[a习作temp] argument140 [09年04月机考作文组]第5周第4次作业 by 程喷喷 [复制链接]

程喷喷
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电梯直达

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发表于 2009-3-27 13:28:52 |只看该作者 |倒序浏览

The Committee recommends that Professor Thomas receive a $10,000 raise and a promotion to Department Chairperson to prevent her from leaving Elm City University for another college. To support this recommendation, the writer of the report points out that Professor Thomas is popular among students because her classes are among the largest at the university. Also, the writer states that the money Professor Thomas has brought to the university in research grants has exceeded her salary in each of the last two years which demonstrates her research abilities. However, this argument suffers from several critical fallacies.

To begin with, the writer fails to establish a causal link between having largest class and a professor's teaching ability. On the one hand, having largest class does not always demonstrate one's popularity. General knowledge informs me that students attend a professor's classes for a number of reasons. It is entirely possible that what Professor Thomas teaches is the basic knowledge of botany which every student of this major has to learn. On the other hand, it is unfair to only use popularity to evaluate a professor's teaching ability. Popularity is only students' reaction instead of the result of teaching. Perhaps students choose Professor Thomas' class because she is famous of giving everybody a high score in the end of semester; or perhaps students prefer to attend her class on account of her jokes which is nothing but funny. Since the popularity cannot guarantee the quality of teaching, the writer's statement on this point is meaningless.

Secondly, the fact that Professor Thomas brought money in research grants during the last two years proves little about her research ability. Common sense tells me that a person's research ability is presented by the value of the result of the research. Common sense also tells me that, in fact, a number of big companies donate money to research in universities in order to gain a biased result which will be beneficial to their products sale and has nothing to do with professor's research ability. Since Thomas is a professor of botany and tobacco companies might be interested in some of the researches on this field, there is possibility that Professor Thomas can easily attract money from those companies with nothing but a promise of research's result.

Furthermore, the writer neither provides information to justify the amount of salary raise nor evidence which qualifies Professor Thomas for Department Chairperson. For one thing, even if she is outstanding as the committee report, to decide how much her salary raise, the arguer should at least consider other professors' income and make a comparison. It is possible that $50,000 is already more than enough since other professors who are excellent as the same get less than it. For another, the issue of promoting to Department Chairperson is simplified. Obviously, to be Chairperson, professor's personal skills and the ability of management as well as a foresight are necessary. Therefore, promoting someone only for preventing his or her leaving is irresponsible.

To sum up, this recommendation is unconvincing and misleading. To strengthen this argument, the arguer should provide more details to prove teaching and research ability of Professor Thomas. Moreover, I would suspend my judgment about the propriety of the recommendation until the arguer can provide concrete evidence that promising Professor Thomas deserve $10,000 raise and will qualify Department Chairperson.