TOEFL Essay

The argument that board members should be replaced because they are unconcerned about the increasing costs of employee benefits and salaries leaves out important concerns that must be addressed to substantiate the argument. No clear relationship is established between the premises stated and the conclusion drawn. This alone does not constitute a logical argument in favor of replacing the board members.

First, the author assumes an analogy between the financial status of the computer hardware division and that of the whole company. If the computer hardware division did not constitute a substantial part of the consolidated financial statements, the board members would not pay too much of attention to the declining profits of just a division. Therefore, the argument that a division is decreasing profits would not be applicable.

Second, the argument draws the conclusion based on last year's performance and assumes that such division would continue to generate low profits for the company. If it included a deeper analysis of the past five years or the budget for the following two years, the board members would have more information available to adopt another policy and increase the division's benefits. As a consequence, a lot more date should be gauged to thoroughly conclude about a company's division.

Finally, the author establishes a comparison between last year's profits and projections, instead of distinguishing projections from real numbers. If the comparison were drawn between real figures, the outcome would be different because the projections could have been poorly settled by the managers of the division. Managers may have thought that the launching of new products would have enhanced profits, but in the end some implementation costs could have arouse. In this case, the fact that the conclusion is based on projections would not help to infer that the division may be behaving poorly opposite to another real year.

Because the argument leaves out several key issues, it is not sound or persuasive. If it included the items discussed above instead of solely asserting the conclusion, the argument would have been more thorough and convincing.