The Difference between Macro and Micro Economics & Price Elasticity of Essay

The Difference between Macro and Micro Economics & Price Elasticity of Demand - Essay Example Microeconomics focuses on the demand and supply of a single product. It studies the behaviour of a particular institute in the market, helping in the management of that institute. It helps in answering various questions such as what type of a product is to be produced; how much of that product is to be produced to meet the market demands; how is it going to be produced; what raw materials are going to be used; what type of fuel would be used; for whom the good is to be produced; and many other such questions are answered via microeconomics. So all the choices a particular person makes comes under microeconomics because he is just concerned with what he is producing rather than the total production of a particular good in an economy. Macroeconomic issues are related to the balance between aggregate supply and aggregate demand. If the aggregate demand gets much higher than aggregate supply, inflation and balance of payment deficit (exports become greater than imports) can take place. O n the other hand, if the aggregate demand gets lower than aggregate supply, recession and unemployment may occur. So it is crucial to maintain the balance between aggregate supply and aggregate demand and macroeconomics helps in doing so. ... Task 2: The Price Elasticity of Demand (PED) measures how much the quantity demanded of a commodity responds to a change in price of that commodity. Price Elasticity of Demand can be calculated by using the following formula: Price elasticity of demand = Percentage change in quantity demanded / Percentage change in price For example, if there is a 40% rise in oil price and the demand for oil decrease by 10% then Price Elasticity of Demand will be -10% / 40% = -0.25. The value of PED is always negative, because demand graphs are mostly downward slopping, meaning that price and demand always go opposite. An increase in price will result in a decrease in demand and vice versa. Thus there will always be a negative figure which would make the sign negative. If the quantity demanded responds substantially to the changes in price, the demand for that good is said to be elastic. On the other hand, if the quantity demanded responds slightly to changes in prices, the demand for that good is sa id to be inelastic. PED helps us in determining whether a good has elastic or inelastic demand. Ignoring the negative sign, if PED is greater than 1 then the demand will be elastic and if PED is less than 1 then the demand will be inelastic. Consider the example of oil. A rise in the price of oil may result in a slight decrease in the demand of oil. The vehicles will continue to use oil, so people would have to pay higher prices. The slight decrease in demand may occur because some people might shift to bicycling. In this case the demand for oil is inelastic. Goods which are classified as necessities have inelastic demand. A patient would have to buy a life saving drug how much expensive it might be

Home Schooling and Traditional Schooling Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Home Schooling and Traditional Schooling - Essay Example As a result, there have been debates whether it is a good idea to home-school children or if it would be better to send them to traditional schools. One of the arguments presented against homeschooling is that there is no guarantee of quality education because not all parents and tutors have the proper training to teach. Moreover, the lessons that might be presented to the student may not be on the same level of the nationally accepted curriculum such as those taught in school (kidshealth.org). On the other hand, the same argument can also be presented in the traditional school because not all licensed teachers really have the skill of effectively teaching students. In relation to the quality of education given to students, homeschooling prides itself on an intensive program that could be designed for the student depending on the student’s learning speed. The one to one teaching and learning experience can be a catalyst for quantity learning. In contrast to this matter, traditional schools have set schedules that need to be followed so that the quality of learning is greatly affected (Baker & kidshealth.org). For instance, slow learners are often left behind while fast learners get bored with the lessons that are repeatedly discussed for those who have difficulty following the lesson. Another problem that is said of homeschooling is the absence or limited access to the development of social skills in students. Home-schools may organize groups for their children in order to compensate for the socialization they miss while learning alone at home and join group activities such as tours and sports but it is so limited in contrast to the exposures of students in traditional schools. Moreover, the facilities used in homeschooling are far limited than in traditional schools.  

