In surveys Mason City residents rank water sports (swimming, boating and fishing) among their favorite recreational activities. The Mason River flowing through the city is rarely used for these pursuits, however, and the city park department devotes little of its budget to maintaining riverside recreational facilities. For years there have been complaints from residents about the quality of the river's water and the river's smell. In response, the state has recently announced plans to clean up Mason River. Use of the river for water sports is therefore sure to increase. The city government should for that reason devote more money in this year's budget to riverside recreational facilities.
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 the assumptions and what the implications are if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
The prompt argues that the government of Mason City should allocate more funds from its annual budget to riverside recreational facilities. This conclusion is reached based on the results from several surveys and the spate of residents’ complaints regarding the river’s smell and water quality. Notwithstanding the potential aesthetic and financial gains from implementing this recommendation, the prompt’s argument is flawed as it rests on three unproven assumptions. Should these assumptions not hold, the implications can be deleterious for the city and its residents.
Firstly, the prompt’s author assumes that the surveys are reliable indicators of how the city’s residents will behave should the river be cleaned. That is, it assumes people will engage in recreational water sports if this recommendation is implemented. However, several issues with these survey results must first be addressed. Firstly, it is possible that the people surveyed are not representative of Mason City’s residents. For instance, if only teenagers were surveyed, then it is not clear if these results would extend to the rest of the population. Furthermore, the prompt’s argument also depends upon the quantity of people surveyed. If only five were surveyed amongst potentially thousands or millions of residents, the surveys’ results are quite trivial. Finally, there is also the issue of the quality of the survey questions. If they were biased or limited in nature, this may have skewed the results to water sports. Given these various aspects to the author’s survey-related assumption, the argument does not hold water should this assumption not hold.
Secondly, the strength of the prompt’s arguments depends on its unstated assumption that people will make use of the river for water sports once it is cleaned. Yet, this may not necessarily hold true as several factors influence this outcome. For instance, it is possible that people do not have the financial resources or time to engage in such an activity. Additionally, the question of whether people want to do so arises. As has been widely found in studies, people do not carry out on the activities and disportments they cite in surveys. If there is any merit to such scenarios, the government’s funding for such recreational activities would be prodigal.
Finally, the argument also heavily depends on the assumption that the city government has enough funds to dedicate towards this venture. By adopting a utopic-like mindset the author has neglected the practical issues this government potentially faces. Perhaps, this government is struggling with its annual budget and cannot afford to dedicate funds to this cause. It is also plausible that other more pressing needs require funding (e.g. healthcare, unemployment, and crime). If the government is facing such dire and demanding conditions, it may not be a financially sage decision to invest in recreational activities. Indeed, it is likely the city’s residents would lambast its government officials should they do so.
In summary, as it stands now, the prompt’s argument is substantially flawed as it rests on three unwarranted assumptions. Given this, it would be an imprudent decision to implement the prompt’s recommendation. Yet, if the author can provide more evidence to delineate on the strength of these assumptions, then it will be possible to better assess the viability his/ her argument.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 29 15
No. of Words: 534 350
No. of Characters: 2806 1500
No. of Different Words: 237 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.807 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.255 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.894 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 221 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 169 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 121 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 80 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 18.414 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 4.598 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.724 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.267 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.451 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.051 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 1069, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
... water should this assumption not hold. Secondly, the strength of the prompt’s a...
^^^^^
Line 5, column 374, Rule ID: WHETHER[3]
Message: Wordiness: Shorten this phrase to the shortest possible suggestion.
Suggestion: whether; the question whether
...gage in such an activity. Additionally, the question of whether people want to do so arises. As has bee...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 7, column 150, Rule ID: EN_A_VS_AN
Message: Use 'an' instead of 'a' if the following word starts with a vowel sound, e.g. 'an article', 'an hour'
Suggestion: an
...icate towards this venture. By adopting a utopic-like mindset the author has negl...
^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, e.g., finally, first, firstly, furthermore, however, if, may, regarding, second, secondly, so, then, for instance, in summary
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 29.0 19.6327345309 148% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 20.0 12.9520958084 154% => OK
Conjunction : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 8.0 13.6137724551 59% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 48.0 28.8173652695 167% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 51.0 55.5748502994 92% => OK
Nominalization: 26.0 16.3942115768 159% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2924.0 2260.96107784 129% => OK
No of words: 534.0 441.139720559 121% => OK
Chars per words: 5.47565543071 5.12650576532 107% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.80712388197 4.56307096286 105% => OK
Word Length SD: 3.06617161162 2.78398813304 110% => OK
Unique words: 247.0 204.123752495 121% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.462546816479 0.468620217663 99% => OK
syllable_count: 870.3 705.55239521 123% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 12.0 4.96107784431 242% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 8.0 2.70958083832 295% => Less adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 2.0 4.22255489022 47% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 29.0 19.7664670659 147% => OK
Sentence length: 18.0 22.8473053892 79% => The Avg. Sentence Length is relatively short.
Sentence length SD: 28.8287411087 57.8364921388 50% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 100.827586207 119.503703932 84% => OK
Words per sentence: 18.4137931034 23.324526521 79% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.51724137931 5.70786347227 79% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 6.0 8.20758483034 73% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 15.0 6.88822355289 218% => Less negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 8.0 4.67664670659 171% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.174873701788 0.218282227539 80% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0513477168602 0.0743258471296 69% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0540951673653 0.0701772020484 77% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.100960194485 0.128457276422 79% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0633202201001 0.0628817314937 101% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.6 14.3799401198 95% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 53.21 48.3550499002 110% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 10.3 12.197005988 84% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.5 12.5979740519 115% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.7 8.32208582834 105% => OK
difficult_words: 141.0 98.500998004 143% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 9.2 11.1389221557 83% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 Out of 6
---------------------
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.