argument 33 麻烦大家打个分

huwenjie333

这篇是我练习的时候不计时写出来，想问下大家如果的在考场里限时写出这样的argument，大概能得几分。好让我自己心里也有个数，谢谢！！


                                                                                                                                                [size=10.000000pt]33. The following appeared in a memorandum from the planning department of an electric power company.

[size=10.000000pt]"Several recent surveys indicate that home owners are increasingly eager to conserve energy. At the same time,manufacturers are now marketing many home appliances, such as refrigerators and air conditioners, that arealmost twice as energy efficient as those sold a decade ago. Also, new technologies for better home insulationand passive solar heating are readily available to reduce the energy needed for home heating. Therefore, thetotal demand for electricity in our area will not increase—and may decline slightly. Since our three electricgenerating plants in operation for the past twenty years have always met our needs, construction of newgenerating plants will not be necessary."


[size=10.000000pt]Write a response in which you examine the stated and/or unstated assumptions of the argument. Be sure toexplain how the argument depends on these assumptions and what the implications are for the argument if theassumptions prove unwarranted.


正文：

In this argument, the arguer claims that it’s not necessary for theelectric power company to construct new generating plants in the future. Tojustify the claim, the arguer cites the survey indicating the preference forconserve energy among the homeowners, as well as the marketing of energyefficient home appliances from manufactures. In addition, he explains that thenew technology reduce the energy consumption for home heating.  Based on these reasons, the total in energyusage in the following years won’t augment significantly. A careful examinationof this argument would reveal how groundless it is.

First ofall, the evidences arguer provides are insufficient to warrant that the totalusage of the energy in home won’t increase or even drop in the future.  There is no reason to believe the homeownerswilling to conserve energy will take action to buy energy saving appliances.Moreover, the company marketing their energy saving product may notsuccessfully persuade their customers to purchase those. For example, theenergy efficient appliances have too high price for the customers to accept,who might finally choose the cheaper and normal ones.  Therefore, to substantiate the conclusion,the arguer must provide more evidence to show the owner of houses will surelypurchase these energy efficient appliances in the future.

Secondly, evenassuming the energy consumption in the residential area will not increase, itis nevertheless unfair to infer that the total energy assumption will remain ordecrease, because there is no reason to believe that the usage in houses isrepresentative of the usage of the entire area. For example, many industrieslike manufacture are located in the area, which consume huge amount of energyand may still aggrandize their scale in the future. Besides, the public servicelike metro also shows no sign to reduce their energy usage.

Finally,the arguer unfairly assumes that the only function of the construction of newgenerating plants to satisfy the increase need of energy. However, it is alsopossible that the new plants are used to replace the old ones for the purposeof better saving the environment.  Inaddition, due to the fact that with the age of the original plants grows, thechance to occur breakdown increases. For dealing with this risk, the new plantscan take their places once unexpected situation happens.

To sum up,the claim that construction of new generating plants will not necessary is notwell supported. To make it more convincing, the arguer should provide more specificinformation in terms of the house owners’ behavior of purchasing the energyefficient appliances, the condition of energy consumption in other part of thearea, to rule out the possibility that would undermine the arguer’s claim.