The following is a memorandum from the business manager of a television station.
"Over the past year, our late-night news program has devoted increased time to national news and less time to weather and local news. During this period, most of the complaints received from viewers were concerned with our station's coverage of weather and local news. In addition, local businesses that used to advertise during our late-night news program have canceled their advertising contracts with us. Therefore, in order to attract more viewers to our news programs and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should expand our coverage of weather and local news on all our news programs."
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 following argument is flawed for several reasons. Primarily, the argument is based on the unwarranted assumption that their advertising contracts is canceled because they have decreased time for weather and local news, rendering its main conclusion that restoring the time devoted to weather an local news will increase its advertising revenue invalid.
The argument fails to provide any justification that the advertisers are actually concerned with the type of news shown late-night. For one, advertisers may be actually canceling their contracts because they might not getting any benefits for airing the advertisements late-night. The argument would have been stronger had it provided information regarding the cause of cancelation of advertising contracts rather than just assuming it is because of decreasing the time devoted to weather and local news. Even if reducing the time devoted for weather and local news was the cause, the argument would have to further prove that the viewers interested in watching weather and local news have not been decreased.
The argument also leaves many other unanswered questions regarding the number of viewers who prefer weather and local news versus number of viewers who prefer national news. First, there might be a possibility that when time devoted to weather and local news was more, then the complaints regarding the coverage was more from the people who prefer watching national news. If they want to validate their statement, they should have provided facts and figures that the number of people who prefer weather and local news were more than the number of people who prefer national news. Even then, they would have to provide evidence that the complaints received were regarding not showing local and weather news or the content shown during the reduced time.
Finally, the argument claims without warrant that decrease in viewers were due to the reduced time of local and weather news coverage. There is a possibility that the viewers were not happy with the content shown in local news and hence, chose not to watch the program. There is another possibility the late-night viewers have changed their schedule and started sleeping early which led to decrease in viewership.
Because the argument makes several unwarranted assumptions, it fails to make a convincing case that increasing time devoted to weather and local news program will attract more viewers and will increase advertising revenues.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
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| 2019-09-06 | mhayat29 | 55 | view |
| 2019-09-04 | benson zhang | 55 | view |
| 2019-08-05 | sea0215 | 77 | view |
| 2019-06-26 | madiha3 | 89 | view |
| 2019-06-22 | Mrunal47286 | 67 | view |
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- not exactly
argument 3 -- not OK
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examples:
https://www.testbig.com/gmatgre-argument-task-essays/over-past-year-our…
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 3.0 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 14 15
No. of Words: 389 350
No. of Characters: 2043 1500
No. of Different Words: 156 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.441 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.252 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.556 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 151 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 131 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 80 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 46 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 27.786 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.898 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.714 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.444 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.664 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.191 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 297, Rule ID: EN_A_VS_AN
Message: Use 'a' instead of 'an' if the following word doesn't start with a vowel sound, e.g. 'a sentence', 'a university'
Suggestion: a
...t restoring the time devoted to weather an local news will increase its advertisin...
^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, also, finally, first, hence, if, may, regarding, so, then, in conclusion
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 18.0 19.6327345309 92% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 10.0 12.9520958084 77% => OK
Conjunction : 15.0 11.1786427146 134% => OK
Relative clauses : 17.0 13.6137724551 125% => OK
Pronoun: 24.0 28.8173652695 83% => OK
Preposition: 35.0 55.5748502994 63% => OK
Nominalization: 14.0 16.3942115768 85% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2084.0 2260.96107784 92% => OK
No of words: 389.0 441.139720559 88% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.35732647815 5.12650576532 105% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.44106776838 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.59825330351 2.78398813304 93% => OK
Unique words: 161.0 204.123752495 79% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.413881748072 0.468620217663 88% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 642.6 705.55239521 91% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 3.0 4.96107784431 60% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 0.0 1.67365269461 0% => OK
Preposition: 0.0 4.22255489022 0% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 14.0 19.7664670659 71% => Need more sentences. Double check the format of sentences, make sure there is a space between two sentences, or have enough periods. And also check the lengths of sentences, maybe they are too long.
Sentence length: 27.0 22.8473053892 118% => OK
Sentence length SD: 56.7182888116 57.8364921388 98% => OK
Chars per sentence: 148.857142857 119.503703932 125% => OK
Words per sentence: 27.7857142857 23.324526521 119% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.85714285714 5.70786347227 103% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 5.0 8.20758483034 61% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 8.0 6.88822355289 116% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 1.0 4.67664670659 21% => More facts, knowledge or examples wanted.
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.344938444548 0.218282227539 158% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.150326484666 0.0743258471296 202% => Sentence topic similarity is high.
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0715584099013 0.0701772020484 102% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.218230176072 0.128457276422 170% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0301975023268 0.0628817314937 48% => Paragraphs are similar to each other. Some content may get duplicated or it is not exactly right on the topic.
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 17.7 14.3799401198 123% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 35.61 48.3550499002 74% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 15.0 12.197005988 123% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.1 12.5979740519 112% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.1 8.32208582834 97% => OK
difficult_words: 77.0 98.500998004 78% => More difficult words wanted.
linsear_write_formula: 11.5 12.3882235529 93% => OK
gunning_fog: 12.8 11.1389221557 115% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 58.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.5 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.