argument220 十二月高强组第一周周五作业

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题目：ARGUMENT 220 - The following appeared in an article in a magazine for writers.

"A recent study showed that in describing a typical day's conversation, people make an average of 23 references to watching television and only 1 reference to reading fiction. This result suggests that, compared with the television industry, the publishing and bookselling industries are likely to decline in profitability. Therefore, people who wish to have careers as writers should acquire training and experience in writing for television rather than for print media."
字数：492          用时：0:48:03          日期：2006-11-22

1调查的不能支持作者论点
调查结果不可信。
电视与小说不可比因为电视比小说范围大，而且电视天生就比小说与日常生活更相关。
2 调查不能证明出版和销售业利润下降
3 没有证据说明要找个写作工作得有点事方面的培训与经验。
The arguer claims that people who want to have careers as writers should acquire training and experience in writing for television rather than for print media. To justify this claim, the arguer cites a survey that people make an average of 23 references to watching television while only 1 reference to reading fiction. And the arguer also concludes from the result of the survey that the publishing and bookselling industries are likely to lose profits compared with television industry. The arguer's claim was flawed in several aspects.

First, the survey is specious and therefore lends little credible support to the arguer's claim. One the one hand, the result of the survey is suspect in that the arguer fails to provide that the sample of the survey is representative, the method is scientific and the amount of respondents are adequate to make reasonable conclusion. On the other hand, it is problematic to compare the cites of fictions to those of television in respect that television has a larger range than fiction do and television programs, such as weather report and news, are inherently more relevant to people’s daily lives.

Secondly, merely based on the specious survey, the arguer's conclusion that the publishing and bookselling industries are likely to decline in profitability is unconvincing. It is very likely that people tend to talk about watching television while they are still willing to read books. The comparative less references of reading fictions are not necessary means they are not interested in fictions. Moreover, fictions are just one segment of the whole book categories. Even if it is true that people tend not to read fictions, the bookselling and publishing industries can still make profits in many other sorts of book such as textbooks, science books, and training books. There are no evidences to illustrate the decline of the profit. Absent justifiable information of the profitability of both publishing and bookselling industries and the television industry, at present as well as the past, we cannot agree with the arguer’s claim.

Last but not least, the claim that people should acquire training and experience in writing for television rather that for print media in order to find a writing job is irrational and unreasonable. No facts have shown that the television industry needs more writers than publishing industry do and it is easier for a writer to find a job with trainings and experience in writing for television. Common sense informs us that the television programs, such as opera, take shows , demand far fewer writers than publishing industry do.

To sum up, the arguer's claim is unconvincing as it stands. To strengthen the claim, the arguer has to provide more information about the survey to prove us that the survey is representative and the references in conversation are proportional to the popularity of Medias. In addition, the arguer has to offer credible evidence that the profits of printing and bookselling industries are actually decline. To better evaluate the claim, we also have to know the need of writes for television and print media respectively.

[ 本帖最后由 waidsw 于 2006-11-24 22:53 编辑 ]