题目：
The following appeared as a letter to the editor from a Central Plaza store owner.
“Over the past two years, the number of shoppers in Central Plaza has been steadily decreasing while the popularity of skateboarding has increased dramatically. Many Central Plaza store owners believe that the decrease in their business is due to the number of skateboard users in the plaza. There has also been a dramatic increase in the amount of litter and vandalism throughout the plaza. Thus, we recommend that the city prohibited skateboarding in Central Plaza. If skateboarding is prohibited here, we predict that business in Central Plaza will return to its previously high levels.”
Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the recommendation is likely to have the predicted result. Be sure to explain how the answers to these questions would help to evaluate the recommendation.
作文：
In this argument, the speaker concludes that the city should prohibit skateboarding in Central Plaza and the store owners will get out of their business’s dilemma if skateboarders leave the Central Plaza. To support his conclusion, the speaker cites the negative relationship between the number of shoppers and that of skateboarders and that a dramatic increase in the amount of litter and vandalism throughout the plaza. The argument relies on a series of unsubstantiated assumptions, which considered together render the argument wholly unconvincing.
One such assumption is that the dramatic increase in the number of skateboarders had decreased the number of shoppers. It is entirely possible that other factors existing can arouse the decline in the volume of shoppers rather than skateboarders. For example, the purchasing power gets lower due to the economic depression which raised the rates of crimes and violent during these two years. And the government of the city constructed a new commercial district which distracted a lot of consumers. Since the new shopping center had more kinds of shops and provided more convenience than the Central Plaza, the Central Plaza was noncompetitive and gradually lost its shoppers. Moreover, the city carried out some construction projects near the Central Plaza that block the streets to the Central Plaza so that it was not easy for some vehicles like cars to reach the Central Plaza. Therefore, skateboarders maybe had nothing to do with the business recession of store owners.
Even if some potential relationship indeed exists between the number of skateboarders and that of shoppers, the speaker cannot conclude that it’s skateboarders that deteriorated the shoppers’ business. One could raise his questions fairly about the situations of business and skateboarding before the two years. Without the comparison between the past and present, the letter writer’s reasoning is vulnerable. What if the business situation had been going downhill and litter and vandalism throughout the plaza had also been increased two years ago? Maybe the property management company should take responsibility for the loss of shoppers due to neglecting its duty rather than the skateboard users. At the meantime, we can excavate the reason why skateboarders assemble at the Central Plaza. There is a high possibility that the Central Plaza can provide a lager spare space where pedestrians and cars are sparse. And the sparseness results from the business recession. Therefore, skateboard users are not the fundamental reason for the decreased number of shoppers. Instead, but for the existing of skateboarders, the business would go from bad to worse over the two years.
Moreover, even if the assumption that the skateboard users were culprits of the business’s misery comes true, whether the letter writer’s recommendation on the future can guarantee the recovery of commerce in the Central Plaza remains a question. The letter fails to provide a convincing evidence for the inevitable recovery. More considerations are needed to evaluate the recommendation. For instance, how does the economic environment going, both in local or global? Any turbulence in economic can influence the benefits of sellers in the globalized market.
Can the store owners and business men have an insightful view to keep track of the economic trend and know well the sales techniques? A store owner who has abundant experience and business skills can find the golden wherever he is and whatever he comes across. It is better to concentrating on the improvement environment in the Central Plaza and the ability and service of storeowners rather than the trivial, irrelevant factors as skateboarders, litter or vandalism.
To sum up, the letter writer’s recommendation does give some possible accounts for the decrease in the store owner’s business, whereas his reasoning process relies on the unsubstantial assumptions and lacks of sufficient evidence for the prohibition and recommendation. The commercial and environmental situations of the past and present should be investigated. And more specific evidence should be added to make the recommendation more convincing and reasonable. 作者: kinny10 时间: 2012-3-11 13:58:46