argument 16 水上运动，第一次写，求指导！！谢谢！！

Echocomeon

题目：16.In surveys Mason City residents rank watersports (swimming, boating, and fishing) among their favorite recreational activities. The Mason River flowing through the city is rarely used for these pursuits, however, and the city park department devotes little of its budget to maintaining riverside recreational facilities. For years there have been complaints from residents about thequality of the river's water and the river'ssmell. In response, the state has recently announcedplans to clean up Mason River. Use of the river forwater sports is, therefore, sure to increase. The citygovernment should for that reason devote more money in thisyear's budget to riverside recreational facilities.

The argument is flawed for numerousreasons. Primarily, the argument is based on the unwarrantedassumption that after cleaning up Mason River, use of the river for watersports is sure to increase, rendering its main conclusion, that the governmentshould devote more money to riverside recreational facilities, invalid.

To begin with, the argument fails toprovide any justification that the survey is reliable. Did they poll all of theresidents? Maybe just some special ones. If they happened to poll someone inwater sports clubs, then they definitely rank water sports among theirfavorite. Even though they did poll all of the residents, it didn’t mean all oftheir answers are dependable. Maybe some of them didn’ttake those questionnaires seriously and answers them casually. Besides,saying, “Oh, I like water sports, it’s my favorite recreational activities”doesn’t mean they really will do them, let alone do them frequently. In thosecases, this survey doesn’t have any basis, so it’s not convincing.

What’s more, the argument also leaves manyother unanswered questions. Even though their answers are credible and thesurvey is reliable, the author fails to consider if Mason River is suitable forthose water sports favored by residents in Mason, and if residents are willingto use the river for recreational activities. For example, liking swimmingdoesn’t mean they will swim on the Mason River. Maybe they prefer to swim in aswimming pool or some other rivers. They may want to maintain their habitualexercise habits instead of changing them just because of a new clean river.Moreover, maybe the Mason River is very far away from residential areas, mostpeople are unwilling to dive for a long time to there, so even the statecleaned up the river, not many residents would go there for water sports.Therefore, use of the river for water sports won’t sure to increase and thegovernment’s budge may miss their mark.

Finally, even though the Mason River issuitable for water sports and people are willing to go there, the argument stillclaims without warrant the effectiveness of the proposed plan. Announcing itdoesn’t mean it will be disposed as clean as they thought. The author omitsmany factors that may lead to counterproductive consequence, for instance,pollution level is so high that we cannot recover it, or staffs don’t work verycarefully and their work efficiency is very low. All of those cases can showthis conclusion is invalid.

To sum up, because the argument makesseveral unwarranted assumptions, it fails to make a convincing case that thegovernment should devote more money to riverside recreational facilities.