Managing Your Learning

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You've had one semester of this undergraduate thing...

Tips for the Terrified


computing

languages

maths

presentations

writing


Some people have a real phobia about the above areas, either because of bad experiences at school, or because they have never done them before. Here, if you need them, are a few basic tips to get you started. Beyond that, seek help from your teacher/trainer or find out if there are any courses or workshops you can enrol on. This is only a beginning…

Computing

• Find someone to show you. Manuals and help-screens are often as complicated as the program itself, though your institution may have produced a simple guide.
• Ask him or her to slow down. Computer people tend to do things too quickly.
• Make sure you can get out of situations as well as into them. Always ask: how do I get back to where I was?
• Keep a little notebook beside you and write down your own instructions. That way you will understand them properly.
• Practise each operation two or three times to make sure you can really perform it.
• Take your time. Speed is not important.
• Don’t worry, you won’t break it.
• Work at it regularly, otherwise you will forget.

Languages

• Do a little often rather than a lot occasionally.
• Take risks. You will make mistakes but you will learn from them.
• Listen to tapes to get your ear attuned.
• Read vocab lists three times: top down, bottom up and top down again. Then test yourself. If the list has more than 10–12 items, divide it in half and do the same.
• Try imagining one change when you write or speak a sentence (present to past, statement to question, singular to plural, male to female, different adjective, etc). That way you will learn how to vary the patterns.
• Keep an error book. Note down any repeated mistakes you make and cross them out when you no longer do.
• Check your work before you hand it in.
• Have a go.

Maths

• In maths, if you do it right, you get it right.
• Make sure you understand every little step. Don’t skip or gloss over
• anything.
• Make sure you are doing things in the right order.
• Keep an error log of the mistakes you make. Cross them out when you no longer do.
• Try to grasp the underlying principles rather than just jumping through hoops. If you don’t, ask, and if you still don’t, ask again.
• Understand the purpose of it. Otherwise maths is just meaningless procedures.
• Take your time. Except in some exams, speed is not important.
• Check your workings. It is easy to make a slip.
• Get a feel for the solution. Does it look right?

Presentations

• Don’t put too much in. Maximum three key points in five minutes, five in ten minutes.
• Keep a little bit in reserve near the end in case you look like running out.
• List your main points at the start, preferably on a transparency; make the writing large enough; if you can’t write clearly, print.
• Speak, don’t read. Have clear, large notes you can see at a glance, maybe on a card.
• Project your voice and don’t drop it at the ends of sentences.
• Look at people, and not just the front row.
• If you want to get a discussion going, present conflicting views.
• Provide a handout at the end that summarises it all.
• Have your final sentence worked out so that you exit gracefully.

Writing

• Make an outline of your essay/assignment first and leave it for a day or so.
• Say what you are going to say in the introduction.
• Build up your writing in paragraphs. State your main point at the beginning and then develop it through examples, evidence, questions, arguments and counter-arguments.
• Don’t feel that the writing must be complicated just because it is an essay. Think: how would I explain this to someone?
• Don’t let your sentences get too long or you may lose track of them.
• If you are unsure about spelling, buy a compact dictionary and check.
• Read a lot. It helps all other communication skills.
• Don’t try to come to a firm conclusion if there isn’t one.

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Pan Am - Ending in tragedy - Brand Failure 3

In the 1980s, Pan American World Airways, or Pan Am, was one of the most famous brands of airline on the planet. For more than 60 years it had pioneered transocean and intercontinental flying.

Having begun life in 1927 with a few aircraft and a single route from Key West to Havana, Pan Am came to represent US commercial aviation policy overseas.

However, in the late 1980s the company started to struggle to achieve goals and performance began to slip.

Then, in 1988, disaster struck. A Pan Am plane on route from London to New York disappeared from radar somewhere above Scotland. Later it emerged that a bomb had gone off in the cargo area, causing the aircraft to break in two.

The main body of the plane carried on for 13 miles before coming to ground in the small Scottish village of Lockerbie. The total search area spanned 845 square miles and debris turned up as far as 80 miles from Lockerbie.

In total, 270 people were killed, including 11 on the ground. One witness told television interviewers ‘the sky was actually raining fire.’

The horrific nature of the tragedy, the fact that everybody knew that the airline involved was Pan Am, and also the international nature of the story, meant that the Pan Am name was tarnished and could never recover.

Despite the company’s constant promises of commitment to increasing its airline’s security, the public was simply not willing to fly with Pan Am anymore.

After three years of flying with empty seats, in 1991 the company went bankrupt and shut down.

This all goes to show that some crises are too big to recover from. Pan Am handled the Lockerbie disaster as best as it could, but the decline in public confidence proved too much.

DEBATE: Should We Reject The American Way Of Life?

SHOULD WE REJECT THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE?

AGREE:

Moving towards the American way of life necessarily means the slow decay of individual national cultural identities. As these valuable and historically significant cultures vanish, the world will lose cultural diversity - such as in art, music, and literature - that has so enriched humanity’s history. In a world where the borders between states are becoming increasingly symbolic, the loss of diversity between countries will also mean a loss of choice for human beings with the desire to settle in a country that suits their tastes. As America’s culture becomes universal, Americans and others lose their ability to choose, even in the context of that great patriotic American slogan: “America: love it or leave it!”







