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 writer of the argument recommends that Super Screen Movie Production Company should spend more money for advertising in order to catch the public awareness of their movies' quality; however, this recommendation cannot be accepted as it is because it rests on a number of premises for the support of which some vital questions are to be answered.
The first problem with the argument is that the writer assumes that fewer attendance in Super Screen- produced movies has happened because of public's lack of information about the movies' quality; however, one can ask whether the number of viewers decreased because of their lack of knowledge about films' quality. Maybe, the price of cinema ticket ballooned during the past year; therefore, most of people cannot afford it. Or maybe, the company's movies are available as a DVD in market very soon; hence, people prefer to wait for watching them in their home.
Another problem with the argument is that the writer assumes that as far as positive reviews about specific movies of Super Screen increased during the last year, the quality of all of the films grows up; however, whether this specific movies are an integral part of company's production is questionable. Maybe, only two films received higher percentage of positive reviews while the company made more than 20 films during the last year; hence the overall production quality decreased; therefore, they absorb less viewers.
A third problem with the argument is that the author assumes things remain the same over the years; however, the question is whether this is true. Maybe last year the reviewers had a positive opinion about the films but the next year they will have a negative reviews; therefore, allocating more budget to the advertising has a counter product effect, and it causes a greater loss of attendants because they are aware of the films' quality.
In the final analysis, the writer's recommendation cannot taken to be correct because, as it was shown in the body paragraphs above, there are a number of questions which left unanswered. The recommendation can only be accepted if the concerned questions are all addressed.
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argument 1 -- OK
argument 2 -- OK
argument 3 -- not OK. where did you get 'the author assumes things remain the same over the years; however, the question is whether this is true.'? Need to argue against the conclusion 'Super Screen should therefore allocate a greater share of its budget next year to reaching the public through advertising'.
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 3.5 out of 6
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 10 15
No. of Words: 354 350
No. of Characters: 1757 1500
No. of Different Words: 171 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.338 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.963 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.53 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 135 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 97 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 58 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 35 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 35.4 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 14.753 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.9 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.415 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.714 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.107 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5