The following appeared in a letter from a homeowner to a friend.
"Over the past year, our late-right news program has devoted increased time to national news and less time to weather and local news. During this time 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 just canceled their advertising contracts with us. Therefore, in order to attract more viewers to the program and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level."
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.
The writer of the argument concludes that it is better to increase the weather and local news time to its former level; however, this conclusion cannot be accepted as it is because it rests on a number of premises all of which can be challenged in one way or another.
The first problem with the argument is that the writer assumes that complaints about coverage of weather and local news have happened because of increasing in national news and decreasing in the weather and local news time. However, there is no evidence to prove that complaints about the weather and local news coverage actually happened because of less time. For example, maybe these complaints happened because the quality of the news has been decreased. Or maybe complaints take occurred because the number of viewers proliferates due to the increase in the national news time and new audiences complained about the coverage of weather and local news.
The writer of arguments states that local businesses have canceled their late-night news program advertising contracts. Another problem with the argument is that there is no evidence to address that as a result of which local businesses canceled their advertising contracts. Somebody may assume that these cancellations have been occurred due to the number of viewers inclined, however, As I mentioned above, maybe the number of news audiences increased.
A third problem with the argument is that the writer assumes that the number of viewers decreased. However, in many ways, this is not true. As I mentioned, maybe more viewers attracted to the program. Complaints about the coverage of news and the time of local and national news cannot lead to decreasing in audiences.
The Forth problem with the argument is that the writer assumes that the number of viewers influences the businesses' decision about contracts, but maybe they only track the revenue of advertisement and nothing else matters for them.
In the final analysis, the writer's conclusion cannot be taken to be correct because, as it was shown in the body paragraphs above, it depends on a number of assumptions each of which is questionable. The conclusion can only be accepted if the weaknesses already referred to are all removed.
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: 15 15
No. of Words: 367 350
No. of Characters: 1826 1500
No. of Different Words: 144 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.377 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.975 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.647 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 135 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 115 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 74 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 41 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.467 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.43 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.406 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.666 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.151 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 11, column 28, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'writers'' or 'writer's'?
Suggestion: writers'; writer's
...for them. In the final analysis, the writers conclusion cannot be taken to be correc...
^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, first, however, if, may, so, third, for example, as a result
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 19.0 19.6327345309 97% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 6.0 12.9520958084 46% => OK
Conjunction : 13.0 11.1786427146 116% => OK
Relative clauses : 15.0 13.6137724551 110% => OK
Pronoun: 28.0 28.8173652695 97% => OK
Preposition: 51.0 55.5748502994 92% => OK
Nominalization: 8.0 16.3942115768 49% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 1874.0 2260.96107784 83% => OK
No of words: 367.0 441.139720559 83% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.10626702997 5.12650576532 100% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.37689890912 4.56307096286 96% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.71639303877 2.78398813304 98% => OK
Unique words: 143.0 204.123752495 70% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.389645776567 0.468620217663 83% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 588.6 705.55239521 83% => 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: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 15.0 19.7664670659 76% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 64.5925348284 57.8364921388 112% => OK
Chars per sentence: 124.933333333 119.503703932 105% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.4666666667 23.324526521 105% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.0 5.70786347227 88% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 12.0 6.88822355289 174% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 0.0 4.67664670659 0% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.280983001172 0.218282227539 129% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.118553750093 0.0743258471296 160% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.125380356172 0.0701772020484 179% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.141464573197 0.128457276422 110% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.127913539208 0.0628817314937 203% => More connections among paragraphs wanted.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.9 14.3799401198 104% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.65 12.5979740519 100% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.88 8.32208582834 95% => OK
difficult_words: 71.0 98.500998004 72% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 17.0 12.3882235529 137% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 13.0 11.9071856287 109% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.