ARGUMENT163 【0706G－cheer作文互改小组】第十五次作业 考前一周 大家狠狠拍！

christine-sevenUID: 2132371

TOPIC: ARGUMENT163 - The following is taken from the editorial section of the local newspaper in Rockingham.

"In order to save a considerable amount of money, Rockingham's century-old town hall should be torn down and replaced by the larger and more energy-efficient building that some citizens have proposed. The old town hall is too small to comfortably accommodate the number of people who are employed by the town. In addition, it is very costly to heat the old hall in winter and cool it in summer. The new, larger building would be more energy efficient, costing less per square foot to heat and cool than the old hall. Furthermore, it would be possible to rent out some of the space in the new building, thereby generating income for the town of Rockingham."
WORDS: 458          TIME: 0:30:00          DATE: 2007-3-8

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In this argument, the speaker suggests that the old town hall should be torn down and be replaced by a new building, which is larger and more energy-efficient, and thereby generate more income for the town of Rockingham. However, I find this argument logically weak in several respects, as discussed below.

To begin with, by claiming that the recommendation is put forward by some citizens of the town, the author provides no information about how many people have proposed to do so. If it was just a small group of people who thought the old town hall was neither large enough nor energy-efficient and proposed to replace it by a new one, we cannot be convinced by this suggestion.

In the second place, even the century-old town hall is as claimed to be too small to comfortably accommodate all the employment of the town, we cannot be convinced by the speaker's assumption that the proposed new building will be more energy efficient and thereby save a considerable amount of money. Although it might be costly for the old town hall to heat or cool, it is entirely possible that the new building is even more consuming than the original one. For example, the new building is larger in size which demands more energy to heat or cool as the common sense informed. Or perhaps the equipments in the new building are more advanced which demands more electricity than before. Without taking into consideration and ruling out these and other possibilities, we cannot accept the speaker's recommendation to replace the old town hall in purpose of saving money.

Another major logic flaw with this argument is that the speaker is too confident to draw the conclusion that they can generate income through the way of renting out some of the space in the new building. He may fail to consider the possibility that the new town hall may be not large enough for people other than the ever expanding employment of the town. Even there is enough space to rent out, perhaps people may not be interested in choosing the municipal office building as their favorable sites for work or any other purposes. For this matter, the town can not generate such income through this way. On the contrary, perhaps the expense they took to build this new town hall might far exceeds that of the money they save in energy respect or they earn by rent some space out. If so, the author's recommendation may account to rather poor advice on the basis of this unreliable assumption.

In conclusion, the speaker's recommendation is premature in many respects thus requires more reconsideration and further survey to make sure that the proposed new town hall can surely achieve the desired result for the town of Rockingham.

谢谢拍砖！^_^