Please Grade my Essay on Analysis of an Argument.

[nachiket331]

Greetings,
Can you please review this analysis of the argument. I fell short of time with this. So I am not very sure about its quality particularly towards the end.
Some tips regarding the pacing would be of immense help.

Thanks and Regards,
Nachiket


ESSAY QUESTION:
The following appeared in an article in a human resources magazine:

"Six months ago, in an experiment aimed at boosting worker productivity, Company Z started providing free gourmet lunches to its employees. The Company hoped that these office lunches would encourage employees to remain in the building during lunch-hour and motivate employees to work harder throughout the day. A survey found that soon after the lunch program was implemented, the average number of hours worked by most Company Z employees increased dramatically. During this same period, the Company's profits also increased substantially. Thus, it is safe to say that the lunch program was a huge success and that Company Z should make the program permanent."

Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. Point out flaws in the argument's logic and analyze the argument's underlying assumptions. In addition, evaluate how supporting evidence is used and what evidence might counter the argument's conclusion. You may also discuss what additional evidence could be used to strengthen the argument or what changes would make the argument more logically sound.


YOUR RESPONSE:
The author of this passage tries to prove that more the time spent by an employee in the office building, the more is his/her productivity and that more the productivity, more the company's profits. He mentions a survery which concludes that providing of free gourmet lunches to the employees leads to their higher productivity. However, his reasoning is seriously flawed because he does not mention how many emoployees brought lunch boxes and ate in the office building. Further, he also fails to prove that time spent by the employees during lunch time is the prime factor of the low productivity.
Moreover, he does not mention if the employees were mandated to eat the lunch provided by the company. This seriously undermines the suvey result because if many people did not eat the free gourmet lunch, it could not be the prime reason for increased productivity or for increased profits.

Firstly, the author assumes that all employees have lunch outside the office. His reasoning is that the employees spend too much time having lunch and hence providing free goumet lunch will prevent people from getting out of the office building. Further, he assumes that no lunch was already being provided before employment of the mentioned free lunch. These assumptions are seriously undermined by the fact that, employees could be bring lunch boxes to the office and this would result in very little time spent on lunch.

Secondly, the author assumes that the employees dont waste any time apart from that spent during the lunch hours. He does not provide any evidence to prove this point. This assumption can be strongly refuted by arguing that the employees could spend their time over coffee in the evening, or in a meeting which may not lead to any conclusion. The argument could be strengthened by providing some information about the ways in which employees of company Z could spend their time.

Thirdly, the author only mentions that the company provided free lunch. However, he or the survey data misses the number of people who actually have this lunch. This figure is very much required because, it might be possible that company provided free lunch but nobody eats there. In this scenario, the increased productivity and the profits of the company cannot be attributed to this scheme.

Finally, the author could strengthen his argument by providing some statistical information about the number of employees who have taken up this lunch scheme, the number of employees who bring lunch boxes and the number of employees who still go outside the building for lunch. In addition, he could also provide the information about then number of ways in which employees could spend and waste their time in company Z. All these evidences and statistics could favor the authors argument of making the lunch scheme permanant in company Z.

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Source : Manhattan GMAT Practice Test.

[StaceyKoprince]

I'd rate this a 4.5. You bring up good points and articulate them clearly, but there are still enough grammatical and syntax errors to hurt your score. If you want to improve on these, you are going to have to work more on grammar; your logic is solid already.

For pacing, spend about 3 minutes reading the argument and brainstorming flaws. Then decide which two are your best TWO and delete the others - only do two. This should help substantially on time.

Then have a very clear idea, before you go in, of exactly what you are going to do, paragraph to paragraph, so you don't have to spend much time thinking about how to structure your essay. A sample is below; you did a lot of this already in your essay, but I'm not sure whether it just sort of happened that way or whether you knew going in that you would structure it that way. If the former, make sure you have this structure in mind before the test even starts.

Intro: briefly restate what's going on, acknowledge that the argument has some merit, and then state your thesis: there are significant flaws that need to be fixed in order to increase the validity of the argument. Mention whichever two flaws you want to discuss. (You might say these are two of the biggest, though others exist - but don't go into detail about those others.)

2nd paragraph is your best flaw. Explain what it is, detail exactly why it's problematic, and then discuss how it could be fixed.

Do the same thing with the 3rd paragraph / 2nd best flaw.

For the conclusion you are going to say nothing new, but you are going to use new words to say what you've already said. Restate that there is some merit here, but there are flaws. Mention the flaws again and summarize how they might be fixed. Again, you might want to mention that there are other minor issues that also need to be addressed but don't go into much detail.

[nachiket331]

Thanks Stacey for that reply. I will work on the grammar part of it.

[Guest]

my points:

1, Lack of the evidence to support that the profit increase was derived directly from the plan of free lunch
Other reason might improve the profit.
2, B happened at the same time with A does not mean that A is the cause of B.
3, The average time increased might caused by other reasons such as booming sales season come or these staffs was busy with a new product launch.
4, Success of last 6 months can not ensure that it will achieve the same results in the future

[StaceyKoprince]

thanks for your input!

[mukund.mm]

My response for the same prompt was as below:

The article establishes a cause and effect relationship between two phenomena without adequately demonstrating evidence to support the linkage. The two phenomena under consideration are the increased average number of hours worked by Company Z employees and the increase in profits during the period the gourmet lunch program was implemented.

If workers were more productive, they would be able to complete the same amount of work in fewer hours. Assuming that there was not a significant increase in work-load during the period of the lunch program, the evidence cited by the article demonstrates that workers worked greater hours, not fewer, implying that they were actually less productive. Perhaps the gourmet lunches were making employees lethargic and consequently decreasing productivity. It would be important to understand how employee's workload moved during the same time to clearly establish whether the workers were more or less productive.

Similarly, it would also be unwise to link the company's profits with the introduction of the lunch program. Profits are influenced by a number of factors, and the number of hours worked by employees is only one of them. We need more evidence to identify the nature of the relationship between the lunch program and profits. For instance, we would need to carefully understand exactly what factors are driving the profits of the business, and then understand how the introduction of the lunch program influenced those factors.

In conclusion, Company Z should study additional evidence to establish that the lunch program is actually having a positive influence on worker productivity before it goes forward with a decision to make the program permanent.