arguemnt241 【0806G-Sunbird小组】第7次作业

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"When XYZ lays off employees, it pays Delany Personnel Firm to offer those employees assistance in creating resumés and developing interviewing skills, if they so desire. Laid-off employees have benefited greatly from Delany's services: last year those who used Delany found jobs much more quickly than did those who did not. Recently, it has been proposed that we use the less-expensive Walsh Personnel Firm in place of Delany. This would be a mistake because eight years ago, when XYZ was using Walsh, only half of the workers we laid off at that time found jobs within a year. Moreover, Delany is clearly superior, as evidenced by its bigger staff and larger number of branch offices. After all, last year Delany's clients took an average of six months to find jobs, whereas Walsh's clients took nine."

提纲:
1．首先，作者的结论基于一个没有被证实的隐含前提1——XYZ仅仅因为Delany价格高而不选Delany。完全有可能有别的更重要的原因。比如Walsh除了帮助下岗员工写简历和培训他们的面试技巧外，还提供给他们的顾客很多非常重要的就业信息，还有可能Walsh可以直接向一些公司推荐员工，提高顾客找到工作的可能性。而这些是Delany不提供的。

2．其次，八年前Walsh的状况并不能说明现状。

3．Delany有更多的员工，和更多的分支办事处；并不表示这些办事处和员工都从事帮助下岗职工再就业的事情。

4．去年，Delany的顾客平均只用了六个月的时间就找到工作了，而Walsh的顾客需要9个月的时间。并不能代表今年的状况，而且调查的数据库是所有的顾客，并不能说明对于XYZ公司的下岗职工也是如此。
全文：

In this argument, the author concludes that we should not use the less-expensive W Firm. To support his conclusion, the author refers to the performance of W Firm 8 years ago and compares two companies using two facts. However, the argument suffers from several critical flaws.

First of all, relying on the fact that only half of the workers XYZ Company laid off found job within a year, the author concludes that W Firm fails to be competent for its job. Yet many factors can account for the poor performance of W Firm. In fact, it is likely that the economic environment 8 years ago is so worse that many people can not find a job. Or it is possible that the standard of laid-off workers is not very strict, thus merely workers performing very bad were laid off, who often lack the ability of competition. Any serioe, if true, would heavily undermine the conclusion.

Secondly, the author claims that D company can provide much better service based on the comparison between the two companies on two aspects- the size of company and the last year's performance. However the comparison fails to support its conclusion. Firstly, the relative larger size does not mean that the efficient and the level of training of D company is better than those of W company. In addition, the fact that last year Delany's clients took an average of six months to find jobs, whereas Walsh's clients took nine cannot necessarily prove that D perform better than W. It is likely that the clients of two companies are from different areas of work, the demand for different jobs may lead to the different time for clients for finding a job. Therefore, lacking the information of whether the composition of their clients are the same or further detail information of the two companies,  the author cannot convince us that D is better than W.

Finally, even though D performs better than W company, there is no indication that this recommendation would be a mistake. Perhaps the financial circumstance of XYZ Company is not very well and a reduced cost for the running of the company is required, considering the lower price of W company's service, it is maybe a good choice for XYZ company while providing its laid-off clerk a service for finding job, although less is better than none.

In sum, this argument fails to be cogent due to its critical logical flaws. To better support its conclusion, more information and evidence should be provided.