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.
The arguer claims that with the cleaning-up plan of Mason River, the use of the river for water sports will definitely increase, and the city government should give stronger financial support for the riverside recreational facilities. However, this argument is unwarranted due to the lack of several vital assumptions.
Firstly, one assumption we need is that the residents in Mason City has kept their interest in water sports until now. There is a great possibility that, with the further development of industrialization and the faster pace of life, the public has less time doing water sports, since these sports require more energy and time than other daily sports, such as jogging, tennis and so on. In this case, even if the government recreated the Mason River, the citizens are less likely to play water sports in the river. Moreover, if the amount of water after cleaning-up declines dramatically, due to the requirement of the water diversion, then there is less resource for people to have fun in the river.
Secondly, the arguer fails to assume that whether the condition of Mason River is suitable for doing water sports. If the river is deep and rough, with quantities of sharp rocks and aggressive species underwater, then it is unfit for a safety area for water sports. Even though the government will clean up the river, the risks in the river cannot be cleaned up. Knowing about the perilous circumstance, the residents would not be eager to spend their time in doing water sports in Mason River. In addition, it is likely that the river is located near the natural reservation, which contains a considerable number of wildlife, so that the safety of the riverside is truly ambiguous . That is to say, instead of playing water sports in the river, the public would prefer to going sightseeing by the riverside. Therefore, the use of the river for water sports will not be sure to increase.
Lastly, this argument did not provide an assumption that the riverside recreational facilities is welcomed by the public while doing water sports in the river. What if the facilities are charged for high fees, and inconvenient to use with low qualities? In this circumstance, people will be unwilling to use the facilities. Additionally, since the belongings of water sports mainly depends on the individuals’ preference, like swimming suits and glasses, the possibility of using public facilities is lower than field sports. Thus devoting more money in this year's budget to riverside recreational facilities is not necessary.
To sum up, without ruling out these assumptions above, the argument cannot convince us because of the adverse logic flaws.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 4 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 19 15
No. of Words: 439 350
No. of Characters: 2165 1500
No. of Different Words: 207 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.577 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.932 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.688 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 141 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 98 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 76 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 55 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.105 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.315 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.737 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.366 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.566 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.119 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 682, Rule ID: COMMA_PARENTHESIS_WHITESPACE
Message: Don't put a space before the full stop
Suggestion: .
...fety of the riverside is truly ambiguous . That is to say, instead of playing wate...
^^
Line 5, column 774, Rule ID: PREFER_TO_VBG[1]
Message: Did you mean 'go'?
Suggestion: go
...n the river, the public would prefer to going sightseeing by the riverside. Therefore...
^^^^^
Line 7, column 555, Rule ID: THIS_NNS[1]
Message: Did you mean 'these'?
Suggestion: these
...eld sports. Thus devoting more money in this years budget to riverside recreational ...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
first, firstly, however, if, lastly, moreover, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, thus, while, in addition, such as, to sum up, that is to say
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 8.0 11.1786427146 72% => OK
Relative clauses : 9.0 13.6137724551 66% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 21.0 28.8173652695 73% => OK
Preposition: 65.0 55.5748502994 117% => OK
Nominalization: 17.0 16.3942115768 104% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2235.0 2260.96107784 99% => OK
No of words: 439.0 441.139720559 100% => OK
Chars per words: 5.09111617312 5.12650576532 99% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.57737117129 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.80995775828 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 211.0 204.123752495 103% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.480637813212 0.468620217663 103% => OK
syllable_count: 690.3 705.55239521 98% => 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: 11.0 8.76447105788 126% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 11.0 4.22255489022 261% => Less preposition wanted as sentence beginnings.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 19.0 19.7664670659 96% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 52.9741482972 57.8364921388 92% => OK
Chars per sentence: 117.631578947 119.503703932 98% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.1052631579 23.324526521 99% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.68421052632 5.70786347227 135% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => 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: 0.271242397928 0.218282227539 124% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0923265794574 0.0743258471296 124% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0703312829645 0.0701772020484 100% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.1508775363 0.128457276422 117% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0740232238993 0.0628817314937 118% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.1 14.3799401198 98% => 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: 12.54 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.19 8.32208582834 98% => OK
difficult_words: 95.0 98.500998004 96% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => 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.