The following is a recommendation from the personnel director to the president of Acme Publishing Company."Many other companies have recently stated that having their employees take the Easy Read Speed-Reading Course has greatly improved productivity. One

It might seem logical, at first glance, to take for granted the author’s conclusion that all of employees of the Acme Publishing Company should take the Easy Read course. The author’s conclusion is merely based on unfounded assumption and dubious evidence that the speed of reading directly influence productivity. In order to strenghten or weaken the argument some pieces of evidence must be provided.

First of all, this argument lacks of details about extra expenses that might be related with these courses. The author states that it will cost to Acme company $500 per employee but, also he mentioned that Easy Read would take place in the Spruce city. It is not clear from the given information whether Spruce city is where Publishing company situated or not. If it is not, company will have to pay much money to cover living cost within 3 weeks for each employee. Thus, the total price for the courses that Acme should pay might be twice more expensive and probably that would not worth it and, as a result, that will undermine the author’s argument.

In addition, author alleges that two graduates after those courses increased their productivity and made career faster. It is obvious that the sample is not representative and such a grandious conclusion could not be absolutely impartial. Even if these two examples are granted, we still need to clearify some details. Firstly, we have no information about that employee who can read 500-pages report in 2 hours – what he charges for and how high-speed reading helps him. Perhaps he is in charge only for speedy reading and abridging the main points. If we look from this angle we need to find evidence that Acme publishing wants for such employees: it might be specialists from marketing or analitical departments. In this case, author’s refering to that example with additional details will strenghten his argument. Moreover, without extra information about that who rose from an assistant manager to vice president of the company in under a year we could not accept this recommendation as valid. It is quite possible that there were some other reasons helped him to make such an impetuous career like personal qualities and abilities. Therefore, this example with no details surely weaken the argument.

Lastly, in order to substantiate the recommendation we need more precise information about benefits that the company could get after all its employees finishe these courses. While the author provides us with two dubious examples and alleges that those courses will increase productivity. Obvious, that information about exact benefits is lacking. The author could provide the results from the latest research about correlation ability of employees to read fast and the company profit growth or give some examples of project that failed because some of the workers were reading materials to long.

To sum up, while the argument seems somewhat convincing it suffers from the lack of pieces of evidences about benefits and costs of Easy Read courses . Without that evidence we should be wary about accepting the truth of the argument conclusion.