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. 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 author of this proposal suggested that investing a huge amount of budget on riverside recreational activities by the city government would increase the use of river for water sports. But the assumptions behind this proposal are not solid and logical enough to explaining the necessity of spending more money on recreational task. The proposal would require more evidence regarding the co-relation between the Mason River and the recreational activities of the residents.
The author assumed that favorite recreational activities of the residents of the Mason city are water sports. This assumption is quite vague because according to the passage Mason River is hardly used for this purpose. If the residents are not utilizing this river for water related sports than it is not necessarily has to be true that resident’s favorite recreational source should be water sports. Perhaps the survey was made by taking limited number of people who lives upon the river. We do not know the whether the survey was made with appropriate questions or number of people. Without proper representation of the survey with important features, it can not be reliable source to support authors argument.
Another assumption was stated by the author is that city park department invest a tiny amount of budget to maintain riverside recreational facilities. It can be predicted that maybe city government are spending money for another sources of water sports. Therefore, the possibilities of other available source for these activities cannot be overlooked. Maybe there were sports center with indoor pools for water sports which has all facilities for the residents. Definitely city dwellers will prefer those indoor pools rather than a river which is not well furnished with modern amenities.
Lastly, building upon the implication that residents do not use this river due to quality of the river’s water and smell, the author made a bold statement that taking initiatives to cleaning up the river will increase the usage of the river’s water. This conclusion cannot be drawn based on city dwellers complaints because it is highly possible that complaints were not made because they want to us it for recreational purpose. Maybe they want it to be cleaned for environmental hygiene purpose. Moreover, there is no gurantee that after polishing the river, people will not overuse the river for their day to day lives and the hygiene of that river again go back to old stage.
Examining all various angles and factors involved with improving riverside recreational facilities, the argument does not justify increasing the budget. While the scheme can highlight possibilities, more information is required to warrant any action.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 13 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 432 350
No. of Characters: 2247 1500
No. of Different Words: 198 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.559 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.201 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.738 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 170 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 121 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 89 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 65 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.6 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.716 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.4 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.311 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.311 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.108 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 589, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...t well furnished with modern amenities. Lastly, building upon the implication th...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, if, lastly, look, may, moreover, regarding, so, therefore, well, while, as to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 30.0 28.8173652695 104% => OK
Preposition: 47.0 55.5748502994 85% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2291.0 2260.96107784 101% => OK
No of words: 432.0 441.139720559 98% => OK
Chars per words: 5.30324074074 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.55901411391 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.81411323951 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 203.0 204.123752495 99% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.469907407407 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 728.1 705.55239521 103% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 43.6855525317 57.8364921388 76% => OK
Chars per sentence: 114.55 119.503703932 96% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.6 23.324526521 93% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.1 5.70786347227 72% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 11.0 8.20758483034 134% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.304832794428 0.218282227539 140% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0985540982836 0.0743258471296 133% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0804813037868 0.0701772020484 115% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.166118174642 0.128457276422 129% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0823486324996 0.0628817314937 131% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.3 14.3799401198 99% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 41.7 48.3550499002 86% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.46 12.5979740519 107% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.52 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 105.0 98.500998004 107% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 12.0 12.3882235529 97% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => 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.