Differences in ways of life between countries can have positive economic consequences. The economic theory of comparative advantage states that efficiency is maximized when those countries that can produce goods or services at the lowest cost do so. The entire concept of comparative advantage depends on major differences between countries and their respective ways of life. Convergence to the American way of life will mean the loss of some of the distinctive differences that are fundamental to maintaining countries’ comparative advantage in the supply of particular goods and services. For example, French culture is closely tied up with the idea of “terroir” - the special qualities of the land in particular regions, and this contributes strongly to its production of speciality foods and drinks - many of which are major exports.




The American way of life is itself unhealthy for people everywhere. Defined by a taste for salty and greasy fast foods, an overloaded work schedule, and an inactive lifestyle, the American way of life is one of the most important reasons that the American population is among the world’s most unhealthy, in terms of stress, fitness, and body weight. By soundly rejecting this unhealthy way of life in favour of more sensible and healthy routines, the world does a credit to its collective health and wellbeing.


The American way of life is naturally un-diplomatic. Lacking trust in other countries and certain of its own rightness, the United States swings between isolationism and outbursts of violence, rather than consistently engaging with the rest of the world on equal terms. This arrogant impatience has historically made it a difficult ally and an intractable foe. The American way of life is marked by a strong belief in the superiority of American institutions and values, and an intolerance of alternatives. This intolerance is what has lead the United States to boldly accept the title of “world policeman,” much to the discomfort of other nations, while at the same time refusing to be bound by international agreements (e.g. on nuclear testing, climate change or the International Criminal Court).



The American way of life should be rejected because the attitudes that define it make diplomacy difficult or impossible. America has developed its unique set of cultural institutions during its more than 200 years of nationhood. As the world’s oldest democratic republic, the United States has the advantage of having developed its culture along with its own history. Like all cultures, America’s culture is tailor-made. It addresses the particular needs - present and historic - of its home country. As such, the American way of life cannot be assumed to be transferable to other parts of the world, with different histories and realities. As experiences in Vietnam in the 1970s and Iraq in the 2000s demonstrate, attempts to spread the most basic constituent of the American way of life - democracy - often end in failure.If the desirable elements of the American way of life, such as democracy, are to be adopted by people in other parts of the world, the necessary foundation must be laid organically by the country’s own experience. That is, the country must become democratic not by adopting the American way of life, but rather by proceeding through national experiences of the sort that shifted America’s own political culture toward democracy in the late 1700s.



America’s culture should be rejected because it is inferior to those of many other nations. In film, music, art, sport and many other aspects of life, the American way is childish and simplistic. Hollywood only makes movies which appeal to the lowest instincts of the mass audience, delivering violence, dazzling special effects and simplistic story lines. Popular music is loud, aggressive and unsophisticated. Sports are designed for showy spectacle and constant celebration of frequent scoring, rather than as a prolonged examination of skill and strategy. Even clothing is garish and utilitarian. Such a culture has nothing to offer the rest of the world.


DISAGREE:

No culture in the world can survive if unchanging. In order to survive, the cultures of the world have always - and must always - adapted to new conditions and realities. As America’s global authority increasingly becomes a reality, cultures will begin to slowly move towards the American way of life not as a product of force, but rather as a natural consequence of increased contact with America’s dominant culture. Some cultural institutions will be lost, others will survive, and still others will become altered in reaction to it. Resisting the evolutionary impact of the American way of life would only serve to counteract an extremely important process in the histories of the world’s cultures.



Rejecting the American way of life denies the world’s people important economic advantages, especially in terms of mobility. The more similar countries’ cultures are, the more likely one is to be able to move between them, seeking economic opportunity and advantage. Many economists believe that mobility of labour (that is, the ability of workers to move across international frontiers) is an important ingredient of economic growth. As cultures move towards the American way of life, they will be better able to make easy the free movement of people to fill specific demand for their labour or skills, because many of the most difficult barriers to movement, in particular those that deal with adjustment to new cultural surroundings, would dissolve.



The American way of life may well be unhealthy, but it is also delicious. Americans are not the only people who flock to the purveyors of freeze-dried, deep-fried, sugary, salty, and greasy foods. W The reason that so many indulge this way is that fast food, for all its faults, is tasty. If we are to accept the virtues of an individual’s choice, the American way of life must not be rejected.







Sparks only ever fly between countries when their foreign policies are at odds. These potentially dangerous foreign policy differences reflect deeper differences between the cultures of the countries concerned. As countries move toward the American way of life the differences that would otherwise increase the potential for foreign policy conflict will diminish. Values will become shared, institutions will become similar, and ideas will become consistent, leading to an increase in harmony between peoples and countries. It has been said that no two countries both possessing branches of MacDonalds have ever gone to war!



As far as ways of life are concerned, the American is a pretty strong choice. The American way of life boasts an emphasis on hard work, self-sacrifice, equality, and democracy. Cultures converge toward this particular set of traits because they are uniquely desirable as a way of life. Convergence between cultures is a necessary consequence of an increasingly interconnected and globalized world. And if cultures are to converge, then the American way of life, with its admirable values and great institutions, is a strong option. In other words, when it comes to cultural evolution and diffusion, one could do a lot worse than to converge towards the American way of life.

It is a mistake to see American culture as all of a piece - there are many different aspects to US popular entertainment, including jazz, blues, indie film-making, experimental art, cutting-edge architecture, demanding literature, etc. Most Americans enjoy the diversity of cultural options available to them, and it is this, as well as the individual art forms, which the rest of the world can learn from. But at its best, all American culture is possessed of a democratic spirit and accessibility, which marks it out from the elitism of art, music, etc. in much of the rest of the world.

