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提纲：
1.nationwide不具有代表性。
2.competitor的高价格和高销量和结构没有必然联系。
3.群众的意见可能被误解。 |
Argument
新G题号：59
题目：The following appeared in a memo from the president of Bower Builders, a company that constructs new homes.
A nationwide survey reveals that the two most-desired home features are a large family room and a large, well-appointed kitchen. A number of homes in our area built by our competitor Domus Construction have such features and have sold much faster and at significantly higher prices than the national average. To boost sales and profits, we should increase the size of the family rooms and kitchens in all the homes we build and should make state-of-the-art kitchens a standard feature. Moreover, our larger family rooms and kitchens can come at the expense of the dining room, since many of our recent buyers say they do not need a separate dining room for family meals."
写作要求：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.
This argument is well presented yet far-fetched. It lays a claim that they should increase the size of the family rooms and kitchens in all the homes they build and make state-of-the-art kitchens a standard feature in order to boost sales and profits. Nevertheless, this recommendation is in effect definitely impractical due several apparent flaws after a close scrutiny, albeit it may appear plausible at a cursory glance.
First off, a threshold problem arises in this argument that the author clearly presumes that the nationwide survey is representative. He thinks the survey could be all the same regardless of scope of it. However, this contention is open to a number of interpretations. Perhaps the nationwide survey includes diverse situations where small family rooms and kitchen are more desired in some regions. We would never if the nationwide survey could reflect the situation of only a small location compared with the whole nation, because there might be different climates and cultures and other such factors affecting different areas. Hence, without accounting for as well as ruling out other likely scenarios, by no means could the author assumes that the nationwide survey is convincing.
Moreover, even though the author might be able to provide evidence for us to deduce a solution to the problem presented above afterwards, the argument still maintains ill-conceived. Another problem lies in the author’s assumption of perceiving a number of homes in their area built by their competitor company as the cause of much faster sales and higher prices. It may be reasonable that the booming of the business of their competitor company might be related to the feature they build, but it’s totally possible that there are other factors influencing the sales of the company. For example, the competitor should have other means to attract consumers by wiser strategy of advertisement or better fame based on the past experience of their business. To corroborate his point, the author should pay a close heed to as well as cope with the representative possibilities of other factors affecting the sales. Only with evidence of ruling out other factors could he bolster his recommendation.
Ultimately, even if the foregoing assumptions might turn out to be supported by ensuing evidence, a crucial problem remains that the author assumes that the buyers’ opinion could be representative of all buyers of their company. But this doesn’t make sense since we don’t even know the details of this survey. In this light, it’s reasonable to cast doubts upon the author’s presumption which I reject as inadequate, in that the buyers might occupy only a slight proportion of the whole number of buyers. Or the author might simply misunderstand the opinion of them. What if they prefer going outside for meals to having meals in the dining room? In this case, they might be implying that they would rather go outside for dinner than have a bad dining room. Pursuing this line of reasoning, it proves to be the author’s responsibility to mull over his assumptions and then provide relative evidence so as to pave the way for a more tenable argument.
In retrospect, it seems precipitous for the author to jump to the conclusion based on a series of problematic premises. To dismiss the specter of implausibility of this argument, the author ought to come to grips with all existing flaws, such as the effectiveness of the nationwide survey, the reason for good sales of their competitor company, and the true opinion of their buyers. After all, feckless attempts with a fallible method could be nothing but a fool’s errand. Thus, only by grasping the gist of assumptions could the author put forth a convincible recommendation.
612words,35min |
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发表于 2011-10-12 11:47:20
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