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 proposes that Mason City’s budget be updated to include money for maintaining riverside facilities for water sports and recreation. This proposal is based on surveys that show residents rank water sports among their favorite recreational activities. This is a faulty proposal that will likely not lead to increased use of the Mason River or to increased resident participation in water sports.
First of all, there are reportedly resident complaints over multiple years about poor water quality and the foul-smelling river. The state is already directing money to clean up the river. This action alone may reduce resident’s frustrations without requiring any extra money from the city. Any person living near a river would prefer it be clean, beautiful, and lack foul smells; this does not have any connection to whether the person complaining would like to get in the river or take part in water sports.
Secondly, a survey was given in which residents rank water sports as favorite activities. One cannot assume that this means they take part in water sports. It is possible that a person who enjoys watching swimming competitions would respond this way on a survey yet have no interest in participating in the sport themselves. Residents only ranked water sports ‘among’ their favorites, which could mean there are 3-4 activities that rank just as high. Additionally, residents who are interested in water sports such as snorkeling or surfing would not be able to do these in the Mason River. A more appropriate survey would ask if residents are likely to use boating and swimming facilities in the local river. The survey should also ask what type of facilities they are most likely to use, because residents may prefer indoor soccer or playgrounds or any number of other options.
Even if Mason City devotes budget money to riverside facilities and maintains them beautifully, there is no guarantee residents will use them. This proposal says river use is sure to increase although there are many reasons why this is not a guarantee. First of all, the entire plan is dependent on the state’s promise to clean up the river. If the state ends up changing plans and using money in other ways, Mason City should not build facilities on a dirty river! They should wait until steps have been taken towards clean-up to change the city budget. Moreover, some residents may already have a routine of visiting a nearby lake or indoor pool that would not change if facilities were built.
A more appropriate proposal for Mason City would consist of waiting until the state cleans up the river, conducting a thorough survey of resident interests that does not make assumptions about water sports, and then holding town hall meetings to elicit resident feedback and buy-in for any new plan. With some simple changes, Mason City could use the recreation budget to improve options for residents: the improvements just may or may not include the river!
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: 22 15
No. of Words: 491 350
No. of Characters: 2418 1500
No. of Different Words: 230 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.707 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.925 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.534 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 161 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 109 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 83 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 56 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 22.318 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.594 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.545 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.33 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.523 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.1 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 345, Rule ID: IT_VBZ[1]
Message: Did you mean 'is'?
Suggestion: is
...son living near a river would prefer it be clean, beautiful, and lack foul smells;...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, if, may, moreover, second, secondly, so, then, such as, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 20.0 12.9520958084 154% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 12.0 13.6137724551 88% => OK
Pronoun: 27.0 28.8173652695 94% => OK
Preposition: 55.0 55.5748502994 99% => OK
Nominalization: 4.0 16.3942115768 24% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2514.0 2260.96107784 111% => OK
No of words: 491.0 441.139720559 111% => OK
Chars per words: 5.12016293279 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.70728369723 4.56307096286 103% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.70716152844 2.78398813304 97% => OK
Unique words: 237.0 204.123752495 116% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.482688391039 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 779.4 705.55239521 110% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 52.9379476732 57.8364921388 92% => OK
Chars per sentence: 119.714285714 119.503703932 100% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.380952381 23.324526521 100% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.85714285714 5.70786347227 68% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.20758483034 158% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 4.0 6.88822355289 58% => More negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.337743853789 0.218282227539 155% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.11204426233 0.0743258471296 151% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0785330756122 0.0701772020484 112% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.214502501803 0.128457276422 167% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0883583829851 0.0628817314937 141% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.4 14.3799401198 100% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 48.13 48.3550499002 100% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.71 12.5979740519 101% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.09 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 103.0 98.500998004 105% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => 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.