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.
revised
==============
According to the business manager, in order to boost the number of viewers and increase advertising revenue, the station should increase the coverage of weather and local news. A number of assumptions have been made in this argument which we need to examine critically to decide if the argument is valid.
To begin with, the author assumes that the complaints about local news and weather are due to the reduced coverage of these topics. While some viewers could be unhappy about the reduced emphasis on local news and weather, the memo does not clearly indicate this link. Other reasons, however, could also have resulted in the complaints. For instance, some complaints could be about the inaccuracy of the weather forecasting, or there could be a new local news anchor who happens to be not as popular as the previous one. The manager needs to provide the details of the complaints to buttress his claim.
As the second argument, the author assumes that local businesses cancel their advertising also because of the reduction of time for weather and local news. Again, there are many other possible reasons why they have done so. Maybe the overall economy is in recession and the businesses has to reduce their expenses by cancelling the advertising. Or maybe they are not happy with the design of the advertising or find the advertising rather ineffective. If this is the case, the quality of the advertising has to be improved to address the problem. In other words, if the assumption does not hold true, expanding the relevant sections would not help increase the advertising revenue.
Even if reduced coverage of local news and weather is the cause of viewers’ complaints and the withdrawal of advertisement contracts, that only applies to late-night news program. Therefore it is an unjustified assumption that the station ought to increase relevant coverage on all their news programs. The memo does not mention the attitude of viewers and local businesses towards their other news programs. It is completely possible that listeners want more local news for late-night news program and less local news for the morning news program. Or people could simply not care about the length of local news and weather on other new programs.
In conclusion, more information needs to be gathered and presented to examine the gratuitous assumptions discussed above. The author would need to verify the real cause of the complaints and the lost of advertisement contracts, as well as the people’s opinion of the coverage of local news on other news programs, other than late-night news. Otherwise, the author’s arguments are not logically sound.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
----------------
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 436 350
No. of Characters: 2169 1500
No. of Different Words: 189 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.57 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.975 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.616 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 149 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 131 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 83 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 49 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.818 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.032 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.591 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.32 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.57 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.092 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 1, Rule ID: UPPERCASE_SENTENCE_START
Message: This sentence does not start with an uppercase letter
Suggestion: Revised
revised ============== According to the bus...
^^^^^^^
Line 6, column 269, Rule ID: ALSO_OTHER[1]
Message: Use simply 'there are other' or 'there are also'
Suggestion: There are other; There are also
...mo does not clearly indicate this link. There are also other reasons that could have resulted in the...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 186, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Therefore,
...nly applies to late-night news program. Therefore it is an unjustified assumption that th...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, if, may, second, so, therefore, well, while, as to, for instance, in conclusion, as well as, in other words, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 17.0 11.1786427146 152% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 20.0 28.8173652695 69% => OK
Preposition: 54.0 55.5748502994 97% => OK
Nominalization: 13.0 16.3942115768 79% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2251.0 2260.96107784 100% => OK
No of words: 437.0 441.139720559 99% => OK
Chars per words: 5.15102974828 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.57214883401 4.56307096286 100% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.77182584124 2.78398813304 100% => OK
Unique words: 188.0 204.123752495 92% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.430205949657 0.468620217663 92% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 697.5 705.55239521 99% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 2.0 4.96107784431 40% => OK
Interrogative: 0.0 0.471057884232 0% => OK
Article: 10.0 8.76447105788 114% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 3.0 1.67365269461 179% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 20.0 22.8473053892 88% => OK
Sentence length SD: 42.9453061431 57.8364921388 74% => OK
Chars per sentence: 107.19047619 119.503703932 90% => OK
Words per sentence: 20.8095238095 23.324526521 89% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.33333333333 5.70786347227 111% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 4.0 8.20758483034 49% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 14.0 6.88822355289 203% => Less negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 3.0 4.67664670659 64% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.351368731879 0.218282227539 161% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.108811904165 0.0743258471296 146% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.102245322801 0.0701772020484 146% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.204612154525 0.128457276422 159% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0953482841999 0.0628817314937 152% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.2 14.3799401198 92% => Automated_readability_index is low.
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: 12.59 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.88 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 90.0 98.500998004 91% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 13.0 12.3882235529 105% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.0 11.1389221557 90% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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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.