The following is a memorandum from the business manager of a television station.
"Over the past year, our late-night news program has devoted increased time to national news and less time to weather and local news. During this period, most of the complaints received from viewers were concerned with our station's coverage of weather and local news. In addition, local businesses that used to advertise during our late-night news program have canceled their advertising contracts with us. Therefore, in order to attract more viewers to our news programs and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should expand our coverage of weather and local news on all our news programs."
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 business manager claims that the television station must restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level in order to attract more viewers and avoid losing any further advertising revenues. He presents evidence to support his claim including frequency of complaints received from viewers who are concerned about the station's coverage of weather and local news. He further adds that several local businesses have terminated their advertising contracts. However, upon careful inspection of the evidence, we can observe that it provides little credible support for the manager's conclusion. Hence, the argument can be considered flawed and unsubstantial.
First of all, the manager assumes that the complaints received from viewers implies the viewers' concern about the amount of time the local and weather news was aired. But, it fails to offer proper evidence to support this position. For instance, the complaints that were received could be about the quality of the content that was telecasted in the local and weather news. It could have been the case that the content was lacking accuracy. Hence the argument would have been much more convincing if it shed more light upon the major concerns of the viewers about the coverage.
Additionally, the manager mentions that the local businesses have cancelled their advertising contracts during the late-night news program. In its current form, it implies that the advertisers cancelled their contracts only based on the reduction of air time on local and weather news. However, there is no evidence that the advertisers cancelled their contract only on the basis of the stated issue. Therefore the manager should provide strong evidence such as a questionnaire that was answered by the cancelled contractors on the reason for cancelling the contract before taking actions based on this assumption.
Although, the manager would not be necessarily wrong to assert that the television station must restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level, if he could provide more evidence on the statistics such as a survey conducted among people to know their opinion, it could lead to a better understanding of the problem at hand.
In conclusion, the manager's claim is unpersuasive as it stands. To support the manager's claim, he needs to provide more concrete evidence, perhaps with a reliable survey or a detailed analysis on the factors contributing to the loss of advertisers or viewers.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
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| 2019-09-06 | mhayat29 | 55 | view |
| 2019-09-04 | benson zhang | 55 | view |
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| 2019-06-26 | madiha3 | 89 | view |
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
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sample:
https://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-argument-task-essays/over-past-year-our…
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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: 17 15
No. of Words: 397 350
No. of Characters: 2051 1500
No. of Different Words: 182 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.464 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.166 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.678 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 155 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 134 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 81 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 49 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.353 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.16 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.588 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.356 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.577 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.158 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 343, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'stations'' or 'station's'?
Suggestion: stations'; station's
...rom viewers who are concerned about the stations coverage of weather and local news. He ...
^^^^^^^^
Line 1, column 593, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'managers'' or 'manager's'?
Suggestion: managers'; manager's
...rovides little credible support for the managers conclusion. Hence, the argument can be ...
^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 441, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Hence,
... that the content was lacking accuracy. Hence the argument would have been much more ...
^^^^^
Line 5, column 402, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Therefore,
... only on the basis of the stated issue. Therefore the manager should provide strong evide...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, hence, however, if, so, therefore, for instance, in conclusion, such as, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 10.0 11.1786427146 89% => OK
Relative clauses : 13.0 13.6137724551 95% => OK
Pronoun: 35.0 28.8173652695 121% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 50.0 55.5748502994 90% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2095.0 2260.96107784 93% => OK
No of words: 397.0 441.139720559 90% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.27707808564 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.46372701284 4.56307096286 98% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.73043443875 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 185.0 204.123752495 91% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.465994962217 0.468620217663 99% => OK
syllable_count: 648.0 705.55239521 92% => 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: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 17.0 19.7664670659 86% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 70.288431963 57.8364921388 122% => OK
Chars per sentence: 123.235294118 119.503703932 103% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.3529411765 23.324526521 100% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.70588235294 5.70786347227 100% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 5.25449101796 76% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => 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: 0.278833202392 0.218282227539 128% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0935079247471 0.0743258471296 126% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0940563230478 0.0701772020484 134% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.152070931944 0.128457276422 118% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0652728610332 0.0628817314937 104% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.1 14.3799401198 105% => 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: 13.64 12.5979740519 108% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.36 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 90.0 98.500998004 91% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4 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.