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 author's argument states that the government should invest money in the recreational activities. This conclusion is based on the premise that people of Mason City are notably interested in water sports and there should be facilities for them to meet their interests. To reach to this conclusion, we have to validate some of the stated assumptions.
Firstly, the argument lacks in a very important point which is how many people were involved in the survey? Author didn't give any information regarding how many residents participated in this survey.The author has taken for granted that significant numbers of the citizens of Mason City would be interested in doing the water sports exclusively in the riverside. The number of people, their age and sex are not mentioned in the survey and this casts doubts on the survey to be reliable. Even if the survey is reliable, the people might meet their recreational desires in the pools of the Mason or other places and do not necessarily need to go to the riverside.
Secondly, the author provides no information regarding the budget used for maintaining riverside recreational activities. This further states that government should increase this year's funding for maintaining riverside recreational activities. Is current budget is not enough to clean the river's water? If current state of the river and its surrounding is perfectly maintained then there is no need of increasing money for yearly funding.
Finally, an assumption is made regarding cleaning plans of mason river. The residents are complaining regarding the quality of the river's water and river's smell. It is not clearly said by the author that which people are complaining ? Those who uses river for the activities like swimming, boating and fishing or those who just come to watch the water sports there? The author said that people do not prefer to use river's water for these sport activities despite their interest because of the river's smelly and polluted water. Thus, there is no specific reason mentioned for residents not using river's water.
Studying all these different factors involved in improving riverside recreational facilities, the argument does not justify increasing the budget. In conclusion, the argument depends on three assumptions mentioned above but fails in providing the valid evidences. The argument can be more convincing if author provides information about which residents complained regarding the river, the interest of residents in the water sports and whether the budget is sufficient or not.
Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 407 350
No. of Characters: 2107 1500
No. of Different Words: 185 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.492 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.177 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.74 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 157 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 116 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 88 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 65 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.35 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.199 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.327 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.556 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.111 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 5, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
The authors argument states that the government sho...
^^^^^^^
Line 1, column 320, Rule ID: SOME_OF_THE[1]
Message: Simply use 'some'.
Suggestion: some
...to this conclusion, we have to validate some of the stated assumptions. Firstly, the ar...
^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 116, Rule ID: EN_CONTRACTION_SPELLING
Message: Possible spelling mistake found
Suggestion: didn't
...ple were involved in the survey? Author didnt give any information regarding how many...
^^^^^
Line 3, column 200, Rule ID: SENTENCE_WHITESPACE
Message: Add a space between sentences
Suggestion: The
...y residents participated in this survey.The author has taken for granted that signi...
^^^
Line 5, column 71, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...no information regarding the budget used for maintaining riverside recreational a...
^^
Line 5, column 175, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...r states that government should increase this years funding for maintaining river...
^^
Line 7, column 132, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'rivers'' or 'river's'?
Suggestion: rivers'; river's
...omplaining regarding the quality of the rivers water and rivers smell. It is not clear...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, finally, first, firstly, if, regarding, second, secondly, so, then, thus, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 8.0 12.9520958084 62% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 24.0 28.8173652695 83% => OK
Preposition: 48.0 55.5748502994 86% => OK
Nominalization: 11.0 16.3942115768 67% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2147.0 2260.96107784 95% => OK
No of words: 405.0 441.139720559 92% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.3012345679 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.48604634366 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.81090171192 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 193.0 204.123752495 95% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.476543209877 0.468620217663 102% => OK
syllable_count: 662.4 705.55239521 94% => 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: 13.0 8.76447105788 148% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 20.0 19.7664670659 101% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 48.3326752829 57.8364921388 84% => OK
Chars per sentence: 107.35 119.503703932 90% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.25 23.324526521 87% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.6 5.70786347227 81% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 7.0 5.25449101796 133% => 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: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.283583333469 0.218282227539 130% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.087169563989 0.0743258471296 117% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0600484319835 0.0701772020484 86% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.153790920325 0.128457276422 120% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0547872028098 0.0628817314937 87% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.7 14.3799401198 95% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 51.18 48.3550499002 106% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.1 12.197005988 91% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.46 12.5979740519 107% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.33 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 95.0 98.500998004 96% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => 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.