In surveys, Mason City residents rank water sports (swimming, boating, and fishing) among their favorite recreational activities. The Mason River flowing through the city is rarely used for these pursuits, however, and the city park department devotes little of its budget to maintaining riverside recreational facilities. For years there have been complaints from residents about the quality of the river’s water and the river’s smell. In response, the state has recently announced plans to clean up Mason River. The use of the river for water sports is, therefore, sure to increase. The city government should for that reason devote more money in this year’s budget to riverside recreational facilities.
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 the assumptions and what the implications are if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The above argument is faulty for a number of reasons mainly because it depends on the survey conducted and though the City park should devote funds for recreational activities in the river, moving forward with the proposal would definitely require more information and clarification. The argument holds a number of assumptions because of which it does not present a very persuasive case.
First of all, the argument is based on a survey that does not prove the validity of the claim that water sports are the residents’ favorite recreational activities. Surveys are not the best way to analyze a situation and jump to conclusions mainly because they are subject to a number of criteria. The argument does not mention the kind of questions that were asked during the survey. The questions could have been ambiguous and therefore the survey didn’t record meaningful answers. It is possible that the residents have a number of other favorite sports that they already play and might not give up those sports to play water sports.
Even if water sports are their only favorite sports, we don’t know whether they would like to engage in the water sports activities on the Mason River. They might already be playing at another spot, better for water sports compared to Mason River. Once Mason River too has improvised on its water sports facilities, one cannot say for sure whether these people would like to shift Mason River, primarily because they are comfortable and accustomed to their usual spot. The majority of the residents may be working-class individuals who may not even have time for water sports since they are time-consuming and don’t even provide as a means of exercise.
Further, after the river has been cleaned up, there are high chances that the city government restricts any activities around it in order to maintain the river’s cleanliness. This could include a ban on water sports activities. The government instead might fund for projects like parks or walking trails alongside the river. Therefore it would be wrong to assume that water sport activities would increase after the Mason River has been cleaned.
Because of the above assumptions, the argument will have to provide more information and facts before it is safe to say that after the river has been cleaned, water sport activities will increase and thus the city government should provide funds for water sports.
Comments
e-rater score report
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: 16 15
No. of Words: 400 350
No. of Characters: 1961 1500
No. of Different Words: 183 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.472 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.902 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.532 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 132 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 94 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 61 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 42 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.124 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.438 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.373 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.373 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.124 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 4, column 326, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Therefore,
... or walking trails alongside the river. Therefore it would be wrong to assume that water ...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, if, may, so, therefore, thus, kind of, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 17.0 12.9520958084 131% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 27.0 28.8173652695 94% => OK
Preposition: 48.0 55.5748502994 86% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2011.0 2260.96107784 89% => OK
No of words: 397.0 441.139720559 90% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.06549118388 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.46372701284 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.60272825456 2.78398813304 93% => OK
Unique words: 186.0 204.123752495 91% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.468513853904 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 625.5 705.55239521 89% => 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: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
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: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 62.7902012658 57.8364921388 109% => OK
Chars per sentence: 125.6875 119.503703932 105% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.8125 23.324526521 106% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.625 5.70786347227 64% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => 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: 0.307264023085 0.218282227539 141% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.103198082571 0.0743258471296 139% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0630120837802 0.0701772020484 90% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.16927561896 0.128457276422 132% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0381129419883 0.0628817314937 61% => 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: 12.42 12.5979740519 99% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.85 8.32208582834 94% => OK
difficult_words: 76.0 98.500998004 77% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.