The following appeared in an e-mail sent by the marketing director of the Classical Shakespeare Theatre of Bardville.
"Over the past ten years, there has been a 20 percent decline in the size of the average audience at Classical Shakespeare Theatre productions. In spite of increased advertising, we are attracting fewer and fewer people to our shows, causing our profits to decrease significantly. We must take action to attract new audience members.The best way to do so is by instituting a 'Shakespeare in the Park' program this summer. Two years ago the nearby Avon Repertory Company started a 'Free Plays in the Park' program, and its profits have increased 10 percent since then. If we start a 'Shakespeare in the Park' program, we can predict that our profits will increase, too."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
In this e-mail, the author recommends to institute a 'Shakespeare in the Park' program similar to the 'Free Plays in the park' program started by Avon Repertory Company. Doing so the author thinks would increase the profits and attract new members to the Classical Shakespeare Theatre. However, the recommendation suffers from several flaws and is therefore doubtful and questionable as it stands, albeit it may appear plausible at cursory glance.
To begin with, the author assumes that by imitating the similar program as introduced by Avon Repertory Company would help increase the profits of their theatre as well, without taking in account the actual reasons behind the decline in profits. Is introducing a new program essentially sufficient to attract audience and increase the profits? Moreover, there may be other reasons like increased pricing of the tickets, decline in the population of people nearby, lesser number of people interested in watching classical plays performed in the theatre, etc. All of these reasons would lead to decline in the number of audience and hence, would be a substantial reason for the decline in profits. Therefore, the author should first need to find out the reasons behind the decline in the number of audience and then act accordingly to attract them.
In addition to this, the author states the successful implementation of 'Free Plays in the Park' by Avon Repertory Company which increased company’s profits by 10%. But, the 10% profit mentioned here is not reliable. Maybe the profit earlier was $1 and after using the strategy is $1.1, which does not properly justify an increase. Hence, we need more clear numbers which signifies the profits. Also, was 'Free Plays in the Park' program the only reason to increase profits of the company? It may be possible that the company introduced many other schemes to attract more audience. Or there might be a possibility that the company reduced the ticket prices which eventually attracted more audience. All of these assumptions need to be verified by the author to know the real reasons behind the company’s profit.
Finally, the most important question here is are the two 'The Classical Shakespeare Theatre' and 'Avon Repertory Company' even comparable? There might be the possibility that the two theatres have different kinds of audience, they might be situated in different cities, they might have different genres, they might have different prices in tickets, etc. For example, one of them might be situated in a cosmopolitan area and other might be situated on a countryside, In such a case, comparing both would be unjustifiable.
In retrospect, the author seems precipitous to jump to the conclusion based on a series of problematic assumptions pertaining the increase profits. To strengthen the argument, further investigation and analysis are needed. If the argument had answered the questions discussed above it would have more through and logical acceptance.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 6 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 4 2
No. of Sentences: 20 15
No. of Words: 475 350
No. of Characters: 2424 1500
No. of Different Words: 218 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.668 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.103 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.737 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 194 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 155 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 92 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 62 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.75 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 14.099 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.65 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.317 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.538 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.122 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 28, Rule ID: ADMIT_ENJOY_VB[1]
Message: This verb is used with the gerund form: 'recommends instituting'.
Suggestion: recommends instituting
In this e-mail, the author recommends to institute a Shakespeare in the Park program simil...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 244, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...t reliable. Maybe the profit earlier was and after using the strategy is .1, whic...
^^
Line 7, column 350, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...t have different prices in tickets, etc. For example, one of them might be situat...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
accordingly, also, but, finally, first, hence, however, if, may, moreover, so, then, therefore, well, for example, in addition, to begin with
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 20.0 12.9520958084 154% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 19.0 28.8173652695 66% => OK
Preposition: 67.0 55.5748502994 121% => OK
Nominalization: 15.0 16.3942115768 91% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2494.0 2260.96107784 110% => OK
No of words: 474.0 441.139720559 107% => OK
Chars per words: 5.26160337553 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.66599839874 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.81616095425 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 218.0 204.123752495 107% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.459915611814 0.468620217663 98% => OK
syllable_count: 765.9 705.55239521 109% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 5.0 4.96107784431 101% => OK
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 1.0 2.70958083832 37% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 7.0 4.22255489022 166% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 48.5849558391 57.8364921388 84% => OK
Chars per sentence: 113.363636364 119.503703932 95% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.5454545455 23.324526521 92% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.40909090909 5.70786347227 112% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 18.0 8.20758483034 219% => Less positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 2.0 6.88822355289 29% => More negative sentences wanted.
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: 0.0974690069653 0.218282227539 45% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.030647196061 0.0743258471296 41% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0415644901755 0.0701772020484 59% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0564523613899 0.128457276422 44% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0467980672277 0.0628817314937 74% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.1 14.3799401198 98% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.23 12.5979740519 105% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.31 8.32208582834 100% => OK
difficult_words: 109.0 98.500998004 111% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 14.0 11.9071856287 118% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
---------------------
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.