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.
This response will examine the assumptions that are advanced by the Mason City government's argument that the Mason River necessitates investment in its riverside recreational facilities due to its newfound cleanliness. Further, the negative implications of these assumptions proving false will also be assessed. There are two key assumptions which underlie the city government's belief that there are valid reasons for greater investment in riverside recreational facilities. Firstly, there is the implied assumption that water sports (swimming, boating and fishing) are activities that would be carried out on the Mason City River. Secondly, there is the implication that there will be a timely relationship between the river's cleanliness and its use by Mason City Residents.
Mason City's surveys articulate clearly its residents passion for water sports as a recreational activity. Further, Mason City identifies its own body of water, the Mason City River, as a possible location for these pursuits. The argument depends on this presumption, because it does not attempt to query the commonality between water sports writ large and those which are feasible on a river. The assumption that activities carried out presumably on the ocean, or large body of water would translate comfortably to an urban river is problematic. While it must be conceded that it is entirely possible that a limited version of swimming, boating and fishing could flourish on the Mason City River, the city government has failed to adequately highlight this connection. It is entirely feasible that a break from Mason City itself may be implicit in the city's resident's love for water sports; such a possibility is unexplored by the government's surveys. The implication of this is that the significant budgetary allocations to rejuvenating the river could be wasted. Another implication of this failure to appropriately explore the roots of its resident's pastimes could further reinforce previously popular resorts located outside of Mason City, which would only sharpen the financial impact of this assumption being invalid.
Secondly, the Mason City Government appear to rest much of their case for investment in riverside recreational facilities on the assumption that there would be a corresponding increase in the use of the river for recreational purposes. The overarching argument that the river deserves investment relies on this assumption, because it provides incentive for greater investment. This assumption rests on a substantially weak premise that government promises and plans to clean up the Mason River engender adequate levels of trust from the City's residents. While this is indeed another matter to be resolved by polling, the Government's failure to substantiate its own assumption especially when the river has an unpleasant reputation for poor quality and scent poses a number of damning implications if this assumption proves baseless. Firstly, should the clean up efforts not satisfy the often unrealistic expectations of the public, the prospect of riverside recreational activities will become even more slight. What's more, the Mason City government does not appear to countenence the prospect of repeated clean up efforts, as recreational water sports can often pose ecological risks through waste and other forms of pollution.
The argument of the Mason Government that their City River deserves greater investment in its recreational potential problematic owing to the government's assumptions about the translateability of certain water sports to an urban setting and the motives of those who rate water activities highly. The Government further assumes that an increase in cleanliness will have a proportional increase in usage, and that this justifies investment. Both have been demonstrated to rest on faulty logic and both possess significant negative implications due to these assumptions potentially being unwarranted. These implications include budgetary mismanagement, reinforcing current patterns of tourism, and reinforcing resident's beliefs as to the river's cleaniness, and potentially damaging their level of trust in the City's government.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 23 15
No. of Words: 627 350
No. of Characters: 3493 1500
No. of Different Words: 265 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.004 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.571 4.6
Word Length SD: 3.067 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 255 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 224 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 163 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 118 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.261 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.279 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.391 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.353 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.495 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.113 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 367, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'governments'' or 'government's'?
Suggestion: governments'; government's
...key assumptions which underlie the city governments belief that there are valid reasons for...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 1, column 719, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'rivers'' or 'river's'?
Suggestion: rivers'; river's
...ll be a timely relationship between the rivers cleanliness and its use by Mason City R...
^^^^^^
Line 5, column 1013, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: What's
...ctivities will become even more slight. Whats more, the Mason City government does no...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, firstly, if, may, second, secondly, so, 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: 16.0 12.9520958084 124% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 22.0 13.6137724551 162% => OK
Pronoun: 51.0 28.8173652695 177% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 72.0 55.5748502994 130% => OK
Nominalization: 36.0 16.3942115768 220% => Less nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3539.0 2260.96107784 157% => OK
No of words: 627.0 441.139720559 142% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.64433811802 5.12650576532 110% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.00399520894 4.56307096286 110% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.10820703711 2.78398813304 112% => OK
Unique words: 266.0 204.123752495 130% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.424242424242 0.468620217663 91% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 1106.1 705.55239521 157% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.8 1.59920159681 113% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 4.0 1.67365269461 239% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 27.0 22.8473053892 118% => OK
Sentence length SD: 54.078742561 57.8364921388 94% => OK
Chars per sentence: 153.869565217 119.503703932 129% => OK
Words per sentence: 27.2608695652 23.324526521 117% => OK
Discourse Markers: 2.82608695652 5.70786347227 50% => More transition words/phrases wanted.
Paragraphs: 4.0 5.15768463074 78% => More paragraphs wanted.
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 8.0 8.20758483034 97% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 10.0 6.88822355289 145% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.355758529701 0.218282227539 163% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.135478765333 0.0743258471296 182% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.10934343662 0.0701772020484 156% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.253526276854 0.128457276422 197% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0696620880086 0.0628817314937 111% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 18.8 14.3799401198 131% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 27.15 48.3550499002 56% => Flesch_reading_ease is low.
smog_index: 11.2 7.1628742515 156% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 16.2 12.197005988 133% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.73 12.5979740519 125% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 9.21 8.32208582834 111% => OK
difficult_words: 168.0 98.500998004 171% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.8 11.1389221557 115% => OK
text_standard: 16.0 11.9071856287 134% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 30 minutes.
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.