Monday, January 27, 2020

The purpose of a lesson plan

The purpose of a lesson plan When I decided to design this lesson I wanted it to be as coherent as possible. The purpose of every lesson plan is to communicate. Every single lesson plan guides the teacher in organizing her material and herself for the purpose of helping her students to attain the intended learning outcomes. Your lesson plan must not be interpreted in many ways; otherwise it will be identified as a not very good plan. This leads to the conclusion that a key principle in creating a plan, is specificity. An effective teaching combines a number of techniques in order to satisfy students different learning styles. The lesson includes some individual works as well as pair work, in order to give students a chance to work with both techniques. Harmer (2007:370) cited that, when planning lessons we need to think carefully, therefore about what stages a lesson will go through and how we will get from one stage to another. So I think that it would be better if I split the lesson into three stages; the opening, the middle and the end. I start the lesson by reminding the students to speak English in the class, as it will help them to practice their fluency in speaking English, and I tell them what we are going to cover during the lesson. While i am talking I will give them a sheet with the sequence of the lesson, because as Harmer (207:370) pointed out, students need to know during a lesson when one stage has finished and another is about to begin. Each lesson plan has to follow a logical sequence so that learners will not find any difficulties in the different activities they will do with the teacher. In order to start the main part of the lesson, I use a picture of Ainsley Harriot who is a very famous English  celebrity chef  and television presenter in order to activate their background knowledge and to motivate them. I will ask them questions related to Ainsley, so that the whole class can participate by answering my questions. This is a very good pre-reading activity because learners activate their schemata but also because the teacher activates their motivation through the discussion about Ainsley Harriot. After this pre-reading activity, I will give them a text related to Ainsley Harriot with a global reading task to do. I decided to give them some reading exercises to do, because as Ur P. (2007:147) points out, reading skills need to be fostered so that the learner can cope with more and more sophisticated texts and tasks and deal with them efficiently. The worksheet I am going to give them includes three paragraph headings. Each paragraph heading goes to one paragraph. The students will gain an idea of the organization of the text and skim quickly through the text in order to find the correct heading for each paragraph. According to Thornbury and Watkins (2007:211) skimming in reading is getting the main ideas or gist of a text by reading it rapidly. After the global reading task I will give them an intensive reading task. I will supply them with another worksheet; which contains 8 questions with four possible answers allocated to each question. Students are supposed to circle the correct answer. They will use the text to find the correct answers. Specifically they are required to carry out specific information in order to find the correct answer. So they do not have to read the whole text, but they will focus on important key words in the questions and then find these keywords in the text in order to decide which answer to circle. This is called the scanning method. According to Lindsay and Knight (2006:72) scanning is the kind of reading you do when you want to find out about something specific. I think it would be better if I used the given text of Ainsley Harriot in order to design some other exercises. Thus I planned a vocabulary activity based on the words from the text. When the students will finish the last worksheet, I will take some words out of the text, write them on the board and I will ask students to tell me some family words of the given words. (Word families) As Nunan (2000:137) points out, word families is an extension of the formal grouping technique and she provides an example of exercise which can be developed in order to show how word families are developed from a single root. For example, music, musician musical. So the activity I decided to give them is called word families. I am going to write on the whiteboard a word like entertain which is in the text. Then, I will tell students to tell me some family words of the word given by giving them an example from another word. Word families are important because they can bring out hidden parts of spelling in a word that we already know. Likewise are very useful because it will give students the chance to expand their vocabulary and meet new words. When they will finish the previous exercise I will tell students to write a short biography of themselves (approximately 10 lines). As Wallace T, Winifred E. Stariba and Herbet J. Walberg (page 15) point out; writing is the final product of several separate acts that are hugely challenging to learn simultaneously. It will be based on the text and if they want they can use some of the words we wrote on the board. I will also indicate that they have to use the present tenses we did in the last lesson (simple present and present continuous). In this piece of writing they have to write about their likes, their hobbies and their daily routine. This type of writing is called personal writing. The purpose I have chosen personal writing is because students are invited to write about themselves. This is an interesting topic, and it is a thing which many students like, because they prefer this sort of writing as they do not have to imagine or invent stories, but if they want to, they can add s ome fictional details on order to make it more fascinating. Ur P. (2007:250) has pointed out, that written work includes assignments on grammar or vocabulary, and so on. Indubitable, when writing we practice the language but also we reinforce the language we have learnt. Thereby, students will practice writing in terms of the grammar, but also the vocabulary activity they have been doing. After writing the short biography, I will suggest that students have to swap their biographies. I will also mention that the purpose of this activity is to read and correct any mistakes they will spot in the biography of their classmates. When they finish reading the biography, they will tell to his/her classmate what mistakes they have done. For example, Marc holds Marinas biography. When they finish, they get together and they tell to each other (Marc-Marina, Marina-Marc) their mistakes. Peer correction is the method of error correction, where students correct each others mistakes rather than having the teacher to correct them. However, students may not be able to identify all the mistakes, but at least they will be able to detect some of them. As Ur P. (2007:172) points out, peer correction can be a time-saving and a useful technique. It can be a useful technique as the learner will feel more comfortable and less afraid or anxious when being helped by their fellow students. In order to finish the lesson, I will tell students the correct answers of the worksheets they have done, and ask them in order to reaffirm if they have any queries. Lastly, I will tell them what they have to do for homework, and collect their biographies so that I will be able to correct them and bring them back next week.

