劉文勇GRE寫作Argument題庫 Day 69

Day 69 Ten years ago our company had two new office buildings constructed as regional headquarters for two regions

The following appeared in a memo from a vice president of a large, highly diversified company.

“Ten years ago our company had two new office buildings constructed as regional headquarters for two regions. The buildings were erected by different construction companies—Alpha and Zeta. Although the two buildings had identical floor plans, the building constructed by Zeta cost 30 percent more to build. However, that building's expenses for maintenance last year were only half those of Alpha's. In addition, the energy consumption of the Zeta building has been lower than that of the Alpha building every year since its construction. Given these data, plus the fact that Zeta has a stable workforce with little employee turnover, we recommend using Zeta rather than Alpha for our new building project, even though Alpha's bid promises lower construction costs.”

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

五問：

（1）“we recommend using Zeta rather than Alpha for our new building project”是結論，其余部分是事實，值得反駁嗎？

（2）兩棟樓有著 identical floor plans，就意味著兩棟樓在其他方面都是一模一樣的嗎？地理位置、內部裝修甚至施工條件是否都有可能影響施工成本以及維護成本？ Alpha公司所建的大樓需要更高的維護成本，就一定是因為這家公司沒有好好完成工作嗎？是否可能有其他原因？例如：該公司人為原因導致大樓實際損耗比較嚴重，使維護費用增加。出于同樣的道理，請想想看 energy consumption在沒有提及總量的情況下，能否簡單地進行比較？

（3）一家工程承包公司擁有更低的 employee turnover比例，是本公司應該考慮的問題嗎？人員流動率低，能說明工人的工作效率一定高嗎？對于本公司來說，只要工程能按時完成就可以了吧？

（4）我們能否在不涉及總量的情況下將兩個比例進行比較？多花費 30%的建造成本與每年減少 50%的維護成本，孰優(yōu)孰劣？如果出現(xiàn)多花費的 30%成本相當于 1 000年的維護成本的情況，那么兩者相比孰優(yōu)孰劣？

（5）Alpha競標時提出更低的建造成本，真的不值得考慮嗎？一個公司在進行招投標的時候，需要考慮的因素有哪些？成本問題是否應該考慮的重要因素之一？缺乏這方面的考慮是否會嚴重地影響原文命題的有效性？