaints received from viewers were concerned with our station's coverage of weather and local news. In addition, local businesses that used to advertise during our late-night news program have canceled 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 our coverage of weather and local news on all our news programs."
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.
In the preceding statement, the author claims that the particular television station should expand coverage on weather and local news to attract more viewers and avoid losing advertising revenues. The premise provided is the large fraction of complaints concerned with less coverage on weather and local news and the cancellation of local business advertisement contracts during that night show. Though his claim well may have merit, but the author presents a poorly reasoned argument based on several questionable premises and assumptions, based solely on the evidence the author offers, we cannot consider his argument valid.
The primary issue in the author's reasoning lies in his unsubstantiated premises. While author claims that a large fraction of complains received are concerned with weather and local news, the data for surge or decline in the total number of complaints about weather and local news is not provided, rather author talks about the major fraction only which is not a true indicator. Moreover, the author states that many local business advertising contracts are cancelled and thus advertising revenue is decreased, but fails to provide information about new advertisement contracts due to the emphasis on national news as the replacement. The author's premises, the basis for his argument, lack any legitimate evidentiary support that render his conclusion unacceptable.
In addition, the author makes several assumptions that remain unproven. The author assumes that if weather and local news is not telecasted, the local viewers will decrease, and as a result local business advertising contracts are cancelled. This assumption does not hold because there can be other factors hike also contributing to cancellation of local contracts like overall decline of coverage, in charges of advertisement, decline in the local business cap, etc. The author weakens his argument by making this assumption and failing to provide explication of links between decreased advertising revenue and increasing weather and local news telecast he assumes exist.
In sum, the author's illogical argument is based on unsupported premises and unsubstantiated assumptions that render his conclusion invalid. There has been several flaws in the premises like no information of total number of complains instead of the major fraction and data about new contracts made due to emphasizing more on national news. The author's unexplained assumption of decrease in local advertising contracts due to less weather and local news telecasted is also highlighted. If author truely hopes to change his reader's mind on the issue, he would have to largely restructure his argument, fix the flaws in logic, clearly explicate the assumptions, and provide evidentiary support. Without these things, the author's poorly reasoned argument will likely convince few people.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 5 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 11 2
No. of Sentences: 15 15
No. of Words: 435 350
No. of Characters: 2385 1500
No. of Different Words: 195 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.567 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.483 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.855 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 189 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 153 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 113 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 65 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 29 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 14.445 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.533 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.435 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.567 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.16 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 648, Rule ID: AGREEMENT_SENT_START[1]
Message: You should probably use 'premise'.
Suggestion: premise
...al news as the replacement. The authors premises, the basis for his argument, lack any l...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, if, may, moreover, so, thus, well, while, in addition, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 12.0 19.6327345309 61% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 7.0 12.9520958084 54% => OK
Conjunction : 20.0 11.1786427146 179% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 23.0 28.8173652695 80% => OK
Preposition: 52.0 55.5748502994 94% => OK
Nominalization: 27.0 16.3942115768 165% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2430.0 2260.96107784 107% => OK
No of words: 435.0 441.139720559 99% => OK
Chars per words: 5.58620689655 5.12650576532 109% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.56690854021 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.9186205448 2.78398813304 105% => OK
Unique words: 205.0 204.123752495 100% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.471264367816 0.468620217663 101% => OK
syllable_count: 755.1 705.55239521 107% => 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: 14.0 8.76447105788 160% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 16.0 19.7664670659 81% => 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: 27.0 22.8473053892 118% => OK
Sentence length SD: 61.9508058362 57.8364921388 107% => OK
Chars per sentence: 151.875 119.503703932 127% => OK
Words per sentence: 27.1875 23.324526521 117% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.8125 5.70786347227 84% => OK
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 2.0 8.20758483034 24% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.88822355289 174% => 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: 0.207168789162 0.218282227539 95% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0863971868411 0.0743258471296 116% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0958722938623 0.0701772020484 137% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.154943756785 0.128457276422 121% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0449793935687 0.0628817314937 72% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 18.5 14.3799401198 129% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 35.61 48.3550499002 74% => OK
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.0 12.197005988 123% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.44 12.5979740519 123% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.97 8.32208582834 108% => OK
difficult_words: 110.0 98.500998004 112% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.8 11.1389221557 115% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => 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.