Argument149，离AW还有11天，留链必返~

shadow1987UID: 2605840

A149. The following is a memorandum from the director of personnel to the president of Get-Away Airlines.

"Since our mechanics are responsible for inspecting and maintaining our aircraft, Get-Away Airlines should pay to send them to the Quality-Care Seminar, a two-week seminar on proper maintenance procedures. I recommend this seminar because it is likely to be wise investment, give that the automobile racing industry recently reported that the performance of its maintenance crews perform improved markedly after their crews had attended the seminar. These maintenance crews perform many of the same functions as do our mechanics, including refueling and repairing engines. The money we spend on sending our staff to the seminar will inevitably lead to improved maintenance and thus to greater customer satisfaction along with greater profits for our airline."

In this argument, the author recommend that Get-Away Airlines (GAA) should pay to sent their mechanics to the Quality-Care Seminar, to bolster this conclusion, the author point out that it is totally worth it to make this decision. He assumes that the seminar will improve the crews' maintenance, consequently, the company shall be better satisfying the customers and eventually increase the company's profits. To support his assumption, the author also cites two evidences. The one of them is a report from the automobile racing industry which claim that its maintenance crews made a remarkable improvement by attending the seminar; the other aspect is that the functions of mechanics in two industries are similar. However, while appealing in some aspects, the argument is dubious on several grounds.

In the first place, the mere fact that the seminar, according to the report from automobile racing industry, helps their mechanics improved markedly does not necessarily means that GAA should make the same decision. Perhaps, most of the mechanics from automobile racing industry are apprentices, and while claim less wages, they are unconfident for lack of experience. Thus, attending the seminar really made them more confident and skillful. Conversely, the mechanics in GAA are all senior experts, in this way, they do not actually need to attend such seminars. Or perhaps, the participators in Quality-Care Seminar are all experts especially in automobile racing field but not aeronautics field. Therefore, it is inappropriate to ask the mechanics in Get-Away Airlines to attend this seminar. On the other hand, without further investigation, the authenticity of this report is under doubt. The automobile racing industry might distort the reality in the report for a better propaganda effect. Hence, the author should provide more evidences to prove the reliability of this report.

Secondly, even giving that the two industries' maintenance crews perform almost the same function, it is sill hastily for the author to assert that the GAA will benefit from the seminar as well. Perhaps, the expertise in maintaining aircraft is not likes the automobile's expertise. The ways to refuel and repair the engines in two fields might are dramatically different with each other. Thereby, it is irrational to discuss various kinds of knowledge in one seminar. In short, without ruling out all those possible scenarios, the author simply cannot convince me that the seminar can improve the GAA's maintenance.

Finally, the arguer assumes that it is totally worth it to spend the money on sending their staff to the seminar, because this decision will improve their maintenance and satisfy the customers, and eventually increase the airline's profits. Yet, there seems no sufficient evidence to substantiate this assumption. Even if the report is well-found and the two kinds of expertise are similar, however, the author fails to provide the details about the crews' scale. Perhaps, the quantity of mechanics in the GAA is much more larger than the number in automobile racing industry. In this case, the payment for sending all the mechanics to the seminar might be a large amount of money, so, the author should reappraise the ratio of cost and benefits. Or perhaps, the quality of the aircraft made by GAA is super and their fault rate is pretty low, therefore, their customers could hardly recognize the improvement of the mechanics because they do not need to repair their aircraft frequently. In short, whether it is worth or not is still a question.

