In surveys Mason City residents rank water sports (swimming, boating, 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 the 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 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 author argues that if the Mason City government increases the budget allocated for maintaining the Mason River and the recreational activities thereof, then the residents will flock to the river to enjoy said facilities. While this argument seems straight-forward and cogent on the surface, on closer observation, it is easy to see the obvious fallacies in the argument and in the underlying assumptions.
To begin with, the author cites surveys where the city residents ranked water sports among their favorite recreational activities. However, the author fails to mention crucial details about these surveys such as the time when they were conducted and the range of the population surveyed. The residents clearly have other favorite activities which they may prefer over water sports, in which case the work done on Mason River may not be alluring to them at all.
Furthermore, the author states that residents have been complaining about the river's derelict state for years. However, there is no evidence that these complaints have been voiced by the same residents who enjoy water sports. It may well be that the residents who have been complaining have no interest in water sports; they may have other reasons such as the river being an eyesore or a public health hazard. They might be concerned about the ecological health of the river. While these reasons do warrant a clean-up, they certainly do not warrant increased expenditure on riverside recreational facilities.
Moreover, it does not appear as if the government has thought through its plans for the clean-up. It is assumed that the clean-up would be a one-time task. Funds are planned to be devoted to maintaining the recreational facilities. Does this maintenance include regular clean-ups as well? The sources of the river water pollution have not been investigated. If, say, there are factories releasing untreated effluents into the water, then a one-time clean-up is effectively moot. Will the government allocate funds to hold the factories answerable and make them cease their practices? Alternatively, if the residents themselves are largely responsible for the river's condition, will funds be allocated for public education and awareness? Even assuming that these are not the causes for the pollution, the manmade damage from the recreational activities such as littering, fuel burning, ecological imbalances due to excessive fishing themselves may call for continuous maintenance and monitoring. One-by-one, these costs add up quickly and may overwhelm the budget that the government plans to set aside.
Evidently, while the author's argument is well-intended, it lacks crucial backing evidence and is rife with over-reaching assumptions. It would be rather risky to go ahead with investing government time, money, and other resources without conducting further research so as to ensure that, once rejuvenated, the river will veritably be used sustainably for the intended purposes.
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Comments
e-rater score report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 462 350
No. of Characters: 2453 1500
No. of Different Words: 233 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.636 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.31 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.847 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 171 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 144 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 109 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 85 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 21 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.99 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.773 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.297 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.297 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.077 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 23, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'authors'' or 'author's'?
Suggestion: authors'; author's
...ns to set aside. Evidently, while the authors argument is well-intended, it lacks cru...
^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 267, Rule ID: SO_AS_TO[1]
Message: Use simply 'to'
Suggestion: to
...ces without conducting further research so as to ensure that, once rejuvenated, the rive...
^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
furthermore, however, if, may, moreover, so, then, well, while, as to, such as, to begin with
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 : 11.0 11.1786427146 98% => OK
Relative clauses : 14.0 13.6137724551 103% => OK
Pronoun: 33.0 28.8173652695 115% => OK
Preposition: 44.0 55.5748502994 79% => OK
Nominalization: 19.0 16.3942115768 116% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2511.0 2260.96107784 111% => OK
No of words: 462.0 441.139720559 105% => OK
Chars per words: 5.43506493506 5.12650576532 106% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.63618218583 4.56307096286 102% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.94079304154 2.78398813304 106% => OK
Unique words: 236.0 204.123752495 116% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.510822510823 0.468620217663 109% => OK
syllable_count: 777.6 705.55239521 110% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.7 1.59920159681 106% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 10.0 4.96107784431 202% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 8.0 8.76447105788 91% => OK
Subordination: 4.0 2.70958083832 148% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 3.0 4.22255489022 71% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 21.0 22.8473053892 92% => OK
Sentence length SD: 56.7936674389 57.8364921388 98% => OK
Chars per sentence: 114.136363636 119.503703932 96% => OK
Words per sentence: 21.0 23.324526521 90% => OK
Discourse Markers: 4.22727272727 5.70786347227 74% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 2.0 5.25449101796 38% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 10.0 8.20758483034 122% => 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: 0.236690148601 0.218282227539 108% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0677684270533 0.0743258471296 91% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.079024064189 0.0701772020484 113% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.136378809851 0.128457276422 106% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0778250066511 0.0628817314937 124% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.7 14.3799401198 102% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 41.7 48.3550499002 86% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 14.27 12.5979740519 113% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.78 8.32208582834 106% => OK
difficult_words: 120.0 98.500998004 122% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.5 12.3882235529 117% => OK
gunning_fog: 10.4 11.1389221557 93% => OK
text_standard: 15.0 11.9071856287 126% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 83.33 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 5.0 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.