Argument 18 范例

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Argument 18/20

Arg 18 expand coverage (radio station)

18) 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.

20) 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 time 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 just canceled their advertising contracts with us. Therefore, in order to attract more viewers to the program and to avoid losing any further advertising revenues, we should restore the time devoted to weather and local news to its former level.

Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.




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.


G1: Over the past year, our late-night news program has devoted increased time to national news and less time to weather and local news.

G2: During this period, most of the complaints received from viewers were concerned with our station's coverage of weather and local news.

G3: In addition, local businesses that used to advertise during our late-night news program have canceled their advertising contracts with us.

C1: 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.


A1 (G1, G2): The complaints are about the time allocation and there are a large number of complaints.

A3 (G1, C1): The program lost many viewers after the change.

A3 (G1, G3): G2 occurs because of G1 rather than other factors.

model-essay


According to the business manager, in order to boost the number of viewers and increase advertising revenue, the station should increase the coverage of weather and local news. A number of assumptions have been made in this argument which we need to examine critically to decide if the argument is valid.


To begin with, it is assumed that local businesses cancel their advertising because of the reduction of time for weather and local news. There are many other possible reasons why they have done so. Maybe the overall economy is in recession and the businesses has to reduce their expenses by cancelling the advertising. Or maybe they are not happy with the design of the advertising or find the advertising rather ineffective. If this is the case, the quality of the advertising has to be improved to address the problem. In other words, if the assumption does not hold true, expanding the relevant sections would not help increase the advertising revenue.


Another assumption is that the complaints about local news and weather are necessarily about the relatively short coverage of these topics. Maybe the viewers are unhappy about the inaccuracy of the weather forecast on certain days and complain about it. Or perhaps the viewers do not like the reporting style of the anchors for local news. In fact, the complaints can be filed against many different aspects of the local news or weather reports and have nothing to do with the duration. If the assumption about the complaints is incorrect, the argument would not be very strong.


The final assumption made in this argument is about the reason why the station has lost viewers. It is implicitly assumed that viewers are lost because of the reductio in local news and weather coverage. But there could be other reasons why the viewers stop watching the programs from the station. Maybe the quality of national news from the station is not very good or other sources of national news from the Internet are more informative or comprehensive. Even if the viewers are interested in national news, they may follow national news via other means. Again if the station lost viewers for reasons other than local news or weather, the proposed change would not make a difference.





Argument范文与提纲目录(tesolchina)
https://bbs.gter.net/thread-2030117-1-1.html

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最后一段似乎有问题。原文是说为了增加观众，我们要多放本地新闻。老板的假设是，多放国内新闻已经造成了观众减少。

另一个逻辑错误是电视台的收入。老板只看到有人取消了合约，并没提到是否有企业签订新合约。