Reading Material

Purpose, Situation and Audience

Your explicit or stated reason for writing is your purpose: Why are you writing in the first place? What do you hope your words will accomplish? In college, the general purpose is usually specified by the assignment: to explain, report, analyze, argue, interpret, reflect, and so on. Most papers will include secondary purposes as well; for example, an effective argument paper may also need explaining, defining, describing, and narrating to help advance the argument.If you know why you are writing,your writing is bound to be clearer than if you don’t. This doesn’t mean you need to know exactly what your paper will say, how it will be shaped, or how it will conclude,but it does mean that when you sit down to write it helps to know why you are doing so.

The rhetorical purpose of most writing is persuasive: you want to make your reader believe that what you say is true. However, different kinds of writing convey truth in different ways. If your purpose is to explain, report, define, or describe, then your language is most effective when it is clear, direct, unbiased, and neutral in tone. However, if your intention is to argue or interpret, then your language may need to be different. If you know your purpose but are not sure which form, style, or tone best suits it, study the published writing of professionals and examine how they choose language to create one or another effect.

College writing is usually done in response to specific instructor assignments — which implies that your instructor has a purpose in asking you to write. If you want your writing to be strong and effective, you need to find a valid purpose of your own for writing. In other words, you need to make it worth your while to invest a portion of your life in thinking about, researching, and writing this particular paper. So, within the limits of the assignment, select the aspect which most genuinely interests you, the aspect that will make you grow and change in directions you want to change in. For example, if you are asked to select an author to review or critique, select one you care about; if asked to research an issue, select one about which you have concerns, not necessarily the first that comes to mind. If neither author nor research issue comes to mind, do enough preliminary reading and research to allow you to choose well, or to allow your interest to kick in and let the topic choose you. Go with your interest and curiosity. Avoid selecting a topic just because it’s easy, handy, or comfortable. Once you purposefully select a topic, you begin to take over and own the assignment and increase your chances of writing well about it.

As I’ve just implied, part of the purpose includes the subject and topic. The subject is the general area that you’re interested in learning more about.For example,all of these would be considered subjects:American literature, American literature in the 1920s, New York City authors, the Harlem Renaissance, Jean Toomer, Cane. Even though the subject Cane (the title of a collection of short stories by Jean Toomer) is far more specific than the subject American literature, it’s still only a subject until you decide what about Cane you want to explore and write about—until you decide upon your topic in relation to Cane:perhaps a difficulty in one particular story in the collection, a theme running through several stories, or its relationship to other Harlem Renaissance works.

The general subject of a college paper could be a concept, event, text, experiment, period, place, or person that you need to identify, define, explain, illustrate, and perhaps reference—in a logical order, conventionally and correctly. Many college papers ask that you treat the assigned subject as thoroughly as possible, privileging facts, citing sources, and downplaying your writer’s presence.

Learn your subject well before you write about it; if you can’t, learn it while you write. In either case, learn it. To my own students I say: plan to become the most knowledgeable person in class on this subject; know it backward and forward. Above all else, know it well beyond common knowledge, hearsay, and cliché. If it’s a concept like postmodern, know the definition, the explanations, the rationales, the antecedents, and the references, so you can explain and use the term correctly. If it’s an event such as the Crimean War, know the causes, outcomes, dates, geography, and the major players. If it’s a text, know author(s), title, date of publication, genre, table of contents, themes, and perhaps the historical, cultural, social, and political contexts surrounding its publication. Then write about a specific topic within this subject area that you are now somewhat of an expert on. The following suggestions will help you think about your purpose for writing:

• Attend closely to the subject words of your assignments. If limited to the Harlem Renaissance,make sure you know what that literary period is, who belonged to it, and the titles of their books.
• Attend closely to the direction words of all your assignments. Be aware that being asked to argue or interpret is different from being asked to define or explain—though, to argue or interpret well may also require some defining or explaining along the way.
• Notice the subjects to which your mind turns when jogging, driving, biking,working out,walking, or just relaxing.Will any of your assignments let you explore one of them further?

SITUATION

The subjects of college papers don’t exist in isolation. The environment, setting, or circumstance in which you write influences your approach to each writing task. The general setting that dictates college writing is educational and academic, though more particular circumstances will surround each specific assignment. For example, each assignment will be affected to some extent by the specific disciplinary expectations of a given college, course, and grade level, so that if you want to write a given paper successfully, it’s your job to identify these. Are the expectations at a college of Arts and Sciences any different from those at the colleges of Business, Engineering, Agriculture, or Education? What conventions govern the writing in English courses and how are they different from those that govern sociology, art, or nursing? What assumptions can you make if enrolled in an advanced class versus an introductory class?

You already know that writing in college, like writing in secondary school, will be evaluated, which puts additional constraints on every act of writing you perform.Consequently, your writing, while displaying disciplinary knowledge, must be clear, correct, typed, and completed on time. Be aware that in your physical absence, your writing speaks for you, allowing others to judge not only your knowledge, but other intellectual habits, such as your general level of literacy (how critically you read, how articulately you make an argument), your personal discipline (the level of precision with which the paper meets all requirements), your reasoning ability (does your approach demonstrate intelligence, thoughtfulness?), and possibly your creativity (is your approach original, imaginative?). In other words,every piece of writing conveys tacit,between-the-lines information about the writer, as well as the explicit information the assignment calls for. Therefore, as you are writing consider the following:

• Know who you are. Be aware that your writing may reflect your gender, race, ethnic identity, political or religious affiliation, social class, educational background, and regional upbringing. Read your writing and notice where these personal biases emerge; noticing them gives you more control, and allows you to change, delete, or strengthen them—depending upon your purpose.
• Know where you are. Be aware of the ideas and expectations that characterize your college, discipline, department, course, instructor, and grade level. If you know this context, you can better shape your writing to meet or question it.
• Negotiate. In each act of writing, attempt to figure out how much of you and your beliefs to present versus how many institutional constraints to consider. Know that every time you write you must mediate between the world you bring to the writing and the world in which the writing will be read.

