"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 argument roughly states that because of the increased amount of time devoted to the national news the television station has been getting complaints and the local businesses have stopped advertising. While at first the provided argument may seem cogent and sound. But looking deeper, it is determined that the argument is deeply flawed and there are several holes that has rendered the argument to seem illogical.
First, the author states that their late night program devotes more time to national new and less to weather and local news. here, the author does not mention any other program but only one specific, it may be possible that all other programs might be solely based on the weather and the local news respectively and this one specific late night program only focuses on the national news.
Secondly, the author assumes that during this time, most complaints received are concerned with the coverages of weather and local news. It is likely that those complains about weather and local news are about the quality of the coverage or about some false information the station might have provided. The author also has not mentioned the other complaints. it might be possible that those complaints are about an even bigger issue than the weather and the local news.
Thirdly, the author assumes that because of less coverage of the weather and the local news many local businesses have ended their advertising contracts. There might be a possibility that those local businesses have found a better station where they can advertise at less price. The author concludes that these problems will be eradicated if they start devoting more time to weather and local news, which is not very convincing given the author's reasons.
Conclusively, If the author had mentioned with a proof that there is no other reason for the complaints or the local businesses ending their contract, the given argument would have been strengthened.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
samples:
https://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-argument-task-essays/over-past-year-our…
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 11 15
No. of Words: 319 350
No. of Characters: 1590 1500
No. of Different Words: 146 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.226 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.984 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.383 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 104 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 83 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 54 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 30 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 29 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 13.578 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.727 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.453 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.717 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.15 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 126, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: Here
...new and less to weather and local news. here, the author does not mention any other ...
^^^^
Line 5, column 360, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: It
...has not mentioned the other complaints. it might be possible that those complaints...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, if, look, may, second, secondly, so, then, third, thirdly, while
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 16.0 19.6327345309 81% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 9.0 12.9520958084 69% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 27.0 28.8173652695 94% => OK
Preposition: 22.0 55.5748502994 40% => More preposition wanted.
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1630.0 2260.96107784 72% => OK
No of words: 319.0 441.139720559 72% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.10971786834 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.22617688928 4.56307096286 93% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.44954991956 2.78398813304 88% => OK
Unique words: 148.0 204.123752495 73% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.46394984326 0.468620217663 99% => OK
syllable_count: 506.7 705.55239521 72% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 13.0 19.7664670659 66% => 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: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 54.2623475982 57.8364921388 94% => OK
Chars per sentence: 125.384615385 119.503703932 105% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.5384615385 23.324526521 105% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.30769230769 5.70786347227 111% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.321035791214 0.218282227539 147% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.134280824057 0.0743258471296 181% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.12411353978 0.0701772020484 177% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.178753029159 0.128457276422 139% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0950443715932 0.0628817314937 151% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.9 14.3799401198 104% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.65 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.8 8.32208582834 94% => OK
difficult_words: 60.0 98.500998004 61% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.