In sum, the author's conclusion is based on a series of unsubstantiated assumptions which renders the conclusion unconvincing as it stands. In order to have a more persuasive recommendation, firstly, the author may need to investigate the report and carry out more thorough study about the similarity and differences of two industries. Likewise, to reappraise the ratio of cost and benefit is also very meaningful to convince the president of the company.

lingli_xiaoaiUID: 172506

攻击点1，3不错，2薄弱了一点，我2写得很多，你可以参考一下。
我攻击1没有你那么详解，主要是我当时限时写的，觉得我自己攻击不出来太多东西，就用一句话带过了。关于写argu，我感觉就是把最重要的，和自己再短时间内可以写得比较深的点写多一点。还有就是，我今天想的时候觉得我很喜欢用常识反驳，因为我一直对某范文里面出现的，他说的人一般都不相信评论家的点评，对于电影，大家都是口口相传，所以评论家说好，人估计也不会去看，印象很深刻。觉得这个比空洞得说没证据表面评论家说好得就一定卖座更让人印象深刻。如果这样的例子有的话一点要写。比如我结论中就把客户满意度，写了一整段，就是为了把常识反驳的例子用进去，还有就是因为客户满意度也是作者结论的2点中的一点，所以我就放心大胆的狂写了。。

我的文章只是参考讨论所用。。说不定你去了考场比我考的高，批判吸收就行了

这段有点长了，真的考试我估计写不到那么多，字数540是限时的，但是现在有600＋了，因为我最开始，没有反驳evidence1，就是汽车那个公司的improve不是这个semniar引起的，还有最后建议没那么长，但是点数到了。

TOPIC: ARGUMENT149 - The following is a memorandum from the director of personnel to the president of Get-Away Airlines.

"Since our mechanics are responsible for inspecting and maintaining our aircraft, Get-Away Airlines should pay to send them to the Quality-Care Seminar, a two-week seminar on proper maintenance procedures. I recommend this seminar because it is likely to be a wise investment, given that the automobile racing industry recently reported that the performance of its maintenance crews improved markedly after their crews had attended the seminar. These maintenance crews perform many of the same functions as do our mechanics, including refueling and repairing engines. The money we spend on sending our staff to the seminar will inevitably lead to improved maintenance and thus to greater customer satisfaction along with greater profits for our airline."
WORDS: 540          TIME: 00:30:00          DATE: 7/26/2010 5:58:22 PM


The author suggested that sending its crew to a two-week seminar will definitely improve both the customer satisfaction and leads to greater profits of Get-Away Airlines. This claim although seems plausible based on common sense that people's capability towards their job are likely to improve after training, however, I am not convinced by the evidence shown here and instead, they are insufficient to prove the seminar would leads to improved performance of their crew necessarily, let alone greater customer sanctification for following reasons.

First, the speculated merits of quality-care seminar is based on prior experiences comes form automobile racing industry, but without taking into account the fundamental differences between repairing a racing car that inspecting an aircraft, this suggestion is groundless. Common sense would tell us that maintain a race car is different from an aircraft in many ways. For example, race car is used for sports, that is, when evaluating mechanics performance like engines repair, the speed of repairing during the match matters more than the quality such as comprehensiveness and reliability. It is highly possible that the performance increase after the seminar is due to the seminar was focused on how to complete tasks like engine repair in a shorter amount of time which is useless for aircraft. Obvious reason for air-line industry, the safety is the most important concern, not the speed. So on the of contrary of what proposed by the speaker, that maintenance crews of racing industry basically perform the same functions as their crew, so what benefits the former would benefits the latter, since they actually perform similar tasks according to distinct requirements, the two-week seminar would be useless for staffs at Get-away airlines. Moreover, the speaker not even convincingly prove that fact that the performance of maintenance crews improvement is due to the seminar, maybe there are other factors contribute to the increased performance but neglect by the speaker due to confirmation bias.


Even given that the seminar would improve the performance of their crew, author' claim that after attaining the seminar, the improved maintenance would leads to greater customer satisfaction is still indefensible. I would ask is there any causal relationship between the maintenance of airplanes with customer service. As a customer, as long as the airplane doesn't crash during the trip, he or she probably has no idea of how the airplane is maintained. If this is the case, how the improved maintenance alone would leads to greater customer satisfaction as author suggested. Even given that there are customers are care about that, no evidence suggest that the current maintenance quality is unacceptable and needs to improve, it is possible that the current mechanics are very good at their job and doesn't need to improve further. I would remain unconvinced until the author is given to make the logic link between custom satisfactions with airplane maintenance which is against common sense that if customer service is the problem, people actually doing customer services are those who needs training not mechanics.