AUDIENCE

Most of us would agree that talking is easier than writing. For one thing, most of us talk more often than we write—usually many times in the course of a single day—and so get more practice.For another,we get more help from people to whom we speak face to face than from those to whom we write.We see by their facial expressions whether or not listeners understand us, need more or less information, or are pleased with our words.Our own facial and body expressions help us communicate as well. Finally, our listening audiences tend to be more tolerant of the way we talk than our reading audiences are of the way we write: nobody sees my spelling or punctuation when I talk, and nobody calls me on the carpet when, in casual conversation, I miss an occasional noun-verb agreement or utter fragment sentences.

However, writing does certain things better than speaking. If you miswrite, you can always rewrite and catch your mistake before someone else notices it. If you need to develop a complex argument,writing affords you the time and space to do so. If you want your words to have the force of law,writing makes a permanent record to be reread and studied in your absence. And if you want to maintain a certain tone or coolness of demeanor, this can be accomplished more easily in writing than in face-toface
confrontations.

Perhaps the greatest problem for writers, at least on the conscious level, concerns the audience who will read their writing:What do they already know? What will they be looking for? What are their biases, values, and assumptions? How can I make sure they understand me as I intend for them to? College instructors are the most common audience for college writing; they make the assignments and read and evaluate the results. Instructors make especially difficult audiences because they are experts in their subject and commonly know more about it than you do. Though you may also write for other audiences such as yourself or classmates,your primary college audience remains the instructor who made the assignment.


Taken from “College Writing : a personal approach to academic writing” by Toby Fulwiler (Heinemann 2002)

Forty Golden Rules Of Marketing

You may agree or you may disagree. Either way the following list makes good food for thought.

• Rule 1 Rules are Meant to be Broken
• Rule 2 Marketing Must Result in Sales
• Rule 3 Plan a Little So You Can Do a Lot More
• Rule 4 Know What You're Aiming At
• Rule 5 Pick the Problem You Want to Solve
• Rule 6 Get to Know Your Customers
• Rule 7 Target Your Messages
• Rule 8 Customers Are People Too
• Rule 9 See the Forest and the Trees
• Rule 10 Change the Words, Not the Idea
• Rule 11 Involve Them and They Will Understand
• Rule 12 Be Different
• Rule 13 Admit When You Make a Mistake
• Rule 14 Messages Need Testing Too
• Rule 15 Just Say No to Jargon
• Rule 16 Be Compelling
• Rule 17 Do It Their Way
• Rule 18 Be Consistent
• Rule 19 Use the Right Tools
• Rule 20 See and Be Seen
• Rule 21 Blogs are Good
• Rule 22 Email is Personal
• Rule 23 Viral Marketing is a Tactic
• Rule 24 Be Critical
• Rule 25 Always Have a Next Step
• Rule 26 Change is Your Friend
• Rule 27 PR Doesn't Mean Press Release
• Rule 28 Tradeshows Will Never Die
• Rule 29 Clicks Aren't Customers
• Rule 30 A Launch is a Process, Not an Event
• Rule 31 Don't Get Caught in the Hype
• Rule 32 The Whole is Greater Than the Sum of its Parts
• Rule 33 Marketing Plans are Good
• Rule 34 Marketing is Art
• Rule 35 Marketing is Science
• Rule 36 Make Them Laugh
• Rule 37 Always Have a Deadline
• Rule 38 Everyone is a Marketing Expert
• Rule 39 Deliver What You Promise
• Rule 40 Give it a Chance
• Rule 41 Don't Follow the Pack .
• Rule 42 These are My RulesWhat are Yours?

Any comments or thoughts?

Which 10 did you choose in class?

Any missing 'Golden Rules'?

Supplementary Reading

Writing Strategy and Style

Purpose, the end you are aiming at, determines strategy and style. Strategy involves choice—selecting particular aspects of a topic to develop, deciding how to organize them, choosing this word rather than that, constructing various types of sentences, building paragraphs. Style is the result of strategy, the language that makes the strategy work.

Think of purpose, strategy, and style in terms of increasing abstractness. Style is immediate and obvious. It exists in the writing itself; it is the sum of the actual words, sentences, paragraphs. Strategy is more abstract, felt beneath the words as the immediate ends they serve. Purpose is even deeper, supporting strategy and involving not only what you write about but how you affect readers.

A brief example will clarify these overlapping concepts. It was written by a college student in a fifteen-minute classroom exercise. The several topics from which the students could choose were stated broadly—"marriage," "parents," "teachers," and so on—so that each writer had to think about restricting and organizing his or her composition. This student chose "marriage":

Why get married? Or if you are modern, why live together? Answer: Insecurity. "Man needs woman; woman needs man." However, this cliche fails to explain need. How do you need someone of the opposite sex? Sexually is an insufficient explanation. Other animals do not stay with a mate for more than one season; some not even that long. Companionship, although a better answer, is also an incomplete explanation. We all have several friends. Why make one friend so significant that he at least partially excludes the others? Because we want to "join our lives." But this desire for joining is far from "romantic"—it is selfish. We want someone to share our lives in order that we do not have to endure hardships alone. [125 words]

The writer's purpose is not so much to tell us of what she thinks about marriage as to convince us that what she thinks is true. Her purpose, then, is persuasive, and it leads to particular strategies both of organization and of sentence style. Her organization is a refinement of a conventional question/ answer strategy: a basic question ("Why get married?"); an initial, inadequate answer ("Insecurity"); a more precise question ("How do we need someone?"); a partial answer ("sex"); then a second partial answer ("companionship"); a final, more precise question ("Why make one friend so significant?"); and a concluding answer ("so that we do not have to endure hardships alone").

