[a习作temp] Argument131 [0710G summer小组]第十次作业_by schenmob [复制链接]

schenmob
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发表于 2007-7-27 15:09:08 |只看该作者 |倒序浏览

TOPIC: ARGUMENT137 - The following appeared in an editorial in the Mason City newspaper.

"At present, Mason City residents seldom use the nearby Mason River for any kind of recreational activity, even though surveys of the region's residents consistently rank water sports (swimming, fishing, and boating) as a favorite form of recreation. Since there have been complaints about the quality of the water in the river, residents must be avoiding the river because they think that it is not clean enough. But that situation is about to change: the agency responsible for rivers in our region has announced plans to clean up Mason River. Therefore, recreational use of the river is likely to increase, so the Mason City council will need to increase its budget for improvements to the publicly owned lands along the Mason River."
WORDS: 449 TIME:00:27:04 DATE: 2007-7-27

In the statement, the author concludes that the Mason City council will need to increase its budget to improvements to the publicly owned lands along the Masson River, in order to increase the recreational use of the river. However, the argument suffers from several flaws which make the statement unconvinced.

To begin with, the author cites some surveys to indicate that Mason City residents consistently rank water sports as a favorite form of recreation. However, the author fails to provide enough information of the surveys. Unless the surveyor sampled a sufficient number of respondents and did randomly across the entire spectrum, the survey results are not reliable to gauge the overall condition of residents in Mason City. Even the statement don't provide me the total number of respondents and the percentage of them who rank water sports as a favorite form of recreation, so I don't know whether the surveys ensure representativeness. Without more convincing and valid information of the respondents of the surveys, the author cannot persuade me.

The author also provides the complaints about the quality of the water in the river confirm that the residents avoid the river just because if the quality of the water. The author overlooks a possibility that the complaints are caused by the residents who merely care about the environment along the river, the living condition and health, instead of whether the river is suit for people to have fun in the Mason River. The foregoing possibility may make the author's statement dubious.

Furthermore, even it is possible for Mason City to improve the condition of Mason River, whether the solutions and the projects can reach its ultimate goal is still dubious, although the agency responsible for rivers in their region has announced plans to clean up Mason river. However, the author doesn’t provide me the evidence that whether they can afford and complete the project well. In other words, perhaps, it is difficult for people there to clean the river completely, for it all depends on extent of the pollution of the river.

Even the river become clean enough for people to take any recreational activity after the project, the recreational use of the river may not increase. On one side, although the residents regard water sports as a famous form of recreation and even they take Mason River as a good place, they may change their views. One the other side, The river is not suit for swimming, fishing or other activities. Both foregoing possibilities make it impossible.

To sum up, the argument suffers several logical flaws, which render it unconvincing. The author has to provide move evidence to strengthen his statement. Or the author fails to persuade me.