The following appeared in a letter to the editor of the Parkville Daily newspaper.
"Throughout the country last year, as more and more children below the age of nine participated in youth-league sports, over 40,000 of these young players suffered injuries. When interviewed for a recent study, youth-league soccer players in several major cities also reported psychological pressure exerted by coaches and parents to win games. Furthermore, education experts say that long practice sessions for these sports take away time that could be used for academic activities. Since the disadvantages outweigh any advantages, we in Parkville should discontinue organized athletic competition for children under nine."
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.
Sports is one of the careers which draws much attraction from the young age. Given to the importance given to sports stars in the media, there is no question on why young ones would want to pursue that for a career. The argument from the Parkville daily, disputes on the effect of sports on young children and based on the evidences provided suggests a restrain in involving kids under the age of nine in sports. Although, the evidences provided sound plausible there are some defects in the way the evidences have been analyzed and thus it weakens the suggestion provided by the daily.
One of the evidences stated is about the number of kids injured in the youth-sports. The number looked as such is troubling, but, the argument doesn’t give information on what period of time do these numbers account for. Also, of the number of injuries how many of these involved kids who were under the age of nine? Without these information being explicitly stated the suggestion for just restraining kids of age nine doesn’t sound sensible. Also, there needs to be a comparison on how many participated to how many were injured, for example if 100,000 participated and 40,000 were injured that is close to 40% injury which is bad. But, incase if 1 billion participated and 40,000 were injured then the injury might sound reasonable and would weaken the suggestion made. Irrespective of the age, most of the sports involve injuries, not knowing the percentage it is not possible to comment on the effect.
When speaking about the interviews for the study, the argument reported psychological pressure being faced by the players. If the study being stated was reliable, then kids of young age won’t be able handle the psychological pressures, which might lead to depression and other mental illnesses. The effect of pressure on sports players is well-known. Here the authenticity of the study should be considered when supporting the suggestion. Some of the questions to be raised include how many players were interviewed? What amount of the interviewed players were of age lesser than nine? How much was the effect of pressure on the players? If the answers to these questions support the evidence then the suggestion made is appropriate.
Finally, the argument takes view of education expert’s advice in strengthening the argument. Spending more time on anything would surely impact the time spent on other things, this being an obvious conclusion one should answer the question, do players really spend more time during the entire academic year on sports? Also, here the age group might not be of much importance, then why the argument only suggests the restrain of students under nine is questionable. Given the evidences and assumptions made, the argument needs to share some more compelling insights in strengthening its suggestion. As such the suggestion isn’t plausible and looks superficial.
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argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- not OK. Psychological pressure is mainly from several major cities, no reports from Parkville city.
argument 3 -- not exactly.
suggested:
No evidence to prove that 1. those who don't take part in sports will have more academic activities. 2. those who take part in sports will have bad academic performance.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 482 350
No. of Characters: 2364 1500
No. of Different Words: 211 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.686 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.905 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.685 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 162 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 120 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 93 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 55 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.083 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.046 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.458 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.306 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.472 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.075 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 4 5