▶ Your Answer :
In
the above statement, the author asserts that the city
government ought to spend more money on recreational facilities to increase the
number of people using the river for water sports. While supporting the argument, however, the author
makes numerous assumptions which cannot be taken for granted thus the argument
remains largely unconvincing without further evidence to verify unjustified
assumptions.
Firstly,
the author claims that the
survey results derived from the residents necessarily indicates their love of water sports, however, this may not be the
case. Even if
there might be people who have a strong desire to enjoy water sports, the
survey might lack
validity and sample representativeness. To be specific, the survey could have
asked only small population of the area or only residents living riverside who
might take more advantage than other residents with the development of riverside
recreational facilities. In addition, it is not clear (certain) that among how
many recreational activities they preferred water sports. The survey might have
asked respondents to choose one answer between two activities; for example,
they might have had only two choices; basketball and watersports. Thus, it needs to be clarified
if the sample was large enough, an unbiased group and the survey was composed
of disinterested questions not swaying them into a specific direction.
Secondly, the author’s assumption that more people might use water if the
river is cleaned up is not
conclusively proven. While
the number of people using river might increase after cleaning up the river, it needs to be verified
that the quality of the river’s water and smell are the cause of people’s
avoidance to use the river for water sports. It is possible that there might have been a
third factor impeding the residents from enjoying water sports in the river.
For example, lots of them might have been using other facilities for water
sports instead of the river. In
addition, the fact that there have been complaints about the quality of
the river’s water and the smell
is not necessarily indicative of its connection to the direct cause of
low population using the river. For
instance, there might
have been only a few complaints from four residents, and the time period of
data collection might have been too brief, indicating the result could be
temporary or an exceptional case. As such, more detailed data needs to be considered whether the low
quality of the river is the causal evidence since the argument is largely based on it.
Lastly, the
author’s assumption that the city government has to
increase its spending money on riverside recreational facilities given that the
city park department devotes little of its budget to them is not plausible without
corroborating evidence. Although
it is implied that more money spent on the riverside facilities might
encourage more people to use it, this may not be the case. There might be a possibility other
parties than the city park department may have devoted sufficient amounts of
money to managing the recreational facilities. Furthermore, even if it might be true that
devoting more money helps to improve the quality of riverside facilities, it is not evident that
there might have been no action undertaken to maintain them. For example, there
might have been some volunteering work to improve the recreational facilities
by local companies. Since
the argument chiefly rests on the assumption that the government’s low
budget on the riverside facility correlates to the low number of population
using the river, evidence
pertaining to the existence of any other actions that might have been
undertaken is necessary.
In sum, the
author’s claim is not very well supported in its current form. Further evidence
pertaining to validity of the surveys, correlation between low
quality of the river’s water and people’s intention to enjoy water sports in
the river and the existence of other actions undertaken to maintain the
recreational facilities is
crucial to strengthen his/her argument.
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