Argument Topic: "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 memo concludes that Super Screen Movie Production Company should allocate a greater share of its budget next year to reach the public through advertising to increase the number of people attending Super Screen-produced movies. The advertising director made this conclusion on the premise that fewer people attended their produced movies in the past year but the percentage of positive reviews about specific movies have increased during the past year. Hence, the problem lies with the lack of awareness that movies of good quality are available. However, this conclusion is logically flawed since it is based on assumptions that are not wholly supported.
First and foremost, the advertising director assumes that the positive reviews by movie reviewers can be compared directly between specific Super Screen movies. However, this is not the case since different movies have different genre, filming director, characters and storyline, which may attract and appeal to different target audiences. It will be inaccurate to directly compare the reviews between different movies. Hence, to further support this statement, the advertising director should include the genre of the specific Super Screen movies he/she is referring to and identify his/her basis of comparison to conclude the percentage increase in positive reviews. This will bolster the accuracy of the comparison and makes the argument more logical.
Next, the advertising director failed to account that the increase in positive reviews may be insignificant and inaccurate. Assuming the reviews between movies are comparable, the percentage increase is not stated explicitly. It could be an increase from 10% to 20%, which is still considered poor performance and quality. That may be the reason why fewer people attended to the movies they produced. Furthermore, it was not stated how many reviewers actually reviewed the movies and the number may not provide an accurate representation of the general public. Thus, the advertising director should provide explicit figures on the percentage increase in positive reviews and some statistics to demonstrate that the reviews they received are representative towards the general public.
Lastly, the advertising director did not account for the current trends of movie genre in the target area. For instance, teenagers may prefer action-films as compared to documentaries and adults may prefer drama-films as compared to cartoons. Hence, instead of reaching to the public through blind advertising, the company should conduct an extensive survey to determine the preferences of their target audiences and shift their movie production to appeal to the majority. This may be a better use of the budget to properly address the issue and attract more people to attend their produced movies.
In conclusion, the argument will be more cogent if the advertising director provide evidences such as the genres and movies that he/she is comparing, the values of the statistics used, and the number of reviews received for each movie. Furthermore, instead of reaching the public through advertising, he/she could conduct a survey to determine the movie preferences and provide greater appeal to the majority. Without these evidences present, we should be wary about accepting the memo's conclusion.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
flaws:
the arguments are not on the right track.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: ? out of 6
Category: Poor Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 22 15
No. of Words: 510 350
No. of Characters: 2739 1500
No. of Different Words: 212 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.752 4.7
Average Word Length: 5.371 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.764 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 237 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 176 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 123 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 70 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 23.182 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 8.825 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.773 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.32 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.519 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.099 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 546, Rule ID: GENERAL_XX[1]
Message: Use simply 'public'.
Suggestion: public
...ovide an accurate representation of the general public. Thus, the advertising director should ...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 5, column 769, Rule ID: GENERAL_XX[1]
Message: Use simply 'public'.
Suggestion: public
...received are representative towards the general public. Lastly, the advertising director di...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 9, column 482, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[2]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'memos'' or 'memo's'?
Suggestion: memos'; memo's
..., we should be wary about accepting the memos conclusion.
^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
actually, but, first, furthermore, hence, however, if, lastly, may, so, still, thus, for instance, in conclusion, such as
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 20.0 19.6327345309 102% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 18.0 12.9520958084 139% => OK
Conjunction : 16.0 11.1786427146 143% => OK
Relative clauses : 11.0 13.6137724551 81% => OK
Pronoun: 36.0 28.8173652695 125% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 63.0 55.5748502994 113% => OK
Nominalization: 8.0 16.3942115768 49% => More nominalizations (nouns with a suffix like: tion ment ence ance) wanted.
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2806.0 2260.96107784 124% => OK
No of words: 506.0 441.139720559 115% => OK
Chars per words: 5.54545454545 5.12650576532 108% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.7428307748 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.82507237378 2.78398813304 101% => OK
Unique words: 215.0 204.123752495 105% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.424901185771 0.468620217663 91% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 878.4 705.55239521 124% => 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: 12.0 8.76447105788 137% => OK
Subordination: 0.0 2.70958083832 0% => More adverbial clause wanted.
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 5.0 4.22255489022 118% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 22.0 19.7664670659 111% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 22.8473053892 101% => OK
Sentence length SD: 57.9487519386 57.8364921388 100% => OK
Chars per sentence: 127.545454545 119.503703932 107% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.0 23.324526521 99% => OK
Discourse Markers: 5.5 5.70786347227 96% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 13.0 8.20758483034 158% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 5.0 6.88822355289 73% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 4.0 4.67664670659 86% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.20608065322 0.218282227539 94% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0634136918094 0.0743258471296 85% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0695843481313 0.0701772020484 99% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.123338075223 0.128457276422 96% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0833794345439 0.0628817314937 133% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 16.2 14.3799401198 113% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 39.67 48.3550499002 82% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 13.4 12.197005988 110% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 15.21 12.5979740519 121% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.62 8.32208582834 104% => OK
difficult_words: 123.0 98.500998004 125% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 14.0 12.3882235529 113% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.1389221557 101% => OK
text_standard: 9.0 11.9071856287 76% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 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.