Last, the speaker suggests that in addition to greater customer satisfaction, the two-week seminar would also lead to greater profits, which is also lacking any supporting evidence. First, the author fails to demonstrate the direct linkage between the profits they are making now to the maintenance quality of their airplanes, it is possible that their airplanes are at their best conditions, therefore neither additional work is required nor this alone could leads to greater profits. In addition, the author didn't mention anything about how this two-week seminar costs, it is possible the expense of sending all their crews to the seminar is high, and as a result, their profits decrease after the seminar instead of increase.

In sum, after carefully evaluating the argument, I remain doubtful towards the conclusion that the seminar is necessary and it would benefit the company as the author suggested. In order to make a better argument, I would suggest the author to investigate what courses are actually offered by this seminar and how exactly it would benefits their employees. In addition, providing evidence suggest that customs are currently unsatisfied about the airplane maintenance to justify the training at the first place. Finally, in order to accept this suggestion as a feasible one, cost analysis should be performed to prove the profits of their company would benefit from it instead of being harmed by it.

shadow1987UID: 2605840

第一次拜读小哀姐文章，不胜惶恐啊~

我还是常规性的做一下阅读记录，以后回过头来看能方便一些：

1：开头段只用一句话paraphrase，很自然，首段主要简述了自己接下来的反驳思路。首段我觉得是个分水岭，graders一看就知道深浅了，需要完整的复述文章的多半水平不高，但是这样操作的好处是求稳，省时间，不怕没话说，在考场上边码字边就把文章的逻辑就理清楚了，而且我也见过这样操作拿高分的文章。

2：文章还是按照主次顺序进行进攻，找到相对比较严重的错误类比，而且这个错大多情况下还是作为主要的逻辑漏洞出现在argument中的。虽然知道应该先主后次，但是我总是写不习惯，回头可以练练看。

3：不求点多，但求点深，这是一个挺好的思路。但是这有一个dilemma，在做到多点开花展现思维广度的同时就很难把其中某个点写得特别深，反之亦然，graders到底更看重什么呢？

4：关于customer satisfaction这个点抓得很好， 我根本没想那么深，属于一句话带过，看了小哀姐文章才发现里面大有乾坤。

最后记录一些文中感觉自己不太常用的表达：

seems plausible based on common sense：按常识看来有些道理；the speculated merits：预想的优势；
taking into account the fundamental differences：没把……考虑在内；
confirmation bias：偏见验证（绝大多数argument都犯这毛病）；indefensible：站不住脚的；

lingli_xiaoaiUID: 172506

3：不求点多，但求点深，这是一个挺好的思路。但是这有一个dilemma，在做到多点开花展现思维广度的同时就很难把其中某个点写得特别深，反之亦然，graders到底更看重什么呢？

this is really a dilemma....my experience is you go depth in one point when 1) it is really important 2)you are really good at it. otherwise, it is better to 多点开花展现思维广度. Since discuss things in depth is one way to impress the rater, but don't go over that than.

Another thing is maybe you can try do things like for 1 paragraph, you discuss board ideas, and for anther paragraph, you discuss one thing in depth. Collectively, you show the rater, you can do both. I guess if you really can achieve this, 6 point in Argument should be possible.  That is what I think the best strategy for this, that is, you can do it all. Like combination of what I wrote (which tends to be extensively only no one point) with your point 1,3, then it should became a really good assay.

shadow1987UID: 2605840

4# lingli_xiaoai

Good idea！It sounds terrific. Thanks, I can try this strategy~ lol~
I think it requires a lot of practices, one should really qualified enough for both thinking styles~
Whatever, it worth a shot!