Argument17 sisong2003--Hamming小组作文第十次冲刺

sisong2003UID: 2154005

TOPIC: ARGUMENT17 - The following appeared in a letter to the editor of the Walnut Grove town newspaper.

"Walnut Grove's town council has advocated switching from EZ Disposal (which has had the contract for trash collection services in Walnut Grove for the past ten years) to ABC Waste, because EZ recently raised its monthly fee from $2,000 to $2,500 a month, whereas ABC's fee is still $2,000. But the town council is mistaken; we should continue using EZ. EZ collects trash twice a week, while ABC collects only once. Moreover, EZ-which, like ABC, currently has a fleet of 20 trucks-has ordered additional trucks. Finally, EZ provides exceptional service: 80 percent of respondents to last year's town survey agreed that they were 'satisfied' with EZ's performance."
WORDS: 415          TIME: 上午 00:35:00          DATE: 2007-1-26
提纲：
1.2次收集垃圾可能是多余的
2.无证据表明新增加的车会服务WG
3.调查不可信
In this argument, the author recommends that Walnut Grove (WG) town should continue using EZ for collecting trash. To support his recommendation, the author sites the comparison of the two companies that EZ collects twice a week while ABC collects only once. The author also sites that EZ has ordered additional trucks and 80 percent of respondents to a survey agreed they were 'satisfied' with EZ's service. However, there are several logical flaws in this argument, which render it unconvincing as it stands.

To begin with, the author rest on the assumption that EZ collects trash twice a week would make the service better than the ABC’s. However, this may be not necessary the case. Lacking evidence of whether it is enough for the trash disposal company collecting once a week, it is entirely possible that collecting trash once a week is enough for the WG's residents. Thus it is unnecessary for the WG's residents to spend additional 500 dollars monthly for a useless additional service.

In addition, the author claims rely further on the assumption that EZ's additional trucks were totally used for the service of collecting WG's trash. However, this is might not be possibly the case. Without information about the use of the additional trucks of EZ, it is equally possible that these additional trucks would be used in another town. Therefore, the residents of WG will not be serviced in these new trucks.

Finally, the validity of the recent survey is doubted. The author claims that 80 percent of the respondents to last year's town survey agree that they are satisfied with EZ's performance. However, the author provides no evidence about the figure of the total respondents. Perhaps 200 residents were surveyed, but only 20 response. Obviously 80 percent of 20 respondents can not be representative of the general residents. Or it is possible that 80 percent of residents agreed they were satisfied with their service because they never tried other companies' service in the past ten years. And if they tried the service of ABC, the result of this survey might be totally different.
Without ruling out these possibilities, the reliability of the survey is suspected.

To sum up, the argument is weak for the logical fallacies mentioned above. To make it stronger, the author has to provide more information of the necessary of twice trash collecting a week and the purpose of the additional trucks. To better evaluate it, the author must convince us of the validity of the survey.

tomato217UID: 2126636

推荐把下面这篇帖子看一下，有专门以这道题为例讲a应该怎么写，强烈推荐！

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