The following is taken from a memo from the advertising director of the Super Screen Movie Production Company.
"According to a recent report from our marketing department, during the past year, fewer people attended Super Screen-produced movies than in any other year. And yet the percentage of positive reviews by movie reviewers about specific Super Screen movies actually increased during the past year. Clearly, the contents of these reviews are not reaching enough of our prospective viewers. Thus, the problem lies not with the quality of our movies but with the public's lack of awareness that movies of good quality are available. Super Screen should therefore allocate a greater share of its budget next year to reaching the public through advertising."
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument on which it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
The advertising director of Super Screen Movie Production Company, in a memo, recommends that to increase the number of viewers, the company should allocate a higher budget for advertising. He also claims that the quality of the movies is high as the percentage of positive reviews by movie reviewers has increased. There are a number of key questions that need to be answered before a proper conclusion can be drawn, otherwise the argument remains vulnerable to critique.
The author mentions that during the past year, fewer people attended the movies as compared to previous years. There could be a number of reasons for low attendance such as an increase in ticket price. We need to find out whether the prices of the tickets increased last year? The ticket price, for example, could have increased from $6 to $10 making it difficult for people to buy. A higher ticket price is likely to result in fewer people watching the movies in the cinema and therefore, we need to see if this were the case?
The author assumes that there is nothing wrong with the quality of movies as the percentage of positive reviews in the last year has increased. The author does not mention what were the total number of positive reviews before and now. It could be the case that the number of positive reviews only increased a small number as only a percentage is mentioned. For example, it could be that the positive reviews changed from 200 to 201 only. The author also does not mention how much was the percentage increase? Was it 1% or 0.00001%? Therefore, we need to know the relevant data to draw proper conclusions.
Furthermore, the author dismisses the claim that there could be anything wrong with the quality of the movies without proper convincing data. Perhaps, the company has changed its director or allocated a lower budget for CGI which resulted in poor quality as compared to before. Therefore, it is important to know whether any such changes were made during the past year?
In addition, another factor that needs to be considered is whether there was a change in genre of movies produced? Did the company switch, for example, from horror to comedy? A change in genre can disrupt the usual fanbase that watches the company’s movies and can result in lower customers. Therefore, it is extremely important to find out if any such change was made during the last year.
In conclusion, the author has based his argument on a number of assumptions and a lot of further information is needed before his recommendation is accepted and finally implemented. Such questions include the exact data of the positive reviews, change in ticket price, change in the director of movies, change in genre of movies produced among others.
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Comments
I checked this with the
I checked this with the official ScoreItNow ets software and it gave a 5 on this essay.
That software can't actually
That software can't actually know whether arguments are correct or not. This is the correct score:
https://www.testbig.com/comment/106067#comment-106067
and this is the sample:
https://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-argument-task-essays/following-taken-me…
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- not OK. read it carefully:
'And yet the percentage of positive reviews by movie reviewers about specific Super Screen movies actually increased during the past year.', not for all movies.
argument 3 -- better to say: maybe the positive reviews reached people. but people may watch movies by phone, DVD, Internet...
argument 4 -- this argument is similar to argument 3.
Need to argue against the conclusion always. For this topic it is:
Super Screen should therefore allocate a greater share of its budget next year to reaching the public through advertising.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 02
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 24 15
No. of Words: 466 350
No. of Characters: 2204 1500
No. of Different Words: 193 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.646 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.73 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.493 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 177 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 113 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 72 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 42 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 19.417 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 6.218 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.542 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.302 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.529 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.092 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 6 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 334, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
..., for example, could have increased from to 0 making it difficult for people to b...
^^
Line 8, column 1, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...hanges were made during the past year? In addition, another factor that needs t...
^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, finally, furthermore, if, so, therefore, for example, in addition, in conclusion, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 24.0 19.6327345309 122% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 7.0 11.1786427146 63% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 24.0 28.8173652695 83% => OK
Preposition: 69.0 55.5748502994 124% => OK
Nominalization: 9.0 16.3942115768 55% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2278.0 2260.96107784 101% => OK
No of words: 465.0 441.139720559 105% => OK
Chars per words: 4.89892473118 5.12650576532 96% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.64369019777 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.61680225926 2.78398813304 94% => OK
Unique words: 197.0 204.123752495 97% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.423655913978 0.468620217663 90% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 715.5 705.55239521 101% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.5 1.59920159681 94% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 8.0 4.96107784431 161% => OK
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 4.0 4.22255489022 95% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 24.0 19.7664670659 121% => OK
Sentence length: 19.0 22.8473053892 83% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 39.8085697083 57.8364921388 69% => OK
Chars per sentence: 94.9166666667 119.503703932 79% => OK
Words per sentence: 19.375 23.324526521 83% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.95833333333 5.70786347227 69% => OK
Paragraphs: 6.0 5.15768463074 116% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 8.20758483034 146% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.196473501014 0.218282227539 90% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0589752222483 0.0743258471296 79% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.062248684924 0.0701772020484 89% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.106599624711 0.128457276422 83% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0503087595751 0.0628817314937 80% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 11.3 14.3799401198 79% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 60.65 48.3550499002 125% => OK
smog_index: 3.1 7.1628742515 43% => Smog_index is low.
flesch_kincaid_grade: 9.5 12.197005988 78% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.14 12.5979740519 88% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.64 8.32208582834 92% => OK
difficult_words: 90.0 98.500998004 91% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 10.5 12.3882235529 85% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.6 11.1389221557 86% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
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.