The following appeared as part of an article in the business section of a local newspaper.
"Motorcycle X has been manufactured in the United States for over 70 years. Although one foreign company has copied the motorcycle and is selling it for less, the company has failed to attract motorcycle X customers—some say because its product lacks the exceptionally loud noise made by motorcycle X. But there must be some other explanation. After all, foreign cars tend to be quieter than similar American-made cars, but they sell at least as well. Also, television advertisements for motorcycle X highlight its durability and sleek lines, not its noisiness, and the ads typically have voice-overs or rock music rather than engine-roar on the sound track."
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
The argument is primarily centered around the reason behind the failure of a foreign competitor to attract Motorcycle X’s customers using the competitor’s copy of Motorcycle X even though it’s cheaper. The argument goes on to claim that the reason must be something other than the loud noise made by Motorcycle X because loud noises don’t sell more cars in the same country. This represents the first flaw of the argument that we will discuss later. Moreover, the author says that since Motorcycle X’s ads don’t focus on the loud sound of the bike, therefore it must not be important to the consumers. The rationale here is weak and is the second flaw in the argument. At the same time, there are reasons to believe that the author’s claim, that there must be other reasons might have some merit as well.
The first flaw in the argument is that it overlooks the differences between the behaviours of those who buy cars vs those who buy bikes. For example, a parent picking up their kid from school would much rather prefer a car over a bike given concerns for their kids safety. Along the same lines, they would also prefer a quieter car so as to not wake up or disturb their kids. Therefore, the author’s claim that since quieter cars sell more than noisier cars, quieter bikes must also sell more than noisier bikes is false, as the type of people who buy quitter cars would be very less likely to buy a bike in any case.
The second stems from the assumptions made by the argument that the absence of any mention of Motorcycle X’s noise from its ads implies a lack of the noise’s importance. This can easily be invalidate by considering examples of famous advertisements which never talk about the most famous aspects of products, instead focusing on the more salient aspects. For example, some chocolate companies never talk about the crunch of their chocolates, instead just focusing on the flavour since the customers already associate it with crunchiness. Hence, Motorcycle X’s ad could be based on the same principle and would thus not talk about its noise since it’s already well established and synonymous with it.
Lastly, the argument does have some merit, as it’s likely that there could be reasons completely removed from Motorcycle X’s noise behind its success. This could have happened as Motorcycle X is considered durable, which might be different from the foreign competitor’s bike since the foreign competitor is also selling it cheaply.
In conclusion, we can see that the author’s claim has multiple flaws and is based on many unsubstantiated assumptions. This could be greatly improved by citing data from a consumer study which compared the preference of bike consumers between noisy and quiet bikes or any other such data which would support the argument quantitatively.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-08-12 | shavak1997 | 58 | view |
| 2020-07-19 | legitthinker | 72 | view |
- The following appeared as part of an article in the business section of a local newspaper Motorcycle X has been manufactured in the United States for over 70 years Although one foreign company has copied the motorcycle and is selling it for less the compa 58
- The following appeared as part of an article in the business section of a local newspaper Motorcycle X has been manufactured in the United States for over 70 years Although one foreign company has copied the motorcycle and is selling it for less the compa
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 11 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 3 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 478 350
No. of Characters: 2279 1500
No. of Different Words: 214 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.676 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.768 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.505 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 139 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 114 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 70 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 47 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 26.556 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 7.312 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.778 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.337 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.571 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.105 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 333, Rule ID: SO_AS_TO[1]
Message: Use simply 'to'
Suggestion: to
...s, they would also prefer a quieter car so as to not wake up or disturb their kids. Ther...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, first, hence, if, lastly, look, moreover, second, so, therefore, thus, well, as to, for example, in conclusion, in any case
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 34.0 28.8173652695 118% => OK
Preposition: 61.0 55.5748502994 110% => OK
Nominalization: 12.0 16.3942115768 73% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2364.0 2260.96107784 105% => OK
No of words: 476.0 441.139720559 108% => OK
Chars per words: 4.96638655462 5.12650576532 97% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.67091256922 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.61453947754 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 222.0 204.123752495 109% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.466386554622 0.468620217663 100% => OK
syllable_count: 718.2 705.55239521 102% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 7.0 4.96107784431 141% => OK
Article: 9.0 8.76447105788 103% => OK
Subordination: 2.0 2.70958083832 74% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 26.0 22.8473053892 114% => OK
Sentence length SD: 45.3160370054 57.8364921388 78% => OK
Chars per sentence: 131.333333333 119.503703932 110% => OK
Words per sentence: 26.4444444444 23.324526521 113% => OK
Discourse Markers: 7.16666666667 5.70786347227 126% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.105598948157 0.218282227539 48% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0357598654009 0.0743258471296 48% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0387449162372 0.0701772020484 55% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.0596069224358 0.128457276422 46% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0329729446126 0.0628817314937 52% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 15.2 14.3799401198 106% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 53.55 48.3550499002 111% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.197005988 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.84 12.5979740519 94% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.01 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 93.0 98.500998004 94% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.4 11.1389221557 111% => OK
text_standard: 12.0 11.9071856287 101% => 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
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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.