又写了一篇argument，大家看看吧~

杨姝云

题目：

The following memo appeared in the newsletter of the West Meria PublicHealth Council.

"An innovative treatment has come to our attention that promises tosignificantly reduce absenteeism in our schools and workplaces. A study reportsthat in nearby East Meria, where fish consumption is very high, people visitthe doctor only once or twice per year for the treatment of colds. This showsthat eating a substantial amount of fish can clearly prevent colds.Furthermore, since colds are the reason most frequently given for absences fromschool and work, attendance levels will improve. Therefore, we recommend thedaily use of a nutritional supplement derived from fish oil as a good way toprevent colds and lower absenteeism."

Write a response in which you discuss what questions would need to beanswered in order to decide whether the recommendation and the argument onwhich it is based are reasonable. Be sure to explain how the answers to thesequestions would help to evaluate the recommendation.

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While it might be true that we should take the advice derived from thismemo, i.e. recommend the nutritional supplement to West Meria, the author ofthis argument doesn't make a cogent inference to validate it. We can easilytell that the absenteeism problem is always troubling West Meria so that weshould take some actions to reduce it. However, this argument is rife withholes and weak assumptions. Thus, readers can easily come up with some questionsthat will undermine or even invalidate the suggestion.

The author cites the evidence that people in East Meria don't always visitthe doctor because of the high consumption of fish. The assumption of bridgingkeeping away from doctors and consuming much fish is that all the other thingswhich will give rise to a cold in both cities are at least almost the same. Butthe author of this argument doesn't indicate it. What if people in West Meria aremuch more likely to catch a cold due to the climate or geographical factors?Actually, it's quite possible that the whole Meria area is divided by a river,and on the east side of the river, which is East Meria, is mild and has lessextreme weather conditions while the other side of the river is quite different.As a consequence, less weather changes, warmer winter and cooler summer allowfewer chances to cause a cold. In this sense, a high consumption of fish justmeets the lower cold rate accidently. Unless a more detailed and comprehensiveinvestigation is made for comparing the factors of cold is given, we cannotsimply concur with the author's point and contribute to fish too much.

Likewise, this argument also emphasizes that less cold will definitelylead to less absences from school and work. This information is not very persuasive.Although it might be true that most absences are reported to be caused byillness, it's still possible that some people fabricate the cold for the sakeof playing truant. If this is true, even if cold is effectively controlled andfewer people catch cold during school days, ones who want to skip classes orwork can continue manipulating things. And the absenteeism will not be reducedsubstantially in schools and firms. To improve his/her argument, the author hasto do some further works, such as make a compact survey about the true reasonsfor those absences, and provides some information strong enough to convince us.

Last, the author of this memo doesn't validate the equivalence betweenfish and the nutritional supplement from fish oil. Regardless what was talkedabout in the above paragraphs, how can we simply believe the specific chemicalwhich will decrease the cold rate is derived from fish oil rather than otherparts of the fish? Readers will find it ambiguous when this "magic"chemical is only tested in meat from back of fish while we are recommended totake supplement from fish oil. The author has to give further information aboutthe mechanism of preventing cold by having fish, and make a clear and convincingexplanation of why we should extract chemicals from fish oil rather than otherparts.

To lower the absenteeism in schools and workplaces is indispensable, andwe have to come up with some ideas to deal with it. Recommending the daily useof supplement from fish oil might be a good method. Nevertheless, whether wecan take it into practice still needs to be shown. To make it more reasonable,the author has to do nothing but providing more explanations and strengthen theassumptions by answering some questions or scrutinize the argument carefully.Otherwise, the recommendation made in this memo is weak and can be easilytoppled.

普渡哥

我觉得写得挺好的。