[a习作temp] Argument197 【模考的都是低频啊】请狠拍 [复制链接]

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电梯直达

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发表于 2007-7-29 21:01:49 |只看该作者 |倒序浏览

TOPIC: ARGUMENT197 - The following appeared as part of a recommendation made by a faculty member to the president of a large university.

"Never once in our 150-year history as a university have we clarified our objectives. How, then, can we hope to adapt as an institution to the new challenges facing higher education. As a first step in this evolutionary process, therefore, we should send out questionnaires asking faculty members why they teach, asking students what they want from this university, and asking former students what they gained from their own education here. When the replies come in, we can tabulate them and formulate an official statement of our educational mission. This will surely result in improved programs at our university."
WORDS: 425 TIME: 00:30:00 DATE: 2007-7-29 20:29:31

Giving some evidence and analyses, the author recommends questionnaires to the students, teachers and even the former students to know the objectives of this university. This argument seems sound and convictive on the surface, however, a close scrutiny reveals its flaw.

The first problem in the argument is that whether the university's objective clarified or not is uncertain, not just as the author's assertion never once in 150 years have they clarified their objective. With the development with society, the objective of education alters. And the first step we should take in this evolutionary process is not to survey our objective but amend it to the period topic. Lack of information of the history of the university, the author could not convince me they need an objective.

Next, grant an objective is surely needed as the first step in our evolutionary, whether through the questionnaires we will get the objective of our university is doubtable. As the objective of a university is not determined by the mere words by teachers, students or the former students, the proposals of public and the contribution to the society should be taken into consideration. Besides, even assuming these suggestions from these people all include in this questionnaires, we could not identify this as our objective as they want to just tabulate and formulate this statistics. But this table could not indicate this objective, as most of the people will share different views, and which should be taken as the objective is not certain in this argument. In short, without ruling out these explanations, the author could not get the objective ultimately.

Finally, even if the author could substantiate all the assumption above, the author could not deduce they will improve their programs due to this clarity in objective. The author ignores some important factors in the quality of the program, such as the ability of the teacher, the talent of the students, and even the methods taken in the program. Maybe this university are lacking of distinguished teachers, so the program will not improve although their objective has been clarified. Or perhaps their students are little interested in the program, as they think this program is dull and boring. So, lack of information of the program makes the author's conclusion implicit.

To summarize, lots of assumption and false analyses make this argument hard to accept. To bolster this, the author should provide more information of the university's history and more scientific methods in analyzing the questionnaires. Besides, more information about the program is needed to better assess this argument.