The persuasive purpose is also reflected in the writer's strategy of short emphatic sentences. They are convincing, and they establish an appropriate informal relationship with readers.

Finally, the student's purpose determines her strategy in approaching the subject and in presenting herself. About the topic, the writer is serious without becoming pompous. As for herself, she adopts an impersonal point of view, avoiding such expressions as "I think" or "it seems to me." On another occasion they might suggest a pleasing modesty; here they would weaken the force of her argument.

These strategies are effectively realized in the style: in the clear rhetorical questions, each immediately followed by a straightforward answer; and in the short uncomplicated sentences, echoing speech. (There are even two sentences that are grammatically incomplete—"Answer: Insecurity" and "Because we want to 'join our lives.' ") At the same time the sentences are sufficiently varied to achieve a strategy fundamental to all good prose—to get and hold the reader's attention.

Remember several things about strategy. First, it is many-sided. Any piece of prose displays not one but numerous strategies—of organization, of sentence structure, of word choice, of point of view, of tone. In effective writing these reinforce one another.

Second, no absolute one-to-one correspondence exists between strategy and purpose. A specific strategy may be adapted to various purposes. The question/answer mode of organizing, for example, is not confined to persuasion: it is often used in informative writing. Furthermore, a particular purpose may be served by different strategies. In our example the student's organization was not the only one possible. Another writer might have organized using a "list" strategy:

People get married for a variety of reasons. First. . . Second . . . Third . . . Finally . . .

Still another might have used a personal point of view, or taken a less serious approach, or assumed a more formal relationship with the reader.

Style

In its broadest sense "style" is the total of all the choices a writer makes concerning words and their arrangements. In this sense style may be good or bad—good if the choices are appropriate to the writer's purpose, bad if they are not. More narrowly, "style" has a positive, approving sense, as when we say that someone has "style" or praise a writer for his or her "style." More narrowly yet, the word may also designate a particular way of writing, unique to a person or characteristic of a group or profession: "Hemingway's style," "an academic style."

Here we use style to mean something between those extremes. It will be a positive term, and while we speak of errors in style, we don't speak of "bad styles." On the other hand, we understand "style" to include many ways of writing, each appropriate for some purposes, less so for others. There is no one style, some ideal manner of writing at which all of us should aim. Style is flexible, capable of almost endless variation. But one thing style is not: it is not a superficial fanciness brushed over the basic ideas. Rather than the gilding, style is the deep essence of writing.

Reading Material

E-communication and society

A cyber-house divided

Online as much as in the real world, people bunch together in mutually suspicious groups—and in both realms, peacemaking is an uphill struggle

Sep 2nd 2010 | washington, dc

IN 2007 Danah Boyd heard a white American teenager describe MySpace, the social network, as “like ghetto or whatever”. At the time, Facebook was stealing members from MySpace, but most people thought it was just a fad: teenagers tired of networks, the theory went, just as they tired of shoes.

But after hearing that youngster, Ms Boyd, a social-media researcher at Microsoft Research New England, felt that something more than whimsy might be at work. “Ghetto” in American speech suggests poor, unsophisticated and black. That led to her sad conclusion: in their online life, American teenagers were recreating what they knew from the physical world—separation by class and race.

A generation of digital activists had hoped that the web would connect groups separated in the real world. The internet was supposed to transcend colour, social identity and national borders. But research suggests that the internet is not so radical. People are online what they are offline: divided, and slow to build bridges.

This summer Ms Boyd heard from a scholar in Brazil who, after reading her research, saw a parallel. Almost 80% of internet users in Brazil use Orkut, a social network owned by Google. As internet use rises in Brazil and reaches new social groups, better-off Brazilians are leaving Orkut for Facebook. That is partly because they have more friends abroad (with whom they link via Facebook) and partly snobbishness. Posh Brazilians have a new word: orkutificação, or becoming “orkutised”. A place undergoing orkutificação is full of strangers, open to anyone. Brazilians are now the second biggest users of the micro-blogging site Twitter; but some wonder whether the dreaded o-word awaits that neighbourhood too.

Facebook’s architecture makes it easy for groups to remain closed. For example, it suggests new friends using an algorithm that looks at existing ones. But simpler, more open networks also permit self-segregation. On Twitter, members can choose to “follow” anyone they like, and can form groups by embedding words and shortened phrases known as “hashtags” in their messages. In May Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda Viégas, who research the display of social information, looked at the ten most popular hashtags on Twitter and discovered that most were used almost exclusively by either black or white authors. The hashtag “#cookout” was almost entirely black; the hashtag “#oilspill” almost entirely white.

With ideology, the pair’s findings were a bit more hopeful; liberals and conservatives at least communicate—by trading taunts. They do so by appropriating hashtags so as to surface in each others’ searches. By now, only one keyword in American political discourse remains unaffected by such games of tag: #NPR, or National Public Radio, used only by liberals.

