In surveys Mason City residents rank water sports (swimming, boating and fishing) among their favourite 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 concludes that the city government should devote more money in this year’s budget to riverside recreational facilities. To support the claim, the author points out that the use of river for water sports is sure to increase as the state has recently announced plans to clean up the Mason River. The author’s chain of reasoning provides an interesting and novel insight. The argument depends, however, on certain assumptions which are not obvious and which, if proven unfounded, can logically impair the claim. In order to better evaluate the argument and analyse its logical soundness, both explicit and indistinct assumptions must be examined.
For example, the author has mentioned a survey in which the Mason City residents rank water sports among their favourite recreational activities. To consider this as a piece of evidence to support the argument that this will increase the use of river for water sports, it is firstly important to know the details about the survey. How long ago were the survey carried out and what population of city residents were part of the survey? Is the survey really reliable? The argument assumes it is but if it is not it will greatly weaken its grip. It is possible that the survey was carried a long time ago and the demographic statics of the city have changed since then which will critically affect the past survey. Additionally if the survey was carried out on specific group of residents then the result of the survey might not be accurate considering majority of the residents. No such information about the survey is provided and without knowing these necessary details, the assumption that water sports are among favourite recreational activities of Mason City residents remains unsupported.
The author also mentions that the Mason River is rarely used for water sports recreational activities and the city park department devotes little of its budget to maintain the riverside recreational facilities. No evidence regarding the current condition of the river’s recreational facilities is provided to prove whether it is in a well maintained state or not. It is vague to state that little budget is devoted without knowing the actual statistics and it cannot be decided whether the budget is considerable for maintaining the facilities or not. The author presents an assumption that considerable budget is not devoted for maintaining the facilities; perhaps the reason could be the rare use of these facilities by the residents. If this is proved true then it will also render the first assumption that water sports is among favourite recreational activity of the city residents as false.
The final assumption made by the argument is that the use of the river for water sports is sure to increase reason being the recent announcement of plans to clean up Mason River as a result of the years of complaints from residents about the quality of the river's water and the river's smell. Since the survey mentioned in the argument was limited to the residents of Mason City then it will be vague to generalise and assume that water sports is favourite recreational activity of the entire state to lead to the assumption that the use of the river for water sports is sure to increase as it is not mentioned in what part will the activities actually increase. No details regarding the complaints from residence are provided as it is important to know how many and where did these residents belong, how long have they been complaining about the river water quality and smell before assuming this as a reason that led the state to announce its plan. If this is not the reason for the announcement then it may cause the plans to change. Additionally, nowhere does the author provide any evidence about how recently (month ago, year ago, or any exact period etc.) or by whom the announcement was made nor does the argument elucidate the details about plan like when will it initiate, or what will be the time duration to complete the plan that the state has announced to clean up the river. If the announcement was made by the state elective few years ago, what affect the future elections will cause on this announcement of the plan if it is not yet initiated? Even if the survey mentioned the argument that water sports is ranked among favourite recreational activity of Mason City residents and it takes period of years for the plan to be successfully implemented then the survey will be outmoded.
The structure and logical reasoning of the argument appears thorough at first glance however further analysis reveal obvious gaps and unwarranted assumptions that render the argument specious. The argument makes a number of dubious assumptions that seriously undermine its veracity. The fundamental assumptions surrounding the “ survey on Mason city residents, little budget provided by the city park department, plans to clean up the river announced by the state that will surely increase in the use of the river for water sports” are dubious. Unless these assumptions are proven warranted, the argument as it stands fails to provide a cohesive theory to support the claim that the city government should for all these reasons devote more money in this year's budget to riverside recreational facilities.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
those are the three arguments:
argument 1:
For years there have been complaints from residents about the quality of the river's water and the river's smell.
argument 2:
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.
argument 3:
The city government should for that reason devote more money in this year's budget to riverside recreational facilities.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: ??? out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 29 15
No. of Words: 874 350
No. of Characters: 4325 1500
No. of Different Words: 282 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 5.437 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.949 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.679 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 308 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 223 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 170 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 113 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 30.138 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 14.236 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.586 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.333 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.508 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.13 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 713, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Additionally,
...will critically affect the past survey. Additionally if the survey was carried out on specif...
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 284, Rule ID: ENGLISH_WORD_REPEAT_BEGINNING_RULE
Message: Three successive sentences begin with the same word. Reword the sentence or use a thesaurus to find a synonym.
... that seriously undermine its veracity. The fundamental assumptions surrounding the...
^^^
Line 9, column 760, Rule ID: THIS_NNS[1]
Message: Did you mean 'these'?
Suggestion: these
... all these reasons devote more money in this years budget to riverside recreational ...
^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, but, first, firstly, however, if, may, really, regarding, so, then, well, for example, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 47.0 19.6327345309 239% => Less to be verbs wanted.
Auxiliary verbs: 19.0 12.9520958084 147% => OK
Conjunction : 24.0 11.1786427146 215% => Less conjunction wanted
Relative clauses : 26.0 13.6137724551 191% => OK
Pronoun: 56.0 28.8173652695 194% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 105.0 55.5748502994 189% => OK
Nominalization: 34.0 16.3942115768 207% => Less nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 4415.0 2260.96107784 195% => OK
No of words: 875.0 441.139720559 198% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.04571428571 5.12650576532 98% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.43878652969 4.56307096286 119% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.76580070703 2.78398813304 99% => OK
Unique words: 296.0 204.123752495 145% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.338285714286 0.468620217663 72% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 1406.7 705.55239521 199% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 14.0 8.76447105788 160% => OK
Subordination: 7.0 2.70958083832 258% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 30.0 19.7664670659 152% => OK
Sentence length: 29.0 22.8473053892 127% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively long.
Sentence length SD: 72.9332723949 57.8364921388 126% => OK
Chars per sentence: 147.166666667 119.503703932 123% => OK
Words per sentence: 29.1666666667 23.324526521 125% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.8 5.70786347227 67% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.20758483034 158% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 9.0 6.88822355289 131% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.67664670659 171% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.359020374181 0.218282227539 164% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.117268775966 0.0743258471296 158% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.123618546512 0.0701772020484 176% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.236696399845 0.128457276422 184% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0674145876711 0.0628817314937 107% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.9 14.3799401198 118% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 42.04 48.3550499002 87% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 14.6 12.197005988 120% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.6 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.91 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 157.0 98.500998004 159% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 13.6 11.1389221557 122% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => 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.