Argument220【0806G-永不言弃小组】第4次作业 by worldbaby

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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."
Argument220【0806G-永不言弃小组】第4次作业 by worldbaby  
Data: 2007-12-15   Words:514  Time: 60minutes
In the argument, the author states that the profitability belongs to the publishing and bookselling industries is possible to decrease due to the lower reference of reading fiction compared to that of television. The author further states that people pursuing careers as writers, instead of for print media, should acquire training and experience in writing for television. At the first glance, the argument seems reasonable, but a clear inspection reveals it based on a suspicious logic and it ultimately remains unconvincing.
Firstly, it assumed that a fact that the frequency of referring of reading fiction is much lower, comparing to that of watching television. The aforementioned result is worthy of suspicion, since the author failed to provide the sufficient evidence that study is based on a enough sample, which means the result stems from a representative study. For example, such study as the ones based on the professional professors or officials are of significance disparate from the one based on the blue-collars major in manufacturing industry. So lacking of details concerning the background of people taking part in the survey undermined the presumption of later induction.
Secondly, the author assumes a direct causal relationship between the lower reference of reading fiction and the declination in profitability of publishing and bookselling industries. While there is no cause and effect connection definitely demonstrated in the argument. One the one hand, the lower reference of reading fiction does not indicate its declining profit Considering the characters of conversation, concentrating on the ability of raising topic, it is apparent that the television bears more opportunity than that of fiction book. For television involves more entertaining topics and news in and aboard, and dairy news surrounding. On the other hand, even the decrease of reading fiction result in its declining profit. It is not safe that the phenomena will occurred in the publishing and bookselling industries. Since in spite of the fiction publish, the industry mentioned include newspapers, pastime magazines, and also the academic journals etc. The author fails to address these additional kinds of publication, which critically weakened its result.  
Finally, the arguer assumes that the people wishing to have a career as writers, rather than for print media, should acquire training and experience in writing for television. First of all, although we concede the decrease in profitability indeed exists, there is no direct effect on the tendency of emphasizing training experience in writing on print media rather than television. Furthermore, even such causal relationship is true, there are many other possible reasons can not lead to the conclusion. For example, many television programme are based on the text of print media. Writers who are good at writing for television may not be qualified to that professional work. Without ruling out such possibilities, the conclusion is untenable.
In summary, the argument ignores several logical possibilities that severely undermine its premise. Without confirming the causal relationship between the lower reference and the decreasing profitability, and addressing the different possible reasons for the changes of career training and experience, the argument is fail to convince the readers about the accuracy of the conclusion.