The following appeared in a letter from a homeowner to a friend.
"Of the two leading real estate firms in our town — Adams Realty and Fitch Realty — Adams Realty is clearly superior. Adams has 40 real estate agents; in contrast, Fitch has 25, many of whom work only part-time. Moreover, Adams' revenue last year was twice as high as that of Fitch and included home sales that averaged $168,000, compared to Fitch's $144,000. Homes listed with Adams sell faster as well: ten years ago I listed my home with Fitch, and it took more than four months to sell; last year, when I sold another home, I listed it with Adams, and it took only one month. Thus, if you want to sell your home quickly and at a good price, you should use Adams Realty."
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.
In the letter sent to a friend by a homeowner, he states that there are two leading real estate firms in town and that he suggests his friend to sell his house using Adams Realty instead of Fitch Realty. He continues his letter by mentioning that Adams is superior because of the greater number of employees in the firm compared to Fitch and that the average price of Adams selling houses were greater than Fitch’s. He finishes his letter by mentioning that 10 years ago he took 4 months to sell his house with Fitch while recently he sold a house using Adam Realty in a month. However, before this idea can be properly evaluated, some topics must be addressed.
First of all, we can not assume that the housing market was the same ten years ago compared to today. The housing market depends greatly on how the economy of the country is doing, therefore some possibilities may have occurred. For instance, the homeowner might have been fortunate enough to sell his house in a month. We don’t know for sure if selling a house in one month is a common thing or if it was an outlier. Another possibility would be that people were more drawn into paying rents instead of buying their own houses. This might be the case if the economy is suffering, people will not have enough money to buy their own houses, thus forcing individuals to pay rent for housing or apartments. If either of the scenarios has merit, then conclusion drawn in the original argument is significantly weakened.
Secondly, we don’t know for sure what guaranteed a higher price of sold houses from Adams Realty compared to Fitch Realty. We know that buyers generally choose their house based in the value of the property associated with how the building looks. If the house requires a lot of renovations and improvements, the price of the house will certainly drop. One possibility is that Adams Realty has sold in the last couples of years more complete houses than houses that required some type of change, which increased significantly the average prices of the sales. The homeowner’s friend might be trying to sell a very old very old property that might have the same selling price in either of the Realty companies. If the above is true, then the argument does not hold water.
Last but not least, maybe Fitch Realty has less employees because they are better at their job than the 40 employees that Adams has. The homeowner implies that Fitch has only 25 employees and that only work part time, which sounds less impressive when you hear it compared to what Adams Realty has. But, one reason for the difference in numbers and the working shift might be that Fitch Realty has so much work to do that they prefer separating house showings and office work to ensure a more efficient and gratifying experience for the customer and the buyer. This just comes to show that the argument in the prompt has its weaknesses.
In conclusion, the argument, as it stands, is considerably flawed do to its reliance on several unwarranted assumptions. If the author is able to answer the three topics above and offer more evidence, then it would be possible to fully evaluate the viability of the ideas in the passage.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-01-30 | nadia_tavakoli | 16 | view |
| 2020-01-30 | nadia_tavakoli | 16 | view |
| 2020-01-26 | lanhhoang | 55 | view |
| 2020-01-22 | ramlalla | 77 | view |
| 2020-01-13 | Subhashree | 77 | view |
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 561 350
No. of Characters: 2568 1500
No. of Different Words: 261 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.867 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.578 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.388 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 164 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 106 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 75 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 45 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 25.5 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.54 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.682 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.294 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.505 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.139 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 618, Rule ID: PHRASE_REPETITION[1]
Message: This phrase is duplicated. You should probably leave only 'very old'.
Suggestion: very old
...apos;s friend might be trying to sell a very old very old property that might have the same selli...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 44, Rule ID: FEWER_LESS[2]
Message: Did you mean 'fewer'? The noun employees is countable.
Suggestion: fewer
...t but not least, maybe Fitch Realty has less employees because they are better at th...
^^^^
Line 7, column 208, Rule ID: EN_COMPOUNDS
Message: This word is normally spelled with hyphen.
Suggestion: part-time
...as only 25 employees and that only work part time, which sounds less impressive when you ...
^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, however, if, look, may, second, secondly, so, then, therefore, thus, while, for instance, in conclusion, first of all
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 23.0 19.6327345309 117% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 12.0 11.1786427146 107% => OK
Relative clauses : 20.0 13.6137724551 147% => OK
Pronoun: 49.0 28.8173652695 170% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 61.0 55.5748502994 110% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2648.0 2260.96107784 117% => OK
No of words: 559.0 441.139720559 127% => OK
Chars per words: 4.73703041145 5.12650576532 92% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.86242540663 4.56307096286 107% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.53174898301 2.78398813304 91% => OK
Unique words: 259.0 204.123752495 127% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.463327370304 0.468620217663 99% => OK
syllable_count: 815.4 705.55239521 116% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 9.0 4.96107784431 181% => OK
Article: 6.0 8.76447105788 68% => OK
Subordination: 6.0 2.70958083832 221% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 23.0 19.7664670659 116% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 48.9391427953 57.8364921388 85% => OK
Chars per sentence: 115.130434783 119.503703932 96% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.3043478261 23.324526521 104% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.60869565217 5.70786347227 98% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 14.0 8.20758483034 171% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 3.0 6.88822355289 44% => More negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 6.0 4.67664670659 128% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.230547975496 0.218282227539 106% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0632312790102 0.0743258471296 85% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0923331603018 0.0701772020484 132% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.121409244142 0.128457276422 95% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.1079328273 0.0628817314937 172% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.0 14.3799401198 90% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 55.58 48.3550499002 115% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 10.51 12.5979740519 83% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.68 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 101.0 98.500998004 103% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 17.0 12.3882235529 137% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.