The following appeared in a memo from the president of Bower Builders, a company that constructs new homes.
"A nationwide survey reveals that the two most-desired home features are a large family room and a large, well-appointed kitchen. A number of homes in our area built by our competitor Domus Construction have such features and have sold much faster and at significantly higher prices than the national average. To boost sales and profits, we should increase the size of the family rooms and kitchens in all the homes we build and should make state-of-the-art kitchens a standard feature. Moreover, our larger family rooms and kitchens can come at the expense of the dining room, since many of our recent buyers say they do not need a separate dining room for family meals."
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 assertion of the president of Bower Builders seems axiomatic. The president claims that the company should enlarge the size of the family rooms and kitchens in every homes, and create a better kitchen with high-end technology. To support the argument, the president cites a nationwide survey. However, the suggestion is ill-advised since the president has flawed assumptions.
First, the president refers to a nationwide survey that discloses that the two favorite features for most desired home are a spacious family room and kitchen. Here, the president supposes that this trend will also fit to the local people's taste. However, it is unsure if the nationwide survey accurately reveals opinions of the local people. It is entirely possible that the local people prefer commodious family dining room over large family room. Thus, the president should have to present evidence that the local people's taste concurs with the nationwide taste to substantiate his or her argument.
Second assumption the president has is that their competing firm, Domus Construction, sold their homes faster at higher prices than the national average owing to their features that contain a large family room and a large, well-appointed kitchen. It is an incomplete observation since there can be other factors that aided in the sales of Domus Construction. Homes by Domus Construction may come with better bathrooms, spacious storage rooms and a garage; houses by the company may have competant features even besides a large family room and a large, state-of-the-art kitchens. Moreover, there also needs an assessment of market conditions and characteristics of different seasons because the high profit of Domus Construction might be owing to stable market conditions and high demands for new homes in that particular time and location. Therefore, without effectively ruling these variables, the president's claim remains dubious.
Third, the president claims that Bower Builders should build cutting edge kitchen and a more spacious family rooms at the expense of the dining room based on thoughts of the company's recent buyers. However, the reliability of opinions from their recent buyers has to be evaluated since they are only a part of the whole buyers, which implies that their opinions might fail to represent opinions of the company's entire customers. Also, the company should also consider prospective customers in order to increase their profits. Thus, even if thoughts of recent buyers concur with thoughts of their entire customers, the company still fails to incorporate opinions from their potential clients. This shows that opinions from the firm's recent buyers do not guarantee that the suggested changes would boost sales and profits when the company chooses to enlarge the size of family rooms and kitchens and technologically organize kitchens.
All in all, because of aforementioned reasons, the president's assertion is far-fetched. The president is basing his or her claim on gratuitous conjectures, which are not substantial. To strengthen the argument, the president needs to provide opinions of local people on home features, the exact reasons of the success of Domus Construction, and further analysis of opinions of past, present and future customers.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Sentence: Homes by Domus Construction may come with better bathrooms, spacious storage rooms and a garage; houses by the company may have competant features even besides a large family room and a large, state-of-the-art kitchens.
Error: competant Suggestion: competent
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argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- OK
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 5.0 out of 6
Category: Very Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 509 350
No. of Characters: 2707 1500
No. of Different Words: 228 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.75 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.318 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.73 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 213 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 158 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 113 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 71 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.136 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 10.614 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.591 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.336 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.556 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.117 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 9, column 52, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'presidents'' or 'president's'?
Suggestion: presidents'; president's
... because of aforementioned reasons, the presidents assertion is far-fetched. The president...
^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, besides, first, however, if, may, moreover, second, so, still, then, therefore, third, thus, well, as to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 13.0 19.6327345309 66% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 11.0 12.9520958084 85% => OK
Conjunction : 17.0 11.1786427146 152% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 33.0 28.8173652695 115% => OK
Preposition: 63.0 55.5748502994 113% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2768.0 2260.96107784 122% => OK
No of words: 508.0 441.139720559 115% => OK
Chars per words: 5.44881889764 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.74751043592 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.82687035118 2.78398813304 102% => OK
Unique words: 240.0 204.123752495 118% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.472440944882 0.468620217663 101% => OK
syllable_count: 841.5 705.55239521 119% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Interrogative: 0.0 0.471057884232 0% => OK
Article: 16.0 8.76447105788 183% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 2.0 1.67365269461 119% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 64.7987348106 57.8364921388 112% => OK
Chars per sentence: 125.818181818 119.503703932 105% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.0909090909 23.324526521 99% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.0 5.70786347227 88% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
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: 0.327864145116 0.218282227539 150% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0929937350505 0.0743258471296 125% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0833428016985 0.0701772020484 119% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.175821196923 0.128457276422 137% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0699906578269 0.0628817314937 111% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.8 14.3799401198 110% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 39.67 48.3550499002 82% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.63 12.5979740519 116% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.76 8.32208582834 105% => OK
difficult_words: 128.0 98.500998004 130% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.0 12.3882235529 65% => Linsear_write_formula is low.
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 16.0 11.9071856287 134% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6 -- The score is based on the average performance of 20,000 argument essays. This e-grader is not smart enough to check on arguments.
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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.