【Flyer杀G作文组】7.19-Argument241-By CC

师大菜菜UID: 2838404

TOPIC: ARGUMENT241 - The following appeared in a memo at the XYZ company.

"When XYZ lays off employees, it pays Delany Personnel Firm to offer those employees assistance in creating resumes 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."
WORDS: 448
TIME: 00:30:00
DATE: 2010/7/19 21:38:52

In this argument, the author assumes that it would be a mistake that XYZ use the less-expensive Walsh Personnel Firm (WPF) in place of Delany. Although the argument might be reasonable at first glance, it suffers several logical fallacies which I will discuss as follow.

To begin with, the arguer assumes that employees have benefited greatly from Delany's services for the reason that those who used Delany found jobs much more quickly than did those who did not last year. However, the author fails to provide more information about the two groups of people. It is very likely that those people who used Delany is more active to prepare to seek job, therefore, they found jobs quickly. It is also possible that Delany do nothing to help worker, those people used Delany found jobs quickly just because they are lucky.
In short, the argument is definitely flawed unless the arguer can convince me that these and other possible scenarios are unlikely.

What's more, the arguer assumes that Delany is superior to WPF because of a poor performance of Walsh eight years ago. Nevertheless, there is no guarantee that it is necessarily the case. It is very possible that eight years ago the economy was suffering a crisis and it was very hard to find a job. What causes people find jobs more quickly is that there are many jobs available today. Without ruling out these possibilities, the conclusion of author is not convincing.

In addition, even if I accepted that WPF did not perform well eight years ago, the author still cannot conclude that Delany is superior to WPF today, because the company’s situation is changed with time flies. It is possible that with the experience of eight years, the WPF have developed greatly, its quality of serving is also improved. In the contrast, the situation of Delany in the past year turned to worse. As a result, WPF is superior to Delany. The author fails to provide the current situations of the two corporations, the conclusion is not persuasive.

Last but not least, in order to support the conclusion the author makes a comparison between the two companies on their staff and number of branch offices. However, the size of staff and number of branch offices do not necessarily indicate the quality and effectiveness of a company’s service. It is possible that those staff and branch office need more cost and leads Delany lacking of human and material resources to help their customers.

To sum up, the arguer's conclusion is based on the valid data or sound reasoning. In order to enforce the conclusion, it is necessary that give evidence to convince us that the people found jobs more quickly contributed to the assistance of Delany. What’s more, in order to prove Delany is superior to WPF, the author should also give more detailed information about the current situations of the two companies.