Tyranny of Teams Essay Example for Free

Tyranny of Teams Essay Some alternative perspectives on team behaviour elucidate the ways in which the prevailing paradigm ultimately hinders groups and tyrannizes the individual team member mdash; by camouflaging coercion and conflict with the appearance of consultation and cohesion. Examination of the limits and effects of the ideology provide the basis for an alternative understanding of the strengths, constraints and complexities of group work. Introduction Teams in various forms have become ubiquitous ways of working. As task forces, committees, work groups and quality circles, they are used to provide leadership, accomplish research, maximize creativity and operationalize structural flexibility (Peters and Waterman 1982; Payne The 1988) . prescriptions of much contemporary management thinking are based on a dominant ideology of teamwork. While teams have been narrowly construed as a tool of the Organization Development Model, the ideology is much more pervasive. Teams are embraced as tools of diverse models of organizational reform from organization development (Dunphy 1976) to work restructuring (Poza and Markus 1980), from quality management to industrial democracy and from corporate culture and Japanese management approaches to complex contingency prescriptions. 611 Beliefs about the benefits of teams occupy a central and unquestioned place in organizational reform. It is all the more surprising that, despite some differences in context, the team ideology has been espoused with such consistency. The hegemony of this ideology has been supported by researchers who offer the ’team’ as a tantalizingly simple solution to some of the intracDownloaded from http://oss. sagepub. com at Massey University Library on June 28, 2010 612 problems of organizational life. Teams appear to satisfy everything individual needs (for sociability, self-actualization, participative management), organizational needs (for productivity, organizational development, effectiveness) and even society’s needs for alleviating the malaise of alienation and other by-products of modern industrial society (Johnson and Johnson 1987). However, do work groups deserve the status they have acquired as multipurpose panaceas for organizational problems? As has been powerfully argued in organizational analysis (Burrell and Morgan 1979; Astley and Van de Ven 1983; Reed 1985; Alvesson 1987), the dominance of a particular paradigm has substantial costs in the institutionalization of table at once: mechanisms of control. The purpose of this article is to scrutinize the ideological basis of the prevailing team paradigm. Four sets of assumptions which underpin the ideology are identified: 1. Narrowly conceived definitions of work groups and group work are based on the assumption that mature teams are task-oriented, and have successfully minimized corruption by other group impulses. 2. It is an individual motivation formula and a ’unitary view’ of organizations which assumes confluence, not conflict, between individual, group and organizational goals (Burrell and Morgan 1979: 204). 3. Simplistic views of the superiority of participative leaders are held. 4. The views are also held that power, conflict and emotion are subversive forces which divert groups from work. Research from some alternative critical, psychoanalytic and other perspectives is used to suggest some areas in which the paradigm requires overhaul. A premise of this paper is that teams can contribute to getting work of all kinds done, but not when their application is informed by a narrow framework that nurtures inappropriate expectations. Further, and more critically, the team ideology embraced by these assumptions tyrannizes because, under the banner of benefits to all, teams are frequently used to camouflage coercion under the pretence of maintaining cohesion; conceal conflict under the guise of consensus; convert conformity into a semblance of creativity; give unilateral decisions a co-determinist seal of approval; delay action in the supposed interests of consultation; legitimize lack of leadership; and disguise expedient arguments and personal agendas. Definitions of Teams and Group Work theorists have defined a ’team’ as a distinctive class of which is more task-oriented than other groups, and which has a set group, of obvious rules and rewards for its members (Adair 1986). According to this view, high-performing teams substitute collective goals and an inter- Management Downloaded from http://oss. sagepub. com at Massey University Library on June 28, 2010 613 est in the task at hand for individual agendas and inter-personal conflicts. Group theorists have noted the parallels between therapeutic groups and other types of work groups (Foulkes 1964: 110). However, the emphasis of team ideology on the task-orientation of teams has tended to idealize and resist recognizing that groups with a task still experience anti-task behaviour, and indeed have much in common with other types of groups. Seeking to understand both individual and group work, researchers have, on the whole, been dogged by the search for discrete or measurable outputs of work. Work has many forms. Some definitions of individual ’performance’ and ’effectiveness’ in administrative and managerial (Likert 1967; Sorenson 1971) with creativity and innovation in research or scientific contexts (Gordon 1961; Sch6n 1963), yet such experimental measures often seem to bear little resemblance to individual experiences of work (Terkel 1974) . Efforts to define group work by researchers in the team ideology tradition have produced a range of measures referring either to the output or to the quality of group process.

