Argument137 【CSMY作文互改第三小组】第八次作业，不拍对不起党啊？拍了一定回拍！

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【题目】Argument137 137.The following appeared in an editorial in the Mason City newspaper.
"At present, Mason City residents seldom use the nearby Mason River for any kind of recreational activity, even though surveys of the region's residents consistently rank water sports (swimming, fishing, and boating) as a favorite form of recreation. Since there have been complaints about the quality of the water in the river, residents must be avoiding the river because they think that it is not clean enough. But that situation is about to change: the agency responsible for rivers in our region has announced plans to clean up Mason River. Therefore, recreational use of the river is likely to increase, so the Mason City council will need to increase its budget for improvements to the publicly owned lands along the Mason River."当前，Mason市很少利用附近的Mason河来进行娱乐活动，尽管对该地区居的几次调查一直指出他们把水上运动（游泳、垂钓和划船）作为他们最喜欢的娱乐形式。由于曾经存在对于这条河水质的投诉，居一定是因为他们认为河水不够干净才不在这里活动。但这种情况就会改变了：我们地区负责河流管理的部门公布了澄清Mason河的计划。因此，河流的娱乐用途很可能将会增加，因而Mason市的市委有必要增加用于改善Mason河沿岸公共土地的预算。

At first glance, the argument seems sound and plausible. According to the arguer's conclusion, the Mason City (MC) should increase its budget for improvements to the publicly owned lands along the Mason River because the recreational use of this river is possible to increase. However, close scrutiny and careful consideration made on the argument would reveal how dubious and unpersuasive the conclusion is.

To begin with, the arguer unfairly assumes that the recreational activities will increase. However, little evidence is provided by the arguer to substantiate the assumption. Although surveys of the region’s residents who are being surveyed to love water activities most are used to explain the conclusion, the arguer still cannot simply attributed the cause of residents’ seldom using of the nearby Mason river to the pollution of the river. It is highly possible that the river is quit narrow and has an unfavorable geographic condition or there are other places more suitable for water activities attracting the residents of MC. If this is the case, even if the water condition has been greatly improved, the residents of this city will not prefer to take water activities on it. Without ruling out and considering such and other possibilities, the arguer cannot persuade me that the recreational activities on this river will increase.

Even assuming that the recreational activities on this river would increase if the water has been improved, the arguer still relies on another crucially unsubstantiated assumption that the water in the river can be improved. Nevertheless, absent evidence to support this assumption it is entirely possible that the water of this river has been polluted very heavily that the agency’s plan for cleaning up is of no use in the short time. For example, perhaps the project of cleaning up and improving the river water is tremendous and at the same time new pollution produced by factories occurs that even if great effects have been made by the agency it would be to no avail. Under such circumstance, the assumption that the river water will be improved would undoubtedly lead to be abortive.

Even if the above two assumptions have been substantiated by the arguer, the conclusion that the MC council needs to increase its budget for improvements to the publicly owned lands along the Mason river is still dubious. The arguer not only fails to offer any evidence to establish the relationship between the recreational increase and the budgets for improving the publicly owned lands along the river, but also provides no information about the situation of the lands or the significance of the improvement. It is entirely possible that the lands are pretty good that need no improvement. Without considering and eradicating these and other alternative reasons, it is difficult to assess the merit of the arguer’s statement that it is necessary to increase the budget for improving the publicly owned lands because of the increase of recreational activities.

To sum up, the arguer’s reasoning is unconvincing and unpersuasive as it stands. The information and evidence provided in the argument don’t lend strong support to what the arguer claims. To better evaluate the argument and make us more believe the propose the arguer has to provide more evidence that the recreational activities will increase if the river water has been improved, and that it is reasonable for the agency to increase budget for the improvement of the publicly owned lands along the river. Also other alternative factors and possibilities should be taken into account.

[ 本帖最后由 expire7 于 2007-1-25 23:14 编辑 ]