All this argues for a cautious response to claims that e-communications abate conflict by bringing mutually suspicious people together. Facebook has a site called “Peace on Facebook,” where it describes how it can “decrease world conflict” by letting people from different backgrounds connect. (The optimism is catching; this spring a founder of Twitter described his service as “a triumph of humanity”.)

Peace on Facebook keeps a ticker of friend connections made each day between people from rival places. Israelis and Palestinians, the site claims, made about 15,000 connections on July 25th, the most recent available day. That is hard to put in context; Facebook does not make public the total number of friendships in any country. But Ethan Zuckerman, a blogger and activist, used independent data to estimate that these links represent roughly 1-2% of the combined total of friendships on Israeli and Palestinian accounts. Using the same method for Greece and Turkey, his estimate was 0.1%. That understates the role of Greek-Turkish friendship groups, or groups dedicated to music or films that both countries like. Among, say, people from either country who are studying outside their homeland (and have a better-than-average chance of becoming decision-makers), the share of trans-Aegean links would be far higher. And their mere existence sends an important moral signal.

But Mr Zuckerman frets that the internet really serves to boost ties within countries, not between them. Using data from Google, he looked at the top 50 news sites in 30 countries. Almost every country reads all but 5% of its news from domestic sources. Mr Zuckerman believes that goods and services still travel much farther than ideas, and that the internet allows us to be “imaginary cosmopolitans”.

Peace on Facebook offers data for India and Pakistan, too. That is even harder to put in context. Pakistan has banned Facebook in the past, and offers too few users to qualify even for independent estimates. John Kelly, founder of Morningside Analytics, a firm that analyses social networks, examined links between blogs and twitter accounts in India and Pakistan and discovered two hubs that link the two countries. South Asian expats in London who self-identify as “Desis”—people from the sub-continent—link freely to each other and to their home countries. And cricket fans in both countries link up spontaneously.

Mr Kelly believes that clusters of internet activity, when they do cross national borders, flow from pre-existing identities. Ethnic Baloch bloggers in three different countries link mainly to each other. Blogs in Afghanistan show some ties to NGOs and American service members, but a far greater number to Iranian news services and poetry blogs. That reflects old reality, not some new discovery. There is also some hope in Morningside’s data. Four websites most consistently account for links between countries: YouTube, Wikipedia, the BBC and, a distant fourth, Global Voices Online. The last of these, launched at Harvard University in 2005 and mainly funded by American foundations, works to create links between bloggers in different countries, and to find what it calls “bridge bloggers”: expats and cultural translators, like London’s Desis, who help explain their countries to each other. (This newspaper has a loose editorial collaboration with the site.)

Onnik Krikorian, Global Voices’ editor in Central Asia, is a British citizen with an Armenian name. He couldn’t go to Azerbaijan and had difficulty establishing any online contact with the country until he went to a conference in Tbilisi in 2008 and met four Azeri bloggers. They gave him their cards, and he found them on Facebook. To his surprise, they agreed to be his friends. Mr Krikorian has since found Facebook to be an ideal platform to build ties. Those first four contacts made it easier for other Azeris to link up with him.

But the internet is not magic; it is a tool. Anyone who wants to use it to bring nations closer together has to show initiative, and be ready to travel physically as well as virtually. As with the telegraph before it—also hailed as a tool of peace—the internet does nothing on its own.

The Economist - 2nd September 2010

Session 4 - Task

What kind of writer are you?

Tawachai: For years I was confused about my writing because I simply could not carry out my teachers’ instructions to ‘make a plan’ and they were always telling me that my essays should ‘be more organized’. I found it very difficult to make an outline and then stick to it. My mind didn’t seem to work that way. I always had to start writing and sometimes write quite a lot before I knew where I might be going. That meant I had to cut and do different drafts. Sometimes I would find that I had to start writing one section even if it was in the middle of the assignment, and then build up the whole thing slowly, in bits. In the end it worked out and now I seem to have found my own mix of a method.

Winnie: When I write I try to get down some headings that seem to relate to the question. At least they give me an idea of what topics and divisions my writing will have. But I am not yet sure exactly if I have an argument. I start to write what I can under these headings and as I go I am trying to find a way of making these fit together. When I have got my first draft like this I will go back and put in bits that will show the links between the different parts. I may have to move around some material. Sometimes I have to cut out quite a lot because now that I am much clearer about my argument, I realize that not everything I thought was interesting is actually relevant or important. I still have to work out what exactly I have to leave out, add, or move around but gradually I fit the bits together.

Rosemary: I spend a great deal of time reading and making notes – I try to absorb it all thoroughly. I have to read much more than I need. Then I think about it a lot. I can think as I’m doing other things. Finally, I just sit down and write it out in longhand and it’s as though it has all come together in my inner mind. Sometimes I add an introduction once I have finished and I will read the whole assignment through, but really I have never found I could write down a plan and my work hardly ever needs redrafting.

Deborah: First I wrote down some notes – ideas for headings. I used the space of a whole page so that I could space out my ideas in a diagram-like fashion. Sometimes I had a column on one side to note down ideas that I might use later on or for jobs I would need to do before I could begin writing the assignment. I kept this list to one side so that I could add to it as I was trying to develop my central overarching idea on the main part of the page. When I had finished I had some notes which all related to this ‘central idea’ so that I had an outline for the whole piece. Sometimes I like to use visual diagrams for my planning. I think and plan before I even begin to think about starting to write.