The Importance Of Age In Sla

The Importance Of Age In Sla There are many theories if age affects second language acquisition. Some authors saying that, to learn a second language when you are child is easier than to learn a second language when you are older. We can define children ages from 3 to 18 that are in school and adults or older learners from the ages of 18 and above. However the critical period hypothesis it can also play a role in the learning and also the implicit and the explicit shift hypothesis. Below will examine what authors point out. What is the difference of learning a second language in early stage or later, the benefits and the negatives. And when is easier to start learning a second language. To start with, in critical period hypothesis suggests that there is a period when language acquisition takes place naturally and effortlessly. Penfield and Roberts (1959 in Ellis, 1985:107) argued that the optimum age for language acquisition it starts the first ten years of life. Because in this time of period the brain retains plasticity but with the onset of puberty this plasticity begins to disappear. They suggest that this is a result of the lateralization of the language function in the left hemispheres of the brain, and slowly concentrated in the left hemisphere for most people. Thus, increased difficulty which learners supposedly experience as a direct result of a neurological change. According to Lenneberg (1967 in Ellis, 1985:107) to support the critical period hypothesis found that injuries to the right hemisphere caused more language problems in children than in adults. He also found that in cases of children who underwent surgery of the left hemisphere, no speech disorders resulted, whereas with adults almost total language occurred. Furthermore, Lenneberg provided evidence to show that whereas children rapidly recovered total language control after such operations, adults did not do so, but instead continued to display permanent linguistic impairment. This suggested that the neurological basis of language in children and adults was different. However, Lennebergs evidence does not demonstrate that is easier to acquire language before puberty but he assumed that language acquisition was easier to children. According to Lightbown and Spada (1999:61) most studies of the relationship between age of acquisition and second language development have focused on learn ers phonological (pronunciation) achievement. In general, these studies have concluded that older learners almost inevitably have a noticeable foreign accent. However, another interesting cognitive theory is the implicit and the explicit shift. This suggests that the age affects the decreasing in language learning capacity in SLA and it happens because of the declining role of implicit learning and memory in the language acquisition process, and at the same time increase the role of explicit learning and memory. This statement is supported by a wide agreement that learners process their late-learnt language differently than their native language, but the results of the performance are rarely the same. Paradis (2004 in Dornyei 2009:256-257) point out that a particular strength of the implicit and the explicit shift hypothesis is that they can account of the age effects in naturalistic SLA and in formal school learning: first, the dominating learning mechanism is the implicit thus the younger we are, the better we can capitalize. Second the limited amount of L2 exposure and cognitive structure input is typically favours explicit learning and learning we can benefit from this language environment more in older age when the implicit and the explicit shift is on the way and thus prepared us for utilizing explicit learning mechanisms. Although it is often assumed that the loss of the implicit learning that is forces the second language learners to rely in the explicit learning, which uses a cognitive system different from that the native language is support. Dekeyser (2000 in Dornyei, 2009:241) point out that if the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) is constrained, however in the implicit learning mechanisms appears that there is more than just a sizable correlation. Also early age confers an absolute that there may well be no exceptions to the age effect. Between the ages of 6-7 and 16-17 , everybody loses the mental equipment that requires for the implicit induction of the abstract patterns that underlying the human language, thus the critical period deserves its name as DeKeyser mention. DeKeyser and Larson Hall (2005 in Dornyei 2009:241) point out, that this approach is also accepted by Lenneberg (1967 in Dornyei 2009:241) who had the original observation of the CPH that automatic acquisition from mere exposure to a given language seems to disappear after this age. Also many scholars agree with DeKeyser (2000 in Dornyei, 2009:242) that the qualitative disparity between adult (post Critical period) and child language acquisition shows that somewhere along the line there is bound to be break that it caused from maturational constraints. Studies have repeatedly found that age causes a gradual decline in acquiring language with an attainment curve with a sharp discontinuity at the terminus of the period. Although there is a theory the younger the better whereas Dornyei points out that language learning is easier when one is young. For example a family of immigrates to a new country for a 5 year old child will be far easier to learn a L2 proficiency than the 30 year old father, but he would be better than 60 year old grandma. I can agree with Dornyei view, as for a child it can be easier to learn the second language because of the school context, but for the father it depends from the working or the environment he will be surrounded, thus it can be more difficult for older learners. As Dorney (2009:249) explains, a young immigrant child who will start primary school in the new country at the age of 5-6, will be able to learn as often optimal conditions are provided by the school experiences. However, for an adult immigrant whose social network involve people from the same ethno linguistic group and has few native speaking colleagues at work the learning conditions are far from the ideal. It is also the same for a student that contact a L2 onetime per week in a school context. Some other authors that agree with Dornyei, is Kuhl (2008 in Dornyei, 2009:249) who states, There is no doubt that children learn languages more naturally and efficiently than adults and N.Ellis (2005 in Dornyei, 2009:249) also concludes, It is an incontrovertible fact that ultimate second language attainment is less successful in older than younger learners According to Gass and Selinker (2001:342) children are more successful second language learners than adults and there various explanations: First, there social psychological reasons why adults learn languages less easy than children. There many different versions of this hypothesis. Some suggest that adults dont want to give up the sense of identity that the accent provides them. And other suggests that adults dont want to surrender their ego in the extent that required adopting a new language, which combines with a new life-world. Second the cognitive factors are also responsible for the weakness of the adults to succeed in learning. Adults have greater cognitive abilities than children. Adopting the cognitive abilities in language learning task has less successful learning in children, which according to the hypothesis where supposed to rely a greater extent in a specific language acquisition device. Third, there are neurological changes that prevent adults to use their brain with the same way that children learn language learning tasks. This usually presented as a loss of plasticity or the flexibility in the brain. Fourth, the children are exposed to a better input for language learning thus children are provided with better data about the language. On the other hand, some other authors disagree with that point of view and point out that the older the better by state that a 5 year old student probably will occur to less progress in learning language in school context than an older learner age of 15 or 30, even 60 years old. According to Dornyei (2009:235) Anglophone children in French immersion who entered the immersion programme relatively late, around 9 to 11 years old, very quickly manage to caught up with the early immersion of students, who start he immersion programme in kindergarten or when entering the primary school. Also Dornyei (2009:250) point out that in school settings older students make better progress than their younger peers, particularly in acquiring morphosyntactic and lexical aspects of the second language and sometimes also in acquiring phonological aspects. Also Dornyei (2009:250) states that younger the better principle suggests that younger children learn better in educational settings in the sense of going further but not faster. Singleton and Ryan (2004 in Dornyei, 2009:250): Extrapolating from the naturalistic studies, one way plausibly argue that early formal instruction in an L2 is likely to yield advantages after rather longer periods of time than have so far been studied. Over the last few years two investigations took place in Spain, to examine the older the better issue. They examine three groups of Basque learners of English who attended the fifth year in primary school, the second year in secondary school and the fifth year in secondary school who had 600 hours of instruction, Cenoz (2003 in Dornyei, 2009:251) reported that the oldest group had the highest proficiency in English, followed by the intermediate group and the youngest group. The youngest learners where only better in attitudinal and motivational disposition from their older peers. The second study investigated Catalan learners of English in the Barcelona Age Factor (BAF) project and they found very similar findings. Several groups of learners (total N= 1928) with different AoA were examined three times, after 200 hours, 416 hours, and 726 hours of instruction. In the results older learners where progress faster in learning a foreign language than younger learners. Munoz (2006 in Dorny ei, 2009:251) concluded that after linger periods of time, younger starters did not outperform later starters, and the extensive span and size of this investigation makes this finding particularly robust. However, many authors point out that in formal language contexts younger learners are not better but worse. Thus, in recent initiatives they attempt to push forward the starting age of learning a foreign language as a school productive. Lightbown and Spada (2006 in Dornyei, 2009:251), conclude that older learners are possible to achieve a better use in L2 learning in limited time. When the goal is the basic communicative ability for all students in an educational system, and when the childs native language will remain the primary language, it may be more efficient to start learning a second or a foreign language teaching later. When the learners receive few hours of teaching per week, the learners who start later between 10 to 12 years old often are likely to caught up with the learners who start earlier. Some second or foreign languages programmes that start with very young learners and provide minimum of contact, usually they do not lead to much progress. On the other hand Ellis gives some facts of younger and older learners. According to Ellis (1994:491-492) adult learners have an initial advantage of learning, where rate of learning in concerned, particularly in grammar. Eventually adult learners can overtake the child learners that are exposed to L2. This is less likely to happen in instructional than in naturalistic settings because the critical amount of exposure is usually not available in the former. First, only child learners are able to acquire informal learning contexts. Long (1990 in Ellis, 1994:491-492) point out that the critical period is age 6, but Scovel point out that there is no evidence to support it and argues for a pre-puberty start. Also Singletton (1989 in Ellis, 1994:491-492) point out that children are able to acquire a native accent only if they are exposed to massive L2 learning. However, some children still do not manage to acquire a native like accent possible because they try to maintain active use of the ir L1. Adult learners may be able to acquire a native accent if they have an assistance of instruction, but more researchers have to take place to substantiate this claim. Second, children are more likely to acquire a native grammatical competence, as the critical period of grammar may be able to be later than for pronunciation, around 15 years old. But some adult learners, might achieve to acquire native levels of grammatical accuracy in speech and writing and linguistic competence. Third, children are more likely to reach higher levels of attainment in pronunciation and grammar than adults. Fourth, the process of acquiring a L2 does not really affected by the age, but the acquiring of pronunciation can be. Beside if younger learners or older learners are better, age can affect the mastery of native like learning as we saw above. Also Mark Patkowski (in Lightbown, 1999:61-62) studied the effect of age in acquisition of features of a second language, despite the accent. He pointed that even if the accent was ignored only the learners who start learning a second language before the age of 15 they could achieve full, native-like mastery of that language. Patkowski also examined the spoken English of 67 highly educated immigrants to the United States. The learners started to learn English in different ages, but all of them lived in the United States more than 5 years. Also 15 native-born Americans English speakers of spoken English from similarly high level of education take place to the research to show the validity of the research. In the research, a lengthy interview with each of the subjects in the study was tape recorded. Because Patkowski wanted to remove the possibility that the resu lts would be affected, he did not ask rates to judge the tape-recorded interviews themselves. Instead, he transcribed five-minute samples from the interviews. These samples were rated by trained native-speakers judges. The judges were asked to place each speaker on a rating scale from 0, representing no knowledge of the language, to 5, representing a level of English expected form an educated native speaker. The main question in Patkowskis research was: Will there be a difference between learners who began to learn English before puberty and those who began learning later? However, in the light of some of the issues discussed above, he also compