"To reverse a decline in listener numbers, our owners have decided that WWAC must change from its current rock-music format. The decline has occurred despite population growth in our listening area, but that growth has resulted mainly from people moving h

Essay topics:

"To reverse a decline in listener numbers, our owners have decided that WWAC must change from its current rock-music format. The decline has occurred despite population growth in our listening area, but that growth has resulted mainly from people moving here after their retirement. We must make listeners of these new residents. We could switch to a music format tailored to their tastes, but a continuing decline in local sales of recorded music suggests limited interest in music. Instead we should change to a news and talk format, a form of radio that is increasingly popular in our area."

Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.

Based on three premises the argument suggests that in order to reverse a recent decline in number of the listeners WWAC radio should change from its current rock-music format to a news and talk format. First of all, most of the new residents of the city are retired people and the radio should generate appropriate programs for their taste. Second, resident’s interest in music has decreased. And finally, news and talk is an increasingly popular radio program format there. None of these premises are satisfactory and there are several loopholes in the argument which makes any conclusion deduced from it untenable.
The first premise of the author is that main proportion of the new residents are retired people. Actually there is no information and statistics about number of moving in people and the ones who are already resident there. It is plausible that new residents constitute only small proportion of the population. In addition, the correlation between the genre and the decline cannot be effectively made without further information. For example, the decline may be explained by the station’s repetitious and outmoded songs, low quality of their signals, high number interruption among programs because of advertisements, and etc. which might be boring for listeners.

Second notion of the argument is that resident’s interest in music is decreased since they buy fewer number of recorded music. It should be taken into consideration that fewer sales of recorded music do not necessarily mean decrease in the popularity of music. There might be several other main reasons for current decrease in the sales. Sharing music among themselves, downloading them from internet, loose copy-write rules, online streams, or even listening them throw their own radio station would be main reasons for the decline. If so, the argument would be void.

The final subtle point mentioned in the passage is that news and talk format is an increasingly popular format there. There is no information, statistics or cited surveys to assure the readers about higher popularity of the news and talk format. Even of it is a popular radio program format there it does not necessarily provide sufficient evidence for correlation between its popularity and increase in WWAC listeners. It might be they are well-known only because of their current specific rock-music format. If so, changing format would counteract.

In final analysis, the author’s suggestion cannot be taken to be correct because, for the given information, it depends on number of premises all of which could be explained in other ways as well. The argument could have been more comprehensive if the author had presented more information and statistics to support his claim. Therefore, the argument is not totally convincing and unsound.

Votes
Average: 6.6 (1 vote)
Essay Categories

Comments

Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 2, column 623, Rule ID: AND_ETC[1]
Message: Use simply 'etc.'.
Suggestion: etc.
...ong programs because of advertisements, and etc. which might be boring for listeners. ...
^^^^^^^^

Discourse Markers used:
['actually', 'finally', 'first', 'if', 'may', 'second', 'so', 'therefore', 'well', 'for example', 'in addition', 'first of all']

Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments

Performance in Part of Speech:
Nouns: 0.25 0.25644967241 97% => OK
Verbs: 0.141732283465 0.15541462614 91% => OK
Adjectives: 0.110236220472 0.0836205057962 132% => OK
Adverbs: 0.0511811023622 0.0520304965353 98% => OK
Pronouns: 0.0374015748031 0.0272364105082 137% => Less pronouns wanted. Try not to use 'you, I, they, he...' as the subject of a sentence
Prepositions: 0.133858267717 0.125424944231 107% => OK
Participles: 0.0413385826772 0.0416121511921 99% => OK
Conjunctions: 2.90850283071 2.79052419416 104% => OK
Infinitives: 0.00984251968504 0.026700313972 37% => Some infinitives wanted.
Particles: 0.0 0.001811407834 0% => OK
Determiners: 0.0807086614173 0.113004496875 71% => OK
Modal_auxiliary: 0.0275590551181 0.0255425247493 108% => OK
WH_determiners: 0.00787401574803 0.0127820249294 62% => OK

Vocabulary words and sentences:
No of characters: 2823.0 2731.13054187 103% => OK
No of words: 447.0 446.07635468 100% => OK
Chars per words: 6.31543624161 6.12365571057 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.59808378696 4.57801047555 100% => OK
words length more than 5 chars: 0.402684563758 0.378187486979 106% => OK
words length more than 6 chars: 0.313199105145 0.287650121315 109% => OK
words length more than 7 chars: 0.217002237136 0.208842608468 104% => OK
words length more than 8 chars: 0.143176733781 0.135150697306 106% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.90850283071 2.79052419416 104% => OK
Unique words: 211.0 207.018472906 102% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.472035794183 0.469332199767 101% => OK
Word variations: 52.6009228737 52.1807786196 101% => OK
How many sentences: 24.0 20.039408867 120% => OK
Sentence length: 18.625 23.2022227129 80% => OK
Sentence length SD: 51.3246745944 57.7814097925 89% => OK
Chars per sentence: 117.625 141.986410481 83% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.625 23.2022227129 80% => OK
Discourse Markers: 0.5 0.724660767414 69% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.14285714286 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 3.58251231527 28% => OK
Readability: 49.9449105145 51.9672348444 96% => OK
Elegance: 1.84615384615 1.8405768891 100% => OK

Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.22040807054 0.441005458295 50% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence: 0.110598282365 0.135418324435 82% => OK
Sentence sentence coherence SD: 0.0866055685095 0.0829849096947 104% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence: 0.497363857075 0.58762219726 85% => OK
Sentence paragraph coherence SD: 0.147865506619 0.147661913831 100% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0848216356246 0.193483328276 44% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0642425854714 0.0970749176394 66% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence: 0.36320963262 0.42659136922 85% => OK
Paragraph paragraph coherence SD: 0.0838176979794 0.0774707102158 108% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.153397764555 0.312017818177 49% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0468854686524 0.0698173142475 67% => The ideas may be duplicated in paragraphs.

Task Achievement:
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.33743842365 120% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.87684729064 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 7.0 4.82512315271 145% => OK
Positive topic words: 7.0 6.46551724138 108% => OK
Negative topic words: 6.0 5.36822660099 112% => OK
Neutral topic words: 7.0 2.82389162562 248% => OK
Total topic words: 20.0 14.657635468 136% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?

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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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Note: This is not the final score. 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.