The diver writer

Tawachai just plunges in to her work. She always finds that she has to do some writing before she knows what she wants to say and in order to find out. She might use practice writing for this purpose. Only then can she begin to build up a plan. If she were the child building her house with bricks she would get started and see what kind of building emerged from how she moved around the bricks. She would start to ‘just build’ her house.

The patchwork writer

Winnie writes sections at an early stage, which she then has to fit together to make the whole assignment, adding links as she goes. If she were the child building a house of bricks she might make a series of different ‘rooms’ which she would then need to join together to make up the whole house.

The grand plan writer

Rosemary is a writer who doesn’t seem to make an outline at all: she has a ‘grand plan’ in her ‘inner mind’. In fact, she must have a structure in her mind before she begins to write but she can’t quite say what it is until she writes it down. Then it comes out nearly complete. The child builder with a grand plan would have a clear picture in her mind of the house she was going to build before she began and would build quickly without getting diverted.

The architect writer

Deborah has a sense of design in her writing. She would not find it too difficult to produce a complex plan. Writers who find it easy to put their thoughts in the form of a spider diagram or mind map are this kind of writer. They have a sense of a broad structure almost before they know what content will go into it, whereas other writers have to know what they have to say before they can make a plan. The ‘architect’ child building a brick house might start with an outer structure for her building, which she would then fill in to make all her rooms.

Things to think about

1. What do you think might be the advantages and disadvantages of these different ways of organizing writing?
2. Which way of planning and shaping is most like your own approach?
3. How do you think your way may be different from any of these?

In practice, you may, of course, vary your approach for different purposes and for different kinds of assignment. As with all aspects of writing, it is a good idea to be aware of different methods and to try them out.


Taken from “Writing at University: A Guide for Students” by Phyllis Creme and Mary R. Lea. Open University Press (2008)

So, now your task is to answer the question: What kind of writer are you?

One paragraph - using the COMMENTS feature below.

Reading Material - Pen and Computer

You can write only with your brain; but whether to process your thoughts with a computer or pen and paper is your first practical choice as a writer. I suppose it is still possible to ignore the computer and write just with pencil and paper. A surprising number of writers, including Martin Amis, A. S. Byatt, Ted Hughes, John Irving, Joyce Carol Oates, Susan Sontag, John Updike, and Edmund White prefer longhand for serious writing. But the advantages of the computer are so great that it seems almost irresponsible to pass them up. A computer greatly accelerates editing procedures, allowing you to take a piece through far more drafts than you could otherwise. On-screen correction is so easy that people of all ages find the process relaxing, even pleasurable. Computers give a sense of freedom from lasting error that no one who has experienced it will want to give up. I shall never forget the excitement I felt, twenty-five years ago, when I discovered that words had ceased to be indelible. So in this book I shall take for granted that you will probably use a computer for some, if not all, the processes of writing.

Many people use a computer throughout, and never feel the need to print out hard copy. Mathematicians, in particular, produce papers and even books entirely onscreen. In principle, it is possible to write and publish electronically, without ever lifting pen or pencil. For some, however, especially those engaged in literary work, this may not always be the way to get the most out of the computer.

Computers of the present generation have certain limitations, arising from the screen display, which for some people tend to complicate the process of writing long pieces. Even with the best flat-screen monitor you can’t comfortably read long texts. And you can’t actively browse with any clear sense of where you are in the text.

Good writing depends on extensive reading, not only previous reading of other works but also frequent scans of your own piece, the one you’re working on. Yet if it runs to any considerable length, uninterrupted reading on-screen is difficult. A monitor’s field of view is necessarily local, limited to about 150 words—much less than a printed page. This is fine for drafting a postcard; but not for extensive reading or browsing. To scroll through successive screenfuls is hardly an adequate substitute: it is too fragmentary and remote from ordinary reading. In active browsing you need to be able to skim or read a page or two here, check the index there, and jump back or forward at will, always aware of structure and proportion, always aware of each passage’s relation to the text as a whole.

Working by the screenful can have the unfortunate consequence of smoothing your writing prematurely. For onscreen correction is so easy that the grammar and word choices gel too soon, without enough consideration being given to the overall sequence or the underlying structure. Decisions about the piece as a whole may tend to be passed over, so that the end result is polished enough, but boring: flat, shapeless, even garrulous.

Some have gone so far as to argue that the fluency and facility of composing on-screen are positively bad for writing, since they make you forget the reader’s experience of your piece. The beautiful screen is supposed to delude us into a false consciousness, flattering us with the illusion that technical procedures (correction of typos, format changes, boilerplate insertions, rearrangement of phrases, and the like) can do it all by magic. You cast wonderful spells, but find they are somehow not enough. But the evidence for all this (cited by Edward Mendelson in a 1990 Academic Computing article) is no longer thought compelling. In any case, the remedy is a very simple one: any limitation you feel in the computer’s display can be overcome by printing out hard copy. I shall assume, in fact, that you will work from printouts whenever you find it more convenient to do so.

Composing on-screen, revising as you go, is obviously fine for short letters, emails, and routine reports. But many people find that anything longer than 250 words or so—and certainly any competitive or ambitious piece that needs much thought—is better printed out for reading and drafting. For many writers drafting is not a detour but the best way forward.

An additional reason for alternating screen and paper applies only to some writers, who find their thinking in front of a screen slower. After a time the computer has for them a dulling, even stupefying effect. Others report quite the reverse, finding that the computer’s pleasurability encourages thinking on-screen, as Michael Heim claims in Electric Language (1987). People differ; but it does no harm to take a break from the screen every half hour or so, for your circulation’s sake.

