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 these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
In the argument, the author concludes that the government needs to raise the budget for riverside recreational facilities in Mason River. To justify his conclusion, the author states that the use of Mason River for water sports will surely increase due to the city plans of cleaning up Maon River.
However, this argument is specious on various grounds since the author has failed to provide sufficient evidence to substantiate his conclusion. First, the author needs to evaluate whether or not the action of cleaning up Maon River makes it a qualified place for water sports. Maon River can be quite smelly and of bad quality according to complaints from residents, and a plan of cleaning up Mason River doesn't guanartee that it would be suitable for water sports after actions are done, because water sports have a really high standard for the water quality. If the cleaning up plan doesn't improve greatly, it is possible that this river is still inappropriate for water sports. Consequently, we must reject the assertion that the use of the river for water sports will definitely increase. Conversely, to strengthen his argument, the author needs to prove that this plan of cleaning up water is sufficient to make the river a suitable one for water sports.
Second, even if this plan of cleaning up the river water improves water quality greatly, more evidence revealing the water quality comparison between Mason River and other rivers for water sports would help the author ascertain that Mason River can attract some players as imagined. People might have been familier with organizing water sport events, such as swimming, boating and fishing, in other rivers with high standard water quality. They will compare the water quality of the original river and the Maon River before deciding whether to switch places or not. Only if the water quality of Mason River is evidently better than these original rivers, the organizers get the motivation of turning to Mason River for future events. As a result, the situation weakens the author's claim that there will surely be an increase in the use for recreational activities. In contrast, to bolster his assertion, the author has to guanartee that the water quality of Mason River is good enough to attract players and residents.
Third, granted that the water quality of Mason River is good enough, additional evidence about other possibilities that the increase of this budget wouldn't harm other water recreational activities gains significant importance to strengthing the author's claim. Sometimes as the whole budget of the government is limited, increasing one input would affect another one. In this case, the author needs to prove that we could increase the budget for Mason River without having negative impacts on the normal routines of other rivers which hold water activities, such as lack of money. In these cases, it is unlikely that increasing budget for facilities around Mason River wouldn't affect other rivers' activities, which eventually reinforces his claim.
In sum, the evidence that the author quotes does not provide conclusive information about the necessity of increasing the imput of riverside recreational facilities. As a result, we demand additional information to better evaluate the author's claim.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 6 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 534 350
No. of Characters: 2700 1500
No. of Different Words: 207 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.807 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.056 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.551 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 195 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 137 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 99 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 59 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.7 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 9.078 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.7 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.412 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.596 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.203 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 182, Rule ID: WHETHER[7]
Message: Perhaps you can shorten this phrase to just 'whether'. It is correct though if you mean 'regardless of whether'.
Suggestion: whether
...on. First, the author needs to evaluate whether or not the action of cleaning up Maon River ma...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 407, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
..., and a plan of cleaning up Mason River doesnt guanartee that it would be suitable for...
^^^^^^
Line 3, column 587, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: doesn't
... water quality. If the cleaning up plan doesnt improve greatly, it is possible that th...
^^^^^^
Line 7, column 149, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: wouldn't
...lities that the increase of this budget wouldnt harm other water recreational activitie...
^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 669, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: wouldn't
...udget for facilities around Mason River wouldnt affect other rivers activities, which e...
^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 1, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
...ich eventually reinforces his claim. In sum, the evidence that the author quote...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
consequently, conversely, first, however, if, really, second, so, still, then, third, as to, in contrast, such as, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 14.0 19.6327345309 71% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 12.0 12.9520958084 93% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 16.0 13.6137724551 118% => OK
Pronoun: 35.0 28.8173652695 121% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 64.0 55.5748502994 115% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2761.0 2260.96107784 122% => OK
No of words: 530.0 441.139720559 120% => OK
Chars per words: 5.20943396226 5.12650576532 102% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.79809637944 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.61128599061 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 218.0 204.123752495 107% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.411320754717 0.468620217663 88% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 860.4 705.55239521 122% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 6.0 4.96107784431 121% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 5.0 2.70958083832 185% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 9.0 4.22255489022 213% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 54.4057671575 57.8364921388 94% => OK
Chars per sentence: 138.05 119.503703932 116% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.5 23.324526521 114% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.3 5.70786347227 110% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 6.0 5.25449101796 114% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 6.0 6.88822355289 87% => 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: 0.239637533724 0.218282227539 110% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0938767755252 0.0743258471296 126% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0616332966656 0.0701772020484 88% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.152366877043 0.128457276422 119% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0806232313828 0.0628817314937 128% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.4 14.3799401198 114% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 45.09 48.3550499002 93% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.23 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.29 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 113.0 98.500998004 115% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => 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.