Focus On Learner Pronunciation Problems Essay Example for Free

Focus On Learner Pronunciation Problems Essay In Portuguese, R at the beginning of words, at the end of words, or before a consonant is pronounced like H. Many Brazilian students carry this habit into English words, pronouncing â€Å"restaurant† as â€Å"hestaurant† and â€Å"far† as â€Å"fah.† It’s especially common when the English word and the Portuguese word are similar, such as in â€Å"restaurant† and â€Å"regular.† SOLUTION: First, I have my students work on pronouncing the English R sound by itself. I demonstrate the correct mouth position and they imitate me. Then, we work on each word while exaggerating the R sound – so we say rrrrememberrrr, for example. Finally, we practice making that exaggerated R sound shorter and shorter until the student gets used to saying remember with an English R. It feels a little ridiculous, but it works! PROBLEM: Similar words Fortunately, Portuguese and English have a lot of true cognates – words that are similar in both languages, such as area, animal, culture, famous, music, romantic, hamburger, and sports. This makes it easier to remember the vocabulary – but more difficult to remember to pronounce the words â€Å"the English way.† SOLUTION: To show the difference in the sounds, I make comparisons with words that they already know and pronounce well in English – â€Å"The ‘a’ in animal is like the ‘a’ in and,† for example. I also draw attention to syllable stress – popular in English vs. popular in Portuguese. PROBLEM: Final consonants Portuguese doesn’t have letters like D, T, G, P, and K at the end of words, so it’s common for Brazilian students to accidentally add a little vowel sound at the end of English words – so big sounds like bigg-ee and stop becomes stopp-ee. One of the most famous is difficult turning into difficulty which is also an English word, but the first is an adjective and the second is a noun. SOLUTION: I start with words ending in P because they’re the easiest to practice – we practice saying â€Å"stop,† â€Å"help,† and others, and I tell them to keep their lips together for a second at the end, then â€Å"release† them without making an extra sound. Then we move on to â€Å"rock,† â€Å"get,† â€Å"thing,† â€Å"good,† and so on, again, â€Å"holding† the final consonant for a moment before â€Å"releasing† it soundlessly.

Autonomy and Responsibility: The United States involvement in the Persian Gulf :: Essays Papers

Autonomy and Responsibility: The United States' involvement in the Persian Gulf The United States' involvement in the Persian Gulf War showed the responsibility of the country to maintain peace and order, but more importantly, the conflict showed that the United States has a responsibility to oversee control of the world's natural resources. â€Å"On Aug. 2, 1990, Iraqi military forces, on orders from President Saddam Hussein, invaded and occupied the small country of Kuwait.†1 Kuwait, a small country in the Middle East, contains a large amount of oil that Iraq wished to take control of to help solve the economic problems of their country. A very important decision faced the United States, whether or not to risk lives of American soldiers to free Kuwait. By freeing Kuwait, the United States would be able to maintain Kuwait’s control over oil prices in the United States. The United States, fearing Iraqi control of Kuwait’s oil supply, initiated an offensive military action on January 16, 1991, over five months after Iraq’s in itial invasion.2 Thus beginning a conflict known as the Persian Gulf War. The United States, standing â€Å"for law and order and justice,† had a responsibility to free Kuwait after peaceful negotiations failed and the economic future of Kuwait, Iraq, United States, and the rest of the world was in danger pending Iraq’s control of the regions natural resources.3 So that citizens would be peaceful and supportive, the United States' use of military action was justified by the helpless Kuwait citizens and the fear of Iraqi control of oil prices in America. The public opinion on the United States’ responsibility to join the war involved several complex arguments and counter-arguments. One such argument involved the United States being the world’s police force. Since the United States controls most of the world power, many feel as though the United States should maintain order throughout the world. Unfortunately, this maintenance of order is not at a cheap cost. The United States spends billions of dollars to support its military forces and figures increase during war times. This created a huge dilemma among the nations leaders. The cost of war may or may not have been worth the cost of the government being involved in the Persian Gulf War. The government made the tough decision to engage in offensive military actions to free Kuwait on the basis that the price of war was less than the apparent price of allowing Iraq to control Kuwait and their oil supply.

