[a习作temp] 新g Argu 15 求拍~ [复制链接]

ykhjy
UID: 3013326

寄托新兵

Rank: 2

声望: 18
寄托币: 276
注册时间: 2011-2-21
精华: 0
帖子: 8

电梯直达

楼主

发表于 2012-1-14 16:47:12 |只看该作者 |倒序浏览

本帖最后由 ykhjy 于 2012-1-14 16:48 编辑

15) The following memorandum is from the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants.

Recently, butter has been replaced by margarine in Happy Pancake House restaurants throughout the southwestern United States. This change, however, has had little impact on our customers. In fact, only about 2 percent of customers have complained, indicating that an average of 98 people out of 100 are happy with the change. Furthermore, many servers have reported that a number of customers who ask for butter do not complain when they are given margarine instead. Clearly, either these customers do not distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine.

Write a response in which you discuss one or more alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation and explain how your explanation(s) can plausibly account for the facts presented in the argument.

Based on 2 percent of customers have complained about margarine's substituting for butter and many servers' report concerning few complaints from customers who require butter but are given margarine, the writer assumes that these customers either don't distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine. Although the argument might seem reasonable at first glance, it is in fact ill-conceived. And many alternative explanations that could rival the proposed explanation are stated as follows.

In the first place, the fact that 2 percent of customers have complained doesn't indicate that average 98 percent of them are happy with the change. Since it is possible that although people don't like the change, but they don't complain about it. In common life, people don't necessarily complain anything even if they are annoyed, not alone anything they are just not satisfied. Take some of my experience as a customer as an example. After a long time waiting for the butter sandwiches in a famous sandwich store, the sever told me that there were no butter sandwich but some margarine sandwiches, although I loved the butter sandwiches very much, I accepted the margarine ones because of hunger without complaining there. Could it indicate that I was happy with it? Of cause not. I would not buy it if I was not so hungry. The same situation can be said in the argument. That people don't complain about the margarine's substituting for butter doesn't mean they are happy with it, thus the writer's assumption that these customers don't distinguish butter from margarine, or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine isn't necessarily true.

In the second place, the servers' report about few complaints about margarine's instead of butter from customers who required butter doesn't substantiate that these customers don't distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to refer to either butter or margarine. It is possible that these customers are amendable, and when they are given margarine despite of the requirement for butter, they assume that the restaurant are lake of butter that day, thus don't complain about it. Meanwhile maybe these customers know the differences between butter and margarine, and they really prefer butter, but they don't have such high requirement for butter that they must complain about it without the butter. Thus the writer's conclusion doesn't be necessarily totally explained.

Finally, is it possible that customers don't complain about the butter's changing of margarine in words but they complain about it in behavior? Maybe they accept the margarine there in restaurant without complaining, but they won't come to that restaurant again just because of the change. Thus we cannot say that the reasons of the phenomenon that few customers' complaining about the butter' change are that either these customers don't distinguish butter from margarine or they use the term 'butter' to refer to margarine.

To sum it up, many more explanations could rival the proposed explanation as it stands. And the point is to make it clear whether these customers really don't mind the butter's changing.