qbu 5-6月作文练习

qbuUID: 3612188

tesolchina 发表于 2015-5-28 23:49
貌似你没有把练习楼层的链接发到练习帖上去 因此未能参与互改

这样啊。那我从下周开始吧。老师这周我写的你就不用改了。我自己看看就好

qbuUID: 3612188

Argu 71


71. The following is a letter to the editor of the Waymarsh Times.

"Traffic here in Waymarsh is becoming a problem. Although just three years ago a state traffic survey showed that the typical driving commuter took 20 minutes to get to work, the commute now takes closer to 40 minutes, according to the survey just completed. Members of the town council already have suggested more road building to address the problem, but as well as being expensive, the new construction will surely disrupt some of our residential neighborhoods. It would be better to follow the example of the nearby city of Garville. Last year Garville implemented a policy that rewards people who share rides to work, giving them coupons for free gas. Pollution levels in Garville have dropped since the policy was implemented, and people from Garville tell me that commuting times have fallen considerably. There is no reason why a policy like Garville's shouldn't work equally well in Waymarsh."

Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument.





According to the letter, Waymarsh should introduce a policy similar to that of Garville to encourage more drivers to share rides with others to solve a perceived traffic problem.  This policy will be better than the road building project proposed by the city council.  To evaluate this argument, we need more evidence about the surveys indicating the traffic problem, the policy implemented in Garville that is now proposed for Waymarsh, as well as its strengths and weaknesses relative to the road construction plan.  

To begin with, we need to examine the surveys more critically to decide if there is indeed a traffic problem in Waymarsh.
Editor argues that there is a traffic problem existed because present survey show that commuters take more time driving to work comparing with 3 years ago .However ,in order to prove the validity of this argument, more information about both surveys is needed.  Frist, it is not clear about situation of respondents in the survey for both present and 3 years ago. If the situation of respondents between the surveys have a huge discrepancy, then we cannot conclude the existence of the traffic problem. For example, the respondents 3 years ago works at mid-night, thus had less time to drive to work. Furthermore, even though respondents of survey for present and 3 years ago have similar situation, we still lack the total amount of respondents to verify the problem. To be specific, the number of respondents wasn't informed in both surveys. It is possible that only about 10 commuters participated for each survey. In that case, it is not convincing to say the traffic time has increased. Thus, more evidence about situation of respondents and number of participants for each survey are requried.


In addition, we need to collect more information about how the policy has changed the traffic in Garville and how a similar policy will affect people’s behaviors in Waymarsh. In the letter, editor claims that the reduction in pollution in Garville are both due to the "Share-ride Reward" policy. Indeed, the claim holds true when the above policy was the only action implemented contemporary. But, we are not sure about the existence of other related policy or action. Maybe government also shut down several heavy polluted factories and thus improve the situation of pollution. Moreover, the editor also argues that the policy shorten the commuting time from people of Garville. Similar as above, we need to know if there is any other factors influence the commuting time. Also, we need more information about who and how many people told the editor about commuting time. Simply referring to “people of Garville" is not valid enough for concluding that argument. Furthermore, even though such policy did in fact improve the traffic time in the Garville, it doesn't mean that the same effect would also apply to Waywash. Maybe people from Waywash reject this policy because of safety and privacy concern. In conclusion, we can evaluation the effectiveness, only when we know more about the attitude of Waywash residents towards this policy.

Finally, we need to compare the cost and benefits of the ride sharing policy with the proposed road construction project. First, road construction might be expensive at one time, but it can also last for a very long time. On the other hand, share-ride reward policy requires government provides free gas for a long period of time, which could be even more expensive overall. Moreover, the road construction might bring noise for the residents, but government can offer subsides and money to compensate the residents. For example, government can provide low rate loan for those residents to buy a new house elsewhere.  Thus, we can only make our final decision after we know the total cost of each plan. Before that, it is hard to decide on which plan is better.

In conclusion, while the proposed policy seems useful, we need to collect more information to address the issues discussed above to evaluate the soundness of the argument.