Organizational Effectiveness Essay

The survival of an organization must have the ability to change with the environment. New generations and advanced technology continue to challenge organizations. To completely gain an understanding on the effectiveness of an organization, it is important to identify the three key metrics and provide an example for each. Next, a company will be selected for ineffectiveness and a description of practices that have contributed to the organizations ineffectiveness. The last metric is recognized for the beneficial purpose toward the effectiveness on the organization. Key Metrics and Examples â€Å"Because managers are responsible for utilizing organizational resources in a way that maximizes an organization’s ability to create value, it is important to understand how they evaluate organizational performance† (Jones, 2010, p. 15). The three key metrics for an effective organization are control, innovation, and efficiency. The first key metric is control which is defined as focusing on the customers, stakeholders, and internal and external resources of the organization. The second key metric is innovation which means the recreation or discovery of a new product. During the innovation of a new product, the organization must then look into developing new skills and processes for the employees. The third key metric is efficiency which means to stay on top of competitive products, gaining knowledge of new technology, all in a cost effective and timely manner. An example of control is when management takes the action to secure â€Å"scarce and valued skills and resources from outside the organization† (Jones, 2010, p. 15). To provide an example of innovation from an internal approach, a manager will evaluate an employee’s skills and ask them to invent a creative product based on their customer’s needs. An example of efficiency is  Ã¢â‚¬Å"convert skills and resources efficiently into finished goods and services (technical approach)† (Jones, 2010, p. 15). Ineffective Business and Practices An ineffective business I am familiar with is a county courthouse I worked with for over five years. The practices they were utilizing in their offices was confusing for new hired employees and courtroom staff. Each courtroom judge and their staff ran their office differently so the main district clerk office would have to train their staff various ways pertaining to each judge. Information entered into an old software application was not accurate and documents were stored in folders with mistaken case numbers on some case files. Constituents would often miss their court dates due to lack of written communication because the district clerk staff was not mailing out the forms in the appropriate time. Eventually, the courthouse had to benefit in a new technological approach to become an effective organization. â€Å"The technical approach allows managers to evaluate how efficiently an organization can convert some fixed amount of organizational skills and resources into finished goods and services† (Jones, 2010, p. 17). Metrics to Improve Effectiveness â€Å"Three metrics that are beneficial in measuring technical effectiveness include measuring product quality to be sure it increases, reduce the number of defects, and reducing production costs† (Jones, 2010). In this scenario, the measurement of product efficiency and productivity based on inputs and outputs is a beneficial way to measure effectiveness. Goals should be defined for control, innovation, and efficiency based on the focus of technology and the data exchanged between offices. It is important to increase the completion of files each day with accurate input on a data system. Reducing inaccurate data or misplaced information for courts will also increase the effectiveness of productivity between the court and clerk offices. The reduction of paper is a production cost if the software application is utilized to its full capacity. Conclusion The definition of an organization environment is â€Å"the set of forces and conditions that operate beyond an organization’s boundaries but affect its  ability to acquire and use resources to create value† (Jones, 2010, p. 2). An organization that is willing to reinvent itself as their environment changes will be an effective organization that continues to succeed with their products and value their employees. To measure the effectiveness of an organization, the three metrics must be utilized within the inputs and outputs of processes. A county government office was selected for its ineffective practices but with improvement on the three measurements, the organization has the capability of working in an effective manner that would provide a large amount of revenue after five years. Reference Jones, G. R. (2010). Organizational, Design, Theory, and Change (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Analyzing an Advertisement for a Texas Instruments...

Analyzing an Advertisement for a Texas Instruments Calculator Get your own. These words literally speak for themselves when it comes to the Texas Instruments calculator: TI-83+ silver edition. â€Å"Get your own† is the title that appears at the top of the advertisement for the TI-83+ silver edition. The title is reemphasized by a group of teenagers pictured below the title. The teens pictured in the photo are all playfully trying to get their hands on the coveted TI-83+ silver edition-graphing calculator. Directly below the picture of the teens, is a graphic of an enlarged graphing calculator, and displayed on the screen of the calculator is the new phonebook feature. Then, to the right of the graphic are three short phrases that reemphasize†¦show more content†¦Teens, or girls in general read this magazine, and by placing an ad such as this in the magazine would generally boost sales. Another aspect of this ad that would commonly appeal to the teen age group would have been the choice of colors, and the background of the adver tisement. As far as background goes, historical background is also relatively important in the relevance of the TI-83+ silver edition graphing calculator advertisement. Teens have many choices when it comes to graphing calculators, so that is probably why the author chose to include a feature that not all calculators have. The phonebook feature would appeal greatly to the viewer, hence its purpose. This particular feature, the phonebook, would be of importance because in the past no calculator including all other Texas Instruments calculators has offered such a feature. The Texas Instruments advertisement also allows the viewer to make assumptions in relation to the pictures and text displayed on the page. These assumptions could be anything from the approximate cost of the tool, to the pondering of the ray of colors used in the composition of the calculator itself. These different conjectures are made due to the actual composition of the advertisement itself. Then comes the purpose of the advertisement. The advertisement is presented to show the viewer what a unique tool the TI-83+ silver edition is, and what new features are included in the calculator. 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