The following appeared in a memo from the chairperson of the school board in the town of Saluda.
“For the past five years, Mr.Charles Schade has been the music director at Steel City High School, and during that time the school band from Steel City High won three regional band competitions. In addition, the quality of the music rehearsal facilities and music instruments at Steel City High has improved markedly over the past five years. Because of such successes at Steel City High, the Saluda school board hire Mr.Schade to plan and direct the general music education programs for the entire Saluda school system.”
In this letter, the chairperson of the school board concluded that Steel City High School has had some remarkable improvements such as winning regional band competition and enhancement in music rehearsal facilities since Mr.Charles Schade has been the music director at this school for the past five years; However, this conclusion cannot be accepted as it relies on a number of premises all of which can be challenged in three ways.
A threshold assumption upon which the letter relies is that Mr.Schade has triggered the school to win the regional band competition. The letter fails to state that these triumphs are due to his attempts. Maybe a professional advisor has been accompanying him and these achievements emanates mostly from him/her. Or, perhaps due to some economic problems in the state, families have forced their students to study with more efforts and these accomplishments are because of the students` attempts not Mr.Schade nor any other person at the school.
Another problem with the argument is that the writer assumes that the enhancement in quality of the music rehearsal facilities and music instruments are due to Mr.Schade `s activities during this period; However, there is no evidence to prove the truth of this assumption. Maybe, the state municipality has devoted more financial resources to music-related activities. Accordingly, all the schools have more money to equip their music facilities and even other parts of their educational system.
Even assuming that Mr.Schade has caused such improvements to Steel City High School, the author fails to express his greatness in the whole Saluda school system. Maybe he was already familiar with Steel City High School system, but we cannot generalize that Mr.Schade can cope with or handle the entire system since he was successful in one school. This means that other schools might have different educational approaches that he cannot be prosperous with the method which was used in Steel City High School.
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. Despite of the writer`s reasonings, the conclusion can only be accepted if the weaknesses already referred to are all removed.
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argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- not OK. You referred something new.
Suggested:
in recommending Schade for the job the chairperson fails to consider other possible job candidates. Even if all the evidence shows that Schade is well-qualified, perhaps one or more other individuals would be even more suitable for the job.
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 13 15
No. of Words: 380 350
No. of Characters: 1901 1500
No. of Different Words: 184 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.415 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.003 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.729 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 136 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 93 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 68 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 47 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 29.231 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 15.675 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.385 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.365 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.653 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.162 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5