"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 author's argument that they should restore the time devoted to weather and local news to atteact more viewers to the program is flawed for several reasons. The author not only draws a conclusion based on unreasoned statements, but also uses limited resources to make sweeping generalization about the entire television station. Furthermore, the author makes the mistake of focusing solely on received complaints while ignoring the other possible reasons. Hence, the argument can be cosidered incomplete or unsubstained.
First of all, the author readily assumes that only late-night news caused to decrease in number of viewers. This is merely an assumption without much solid ground. For example, other alternative programs could be emerged on other television stations, and they may attract the audience. If the argument explicitly stated that they started to lose significant number of viewers since they have started to devote increased time to national news, then it would have been a lot more convincing to the reader.
Secondly, the author claims that local busninesses canceled their advertising contract with them. This again is a weak and unsupported claim as it does not constitute any correlation between number of viewers and number of received advertisements. For example, local businesses could have found cheaper TV stations. That can be why they started to cancel their contract with television station. Hence, the argument would have been a lot more convincing if it provided the evidence that local businesses ended their contracts because of the decrease in number of viewers.
Finally, the author cites that they have received a lot of complaints about their station's coverage of weather and local news. However, careful scrutiny of the evidence reveals that it provides credible support for the author's conclusion in several critical respects, and raises several skeptical questions. For example, what were the content of the complaints? Were complaining about the duration of the news or accuracy of the news? Without convincing answers to these questions, the reader is left with the impression that the claims made by the author more of a wishful thinking rather than substantive evidence.
In conclusion, the author's argument is unpersuasive as it stands. To bolster it further, the author must provide more concrete evidence, perhaps by way of a detailed analysis of change in number of viewers since they started to allocate more time for national news. To better assess the argument, it would be necessary to know more about why number of viewers started to decay.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- not OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
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Need to argue against the conclusion always. For this topic it is:
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.
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samples:
https://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-argument-task-essays/over-past-year-our…
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 411 350
No. of Characters: 2146 1500
No. of Different Words: 198 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.503 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.221 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.674 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 175 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 141 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 90 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 44 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.571 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.398 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.619 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.321 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.516 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.059 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 5, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
The authors argument that they should restore the t...
^^^^^^^
Line 1, column 252, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...asoned statements, but also uses limited resources to make sweeping generalizatio...
^^
Line 7, column 59, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...r cites that they have received a lot of complaints about their stations coverage...
^^
Line 7, column 221, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...at it provides credible support for the authors conclusion in several critical respects...
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 20, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...antive evidence. In conclusion, the authors argument is unpersuasive as it stands. ...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, finally, first, furthermore, hence, however, if, may, second, secondly, so, then, while, for example, in conclusion, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 9.0 11.1786427146 81% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 31.0 28.8173652695 108% => OK
Preposition: 57.0 55.5748502994 103% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2200.0 2260.96107784 97% => OK
No of words: 411.0 441.139720559 93% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.35279805353 5.12650576532 104% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.50256981431 4.56307096286 99% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.75334642265 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 202.0 204.123752495 99% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.491484184915 0.468620217663 105% => OK
syllable_count: 684.0 705.55239521 97% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 50.4565550308 57.8364921388 87% => OK
Chars per sentence: 104.761904762 119.503703932 88% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.5714285714 23.324526521 84% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.66666666667 5.70786347227 117% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 5.0 5.25449101796 95% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 11.0 6.88822355289 160% => 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: 0.0 0.218282227539 0% => The similarity between the topic and the content is low.
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0 0.0743258471296 0% => Sentence topic similarity is low.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0 0.0701772020484 0% => Sentences are similar to each other.
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0 0.128457276422 0% => Maybe some paragraphs are off the topic.
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0 0.0628817314937 0% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.6 14.3799401198 95% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 43.73 48.3550499002 90% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.9 12.197005988 98% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.75 12.5979740519 109% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.04 8.32208582834 109% => OK
difficult_words: 116.0 98.500998004 118% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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It is not exactly right on the topic in the view of e-grader. Maybe there is a wrong essay topic.
Rates: 16.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 1.0 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.