4. The following appeared in a letter from a homeowner to a friend.
"Of the two leading real estate firms in our town—Adams Realty and Fitch Realty—Adams Realty is clearly superior. Adams has 40 real estate agents; in contrast, Fitch has 25, many of whom work only part-time. Moreover, Adams' revenue last year was twice as high as that of Fitch and included home sales that averaged $168,000, compared to Fitch's $144,000. Homes listed with Adams sell faster as well: ten years ago I listed my home with Fitch, and it took more than four months to sell; last year, when I sold another home, I listed it with Adams, and it took only one month. Thus, if you want to sell your home quickly and at a good price, you should use Adams Realty."
Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure to explain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if the assumptions prove unwarranted.
word：478 In this argument, the author comes to the conclusion that if someone wants to sell his/her home more quickly and at a better price, he/she should choose Adams Realty (AR) rather than Fitch Realty(FR). To support this argument, the arguer shows some numbers such as the two companies' real estate, the construction of the employees, the homes' sale situation and the houses' averaged time cost after listed. As following discussed, the author's argument is not well supported by the evidence.
Firstly, the arguer says that if we want to let our home to be sold more quickly and at a better price, we should choose AR. As we all know, the house's price is decided by multiple conditions: the age of the house, the house's damage situation, the location and the relative environment of the house, the quantity of its previous owners. These conditions can all have some impact on the house's selling. We can never sell out real estate more quickly or at a better price just by rightly choosing a real estate firms.
Secondly, even if the real estate firms have a lot of influence on the houses' selling. We can not draw a conclusion that Adams Realty is better than Fitch Realty just by the material provided in the argument. Adams has 40 real estate agents but Fitch has 25, but it doesn't mean that AR's real state is more than FR's. It is very possible that every real estate of the FR's is bigger than AR's. And even the FR's employees are all part time employees, but FR may has much more employees than AR. So the FR's employees' whole working time is more than AR's. And the last year's average selling situation can't present this year's. Perhaps after last year's poor business, FR has improved itself a lot and it will do much better than AR in the future.
Finally, just accept the view point that AR is better than FR. It never means that every houses sold by AR can get a better pay back than by FR. Maybe, the kind of real estate which FR is good at selling is totally different from the AR's. The arguer also points out that his house sold by AR 1 year ago cost less time than the house sold by FR 10 years ago. We all know that the market is a time-varying system. Even the same house can be sold at different price at different time. Maybe the arguer's house sold last year can get a better price at FR if it were sold this year.
In sum, the conclusion reached in this argument is not well supported. To strengthen its claim, the arguer should provide stronger evidence to show that AR can sell every real estate better than FR at all the time, which, as I can see, is not very easy.
8. The following appeared in a memo from the director of student housing at Buckingham College.
"To serve the housing needs of our students, Buckingham College should build a number of new dormitories. Buckingham's enrollment is growing and, based on current trends, will double over the next 50 years, thus making existing dormitory space inadequate. Moreover, the average rent for an apartment in our town has risen in recent years. Consequently, students will find it increasingly difficult to afford off-campus housing. Finally, attractive new dormitories would make prospective students more likely to enroll at Buckingham."
Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument. Word:470
Grounding on the reason that the dormitories will be inadequate in the future, the author suggests to build more dormitories to meet the housing needs of students, after which he/she concludes that sufficient dormitories would increase students' enrollment at Buckingham. However, after scrutinizing the evidence the author provides, some logical fallacies can be found.
In the first place, the author indicates that new dormitories would be more likely to attract students to enroll. But it is worth a second considering whether the condition of dormitories is an important factor to the students who are choosing their university, where they may want better education more than an environment to live in. There may be other determinant facets rather than the condition of dormitories, such as the academic atmosphere of the college, the concrete major the students are interested in, the location and history of the college, so on and so forth. To make the argument more convincing, the author has to provide more information about the indexes students care about while choosing colleges.
Though admitting that the condition of dormitories is a determinant to the students, the evidence that the dormitories will be lacking in the next 50 years in this argument is also untenable. The current trends may be a suitable basis of analyzing the next year or the next two years’ situation, yet it is unwise to hastily predict how the situation would be in the long run of time as many as 50 years. Even it may be possible that 50 years later there would be no this college at all. The author should be more objective about the prediction of the dormitory needs in the future or offer more evidence for supporting this argument.
It is also unwise to conclude that the college would need more dormitory merely because the rent of apartments has risen in recent years. For one thing, everything changes over time. There may be a crush on the rent of the apartments and the students can afford themselves again. Even if the rent keeps rising still, other ways of tackling this problem is also accessible. For instance, several students can share the rent and they can afford a small part of the sum of the rent. For another thing, the rent rising up off-campus may be less expensive than on-campus. Without detailed evidence about the comparison with both of the rent on-campus and off-campus in the future, no conclusion of the students’ choice could be made.
In sum, more prerequisites should be considered about whether to build new dormitories. It’s precipitous to make such rash decisions without finding out the real factors the students are concerning and the valid evidence that the need of dormitories will indeed rise up. More detailed information should be provided and the author should scrutinize the argument thoughtfully.作者: jz20000cn 时间: 2012-1-21 22:05
楼主很牛，写得太好了！作者: 竹林中人 时间: 2012-1-21 23:19
总的感觉不错，结构、表达和逻辑，计息加油，明天再细拍作者: Autowire 时间: 2012-1-23 16:40
谢谢~求细拍~作者: lukebrehm 时间: 2012-1-25 18:24
Very nicely done! It all seemed very well thought out as well as written.
There was one sentence in the second argument that was very poorly written: Even it may be possible that 50 years later there would be no this college at all.
It would be better like this:
It is even possible that in 50 years this college would not even be around anymore.