Some writers find it helps to jot down the earliest draft on paper, where they can vary the size of words for emphasis, use abbreviations, and resort to private symbols. Even illegible scribbles can be turned to account: paper writers can postpone resolution of ambiguities, defer grammatical structuring, delay lexical choices, allow their minds to explore vague surrounding associations, and perhaps encounter serendipities. For them, the computer closes off too many syntactic options, and calls for definition of ideas still inchoate. Other writers, however, more at ease on the keyboard, value the rapid rearrangement and deletion that can be done on-screen. Inserts can go in as they come to mind, without need for memos or post-its. In drafting, the choice between pen and keyboard may be partly a matter of age, partly of training and temperament.

At any rate, when you have reached the stage of a rough outline, you may want to print it out for ease of reading. Working with the draft on paper, you can read it more easily, and see whether each passage is proportioned and positioned where it should be. But don’t forget to have the latest draft on-screen, ready for you to slot in corrections, references, and new ideas.

Except for a complete beginner, computer spellchecks can waste time. They have a way of giving the correct spelling of the wrong word. Better to have a good dictionary on disk (or on your desk), and consult it for yourself. When you work on the final draft, though, a spellcheck sometimes finds inconsistencies. A grammar check, too, if it is a very good one, can be instructive. But again it is better still to learn some grammar. If you could have a program to write the whole piece for you without effort on your part, would you buy it? If the answer is yes, read no further.

Taken from “How to Write” by Alastair Fowler (Oxford University Press 2006)

Reading Session 1

Books, not instruction, key to creating writers

Setiono Sugiharto , Jakarta | Sat, 23rd August 2008 10:01 AM | Opinion

Conventional wisdom advises this: "If you want your student writers to be able to write, have them write, and nothing else." Our tendency in teaching writing seems to reflect this wisdom.

The best we can do to assist our students of all levels of language proficiency in developing their writing skills is to give them writing instruction, to encourage them to do more writing practice and then to give feedback.

In addition, as writing entails ability in adeptly using language rules (grammar) and as students often find it hard to write using correct grammatical structures, teachers cannot resist the temptation to explain the rules as painstakingly as possible to their students. In this case, grammar instruction is considered necessary.

Both writing instruction and the mastery of language rules, however, are of little value in helping student writers acquire writing competence. Many published studies demonstrate that the effects of instruction on students' writing are weak, fragile and immediately wear off over time. Other studies show that instruction has no effect at all on writing development.

With research confirming that instruction has little or no effect on accelerating writing competence, it is pretty safe to conclude that writing competence cannot be acquired via either instruction or practice.

It is really unfortunate, however, that most teachers are not well-informed about what research on literacy has told us. Because, in their view, research is often incompatible with what they are experiencing in the classroom, they just ignore it.

While it is true that research often makes statements incompatible with teachers' experience, its importance in helping shape our teaching methodology cannot be overlooked.

We need a philosophical justification of what underlies our methodology. At this time, research helps us discern the extent to which our justification is consistent with the reality we are facing.

In fact, teachers' ignorance of research findings has prevented them from finding good solutions to the problems they are constantly confronting. Writing teachers, for instance, have enthusiastically endeavored to assist their student writers in bolstering their writing ability via writing instruction and practice, with little success.

Such a persistent problem can be solved, as long as teachers are willing to pay attention to the following suggestions based on current research, and then take the other alternative which offers much better and less tedious effort on the part of both teachers and students.

Writing instruction doesn't give students a feel of what good and acceptable writing looks like. Specifically, it doesn't help students acquire writing style, appropriate diction and correct spelling. Increasing writing frequency either through self-sponsored writing or classroom-instructed writing doesn't result in significantly increased proficiency. It must be emphasized that the ability to write is the result of acquiring written codes, not the cause of it.

Similarly, the mastery of language rules, which is the result of grammar teaching, doesn't necessarily contribute to writing development. It has been evident that students who are exposed to grammar lessons for many years and grapple with understanding and memorizing rules are still unable to display competence in writing.

A general conclusion then is that writing competence cannot be acquired via either writing and grammar instruction. Forcing students to write without sufficient competence is tantamount to forcing an engine to work without gasoline. This, however, doesn't mean writing and grammar instruction are of no use and should be jettisoned from the school curriculum.

Their relative usefulness can best be explained in terms of Stephen Krashen's dichotomy: writing competence and writing performance. The former refers to the possession of technical writing skills (i.e. grammar, vocabulary and spelling), while the latter designates the ability to write using efficient writing strategies (i.e. planning, drafting, revising and editing).

Writing instruction, it should be reiterated here, cannot make students competent in writing, but it does help equip students with efficient writing strategies. As these strategies are teachable, writing instruction is key to raising students' awareness of how to compose efficiently.

By contrast, writing competence can only be acquired via reading. That is, the ability to write in an acceptable manner using correct grammar, vocabulary and spelling is derived from reading, not from writing practice. It is reading, Krashen says, that gives the writer the "feel" for the look and texture of reader-based prose.

One might argue that language components such as grammar and vocabulary are teachable via instruction. However, it could be counter-argued that they are much too complex, not to mention tedious, to be taught. What is more, we need to invest more time and energy in making students understand and acquire them.

It seems then that the best and the only way of accelerating students' writing competence is to get students hooked on books and to make them fly to books, just as an opium smoker flies to his pipe.

The writer is chief editor of the Indonesian Journal of English Language Teaching and teaches English composition at Atma Jaya Catholic University, Jakarta. He can be reached at setiono.sugiharto@atmajaya.ac.id.

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