|
AA053The following appeared as part of an editorial in a weekly newsmagazine.
“Historically, most of this country’s engineers have come from our universities; recently, however, our university-age population has begun
to shrink, and decreasing enrollments in our high schools clearly show that this drop in numbers will continue throughout the remainder of
the decade. Consequently, our nation will soon be facing a shortage of trained engineers. If we are to remain economically competitive in
the world marketplace, then, we must increase funding for education — and quickly.”
Discuss how well reasoned . . . etc.
The author declares that we must increase the funding for education so that this county can remain economically competitive in the world market. The author stated this argument on the ground that historically, most of this county's engineers have come from our universities, however, the university population has begun to shrink and the enrollment in the high school is declining. Despite of its plausible reasoning, I find this argument unconvincing in several aspects after deep reflection.
In the first place, the author gratuitously assumes that a shrink population in the universities will definitely decrease the engineers supply in this country. However, the decreased number of the population of the university will be probably not proportionate to the one in the engineering education. As we all know, there are different professional fields in one university, all of them constitute substantial proportions of the whole population. It is convictive to conclude that the shrunk number dues to the remarkable population decrease in engineering students. There is the probability that because of the dim career prospect, a lot of students give up pursuing their study of art. Without ruling out other probabilities, it is not logically sound to make such assumption.
In the second place, the author cites the evidence that there is a decreasing enrollment in our high school, hence, there will be a continuous drop in the coming years. Obviously, the evidence is not sufficient to support the author's prediction. The statistics of the history is not the miller of the future. The condition of the past always differs violently from the unforeseeable future. It is possible that drop in enrollment is a temporary phenomenon caused by the depressed economy which may prosper in the near future. What's more, the decreased enrollment in the high school does not mean there will be a correlated decrease in the enrollment in the universities. The author's recommendation lacks of strong support, therefore, is not logically warranted.
What's more, the author simply suggests increase the funding for education to solve the problem. He assumes the decreased enrollment and school population are caused by the money deficiency, however, he has not given any solid evidence for it. The education system is a complex one, and it is not only simply involving the funding issue, but also the teaching resources, national population structure and the economy climate. Only increasing the funding is not sufficient to solve the problem.
To draw the conclusion, as the reasons cited above, what the author calms is not logically convincing per se. To strengthen his argument, the author should offer the evidences that the population decrease in universities will shorten the engineers supply, the enrollment decrease in high school will continue in the future, and the funding issue is the main one causing the previous situation.
字数比上回多了,因为这片argument的切入点多了,对于一些词汇的运用还是很重复机械,比如argument,evidence, convincing等的同意语掌握不多.
还请各位指教啦.
[此贴子已经被作者于2005-9-30 7:54:48编辑过] | 
京公网安备11010202008513号 京ICP证101109号 京ICP备12012021号
发表于 2005-9-29 05:10:00
楼主