Sunday, January 19, 2020

Pros and Cons of Risk Management Essay

1.0 The pros of risk management Maintaining competitiveness Adverse changes in interest and exchange rates may reduce the competitive position of a company against those with lower levels of gearing or smaller exchange rate exposures, or compared with companies that have taken the precaution of hedging against rate changes. Reduction of bankruptcy risk Adverse movements in interest and exchange rates may jeopardize the continued operation of a company. A classic example is that of a highly geared company with a large proportion of floating rate debt being forced into bankruptcy due to an increase in interest rate. Restructuring of capital obligations Interest rate hedging instruments can be used to restructure a company’s capital profile by altering the nature of its interest obligations, thereby avoiding the repayment of existing debt or the issuing of new securities. In consequence, considerable savings can be made in respect of call fees and issue costs. At the same time, a wider range of financial sources becomes available to the company. Reducing in the volatility of corporate cash flows Reducing the volatility of net cash flows may increase the market rating of the company and will facilitate the process of forward planning. 2.0 The cons of risk management The complicated nature of hedging instruments A combination of unfamiliarity with the range of hedging methods available and a belief by potential users that such methods are complex may result in treasurers choosing not to hedge exchange and interest rate exposures. The risks associated with using external hedging instruments The perceived risk associated with in using hedging instruments can sometimes dissuade potential users. Instead of providing protection from steeply increasing interest rates, the transactions turned out to be highly speculative bets. The complicated tax and financial reporting treatments of derivatives The accounting and tax treatment of derivatives has tended to lag behind the pace of their development owing to the dynamic nature of their markets. The major problem regarding the accounting treatment of derivatives is knowing exactly what information to disclose and how to disclose it. Diversification by shareholders may be superior to hedging An alternative to hedging by individual companies is for shareholders to diversify away interest and exchange rate risk themselves by holding a diversified portfolio of shares, hence saving the costs associated with hedging at a corporate level. If shareholders hold diversified portfolios, some commentators argue that hedging of exposures by individual companies is motivated purely by management’s desire to safeguard their jobs, rather than a desire to enhance shareholder wealth. 3.0 Conclusion As a conclusion, exchange rate risk and interest rate risk can be managed by the use of both internal and external techniques. Internal techniques allow companies to hedge risk within their own balance sheet by the way in which they structure their assets and liabilities. Alternatively, companies can employ one or more of the many external techniques now available, such as swaps, options, futures and forwards. While these derivative instruments give more scope and flexibility to companies to manage their risk, their associated costs and their complicated nature must be taken into account.

Saturday, January 11, 2020

Capstone Checkpoint Essay

Looking back over the past nine weeks I must say that a large amount of valuable information has been presented to our class. The reading material, assignments, and class discussions have taught me some valuable lessons in the area of nutrition. The assignment that I learned the most from was the Week Two assignment about the digestive system. I now understand how the body uses the different types of food, the path food takes as it enters the body, and how the organs, including the salivary glands work together in the digestive process. However, my favorite part of Week Two came through the class discussions in the area of home remedies. I learned how a change in diet can prevent or help to cure digestive disorders. For example, Diverticulus can be treated at home by drinking plenty of fluid and eating fiber rich foods, such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, etc. I enjoyed this part the most because I was forced to take medicine for an extended period of time and I really did not enjoy that experience. Therefore, learning natural ways to bring relief was truly refreshing for me.  Checkpoint from week one, three day diet analysis instructed me how to begin eating healthier. I made the necessary changes in my diet and by the time I reached the three day analysis for week six, I noticed some major changes in my eating habits. Currently I notice the different foods on my plate and the nutritional value that each has to offer. I refrain from eating meals (other than grains for breakfast like cereal or oatmeal) that does not include fruits or vegetables. Even on those days when I stop by a fast food place and grab a burger I avoid the fries, and I ask for extra pickles, lettuce, and tomato, to add more nutrients to the sandwich.

Thursday, January 2, 2020

Psychological Profiling And Predictive Modelling - 3711 Words

Contents 1. Executive Summary 3 2. Introduction 4 3. Intellectual Property Rights 5 1) Patents 5 2) Trademarks 5 3) Copyrights 5 4) Trade Secrets 5 4. The Nature of Threats 6 1) Computer Hacking 6 2) Reverse Engineering 6 3) Physical multimedia piracy 6 4) Online Piracy 6 5) Disclosure of Emails 7 6) Disclosure of employees information 7 5. The Magnitude of the Threat 8 6. Offenders 9 7. The Source of Threat 10 1) Externally influenced theft of IP 10 2) Internally influenced theft of IP 10 8. Methods of stealing Intellectual Property 11 9. Mitigation strategies 12 1) Separation of Dties 12 2) Psychological Profiling and Predictive modelling 12 3) Defence-in-depth 13 4) Traffic Pattern Detection 13 5) Use of Isolated Systems for Administrators 13 6) Handling of Employees Grievances 13 10. International Scope 14 11. Legislative Actions 15 12. Conclusion 16 13. References 17 1. Executive Summary Today organisations are having pressure to invent their product faster than their competitors so that they can survive in the market and deliver that product with such a functionally or features that no one can imagine. This is the way for the organisations to survive in the market and increase their revenue by increasing sales. Due to many reasons such as increased customer expectations, revenue pressure, cost pressure, standardised software engineering processes, organisation are facing the pressure of developing complex products within the limited time frame which sometime makesShow MoreRelatedStrategic Marketing Management337596 Words   |  1351 Pagescriteria 13.5 Non-financial criteria 13.6 Multiple criteria 13.7 Summary 14 Modelling approaches – 1 14.1 Learning objectives 14.2 Introduction 14.3 Cost–volume–profit analysis 14.4 Investment appraisal 14.5 Summary 15 Modelling approaches – 2 15.1 Learning objectives 15.2 Introduction 15.3 Allowing for risk and uncertainty 15.4 Matrix models 15.5 The marketing performance assessment model 15.6 Some other approaches to modelling 15.7 Summary Stage Five: How can we ensure arrival? Strategic implementation