The following appeared in a letter to the editor of a journal on environmental issues.
"Over the past year, the Crust Copper Company (CCC) has purchased over 10,000 square miles of land in the tropical nation of West Fredonia. Mining copper on this land will inevitably result in pollution and, since West Fredonia is the home of several endangered animal species, in environmental disaster. But such disasters can be prevented if consumers simply refuse to purchase products that are made with CCC's copper unless the company abandons its mining plans."
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 argument mentioned states that Crust Copper Company is using the tropical lands of West Fredonia to mine copper. Since this land is a home to many endangered species, a concern has been put forward that the pollution arising from copper mining could result in environmental disasters. Hence the argument encourages consumers to avoid purchasing CCC’s product until they abandon mining in the tropical regions. This argument is based on many unwarranted assumptions which will be stated below.
Firstly, the argument has assumed without any proof that the company’s mining activities will lead to pollution inexorably. There was no inquiry into whether the company is following any rules and regulations to avoid pollution caused by copper mining. If the company were to be following protocols to avoid endangering the environment, there would be no concern regarding harming the species of these tropical lands.
Secondly, it is known that endangered species would be present in the tropical forests and not closer to the urban or suburban areas. The argument states that the company has bought 10,000 square miles of land in West Fredonia but no information has been provided as to where exactly in the area has the land been bought for mining. If the land was bought by the company in area which is far away from the tropical forests, the mining activities should not be disturbing the habitat of endangered species. Hence, argument could be bolstered by mentioning the exact location of where the land has been bought.
Lastly, the argument encourages consumers to stop buying CCC’s products until the company stops their mining activities in West Fredonia. But before making an assumption that consumers would indeed stop buying the copper produced by CCC, the market of copper needs to be studied. Do consumers have other various options in the market from where they could source copper? Are copper industries open to the idea of sourcing their raw material from other trusted sources? These questions need to be considered before considering that consumers would stop buying CCC’s material which would in turn avoid environmental disasters.
It can be concluded that there are ample number of scenarios to be considered before making the argument. Every assumption needs to be dwelled into and investigated completely prior to making a decision.
Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.5 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 6 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 2 2
No. of Sentences: 18 15
No. of Words: 379 350
No. of Characters: 1948 1500
No. of Different Words: 177 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.412 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.14 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.578 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 151 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 108 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 74 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 48 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21.056 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 5.788 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.5 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.347 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.591 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.111 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 1, column 290, Rule ID: SENT_START_CONJUNCTIVE_LINKING_ADVERB_COMMA[1]
Message: Did you forget a comma after a conjunctive/linking adverb?
Suggestion: Hence,
...ould result in environmental disasters. Hence the argument encourages consumers to av...
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
but, first, firstly, hence, if, lastly, regarding, second, secondly, so, well, as to
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 26.0 19.6327345309 132% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 13.0 12.9520958084 100% => OK
Conjunction : 6.0 11.1786427146 54% => More conjunction wanted.
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 19.0 28.8173652695 66% => OK
Preposition: 54.0 55.5748502994 97% => OK
Nominalization: 16.0 16.3942115768 98% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2002.0 2260.96107784 89% => OK
No of words: 379.0 441.139720559 86% => More content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.28232189974 5.12650576532 103% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.41224685777 4.56307096286 97% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.65074740481 2.78398813304 95% => OK
Unique words: 179.0 204.123752495 88% => More unique words wanted.
Unique words percentage: 0.472295514512 0.468620217663 101% => OK
syllable_count: 606.6 705.55239521 86% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 4.0 4.96107784431 81% => OK
Article: 7.0 8.76447105788 80% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 1.0 4.22255489022 24% => More preposition wanted as sentence beginning.
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 18.0 19.7664670659 91% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 31.5317300509 57.8364921388 55% => The essay contains lots of sentences with the similar length. More sentence varieties wanted.
Chars per sentence: 111.222222222 119.503703932 93% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.0555555556 23.324526521 90% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.66666666667 5.70786347227 82% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 1.0 5.25449101796 19% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 3.0 8.20758483034 37% => More positive sentences wanted.
Sentences with negative sentiment : 13.0 6.88822355289 189% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 2.0 4.67664670659 43% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.266329915749 0.218282227539 122% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0925866709166 0.0743258471296 125% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0829904614073 0.0701772020484 118% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.146373139337 0.128457276422 114% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0962357432941 0.0628817314937 153% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.0 14.3799401198 97% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 50.16 48.3550499002 104% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 11.5 12.197005988 94% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 13.34 12.5979740519 106% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.47 8.32208582834 102% => OK
difficult_words: 91.0 98.500998004 92% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 8.5 12.3882235529 69% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 50.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 3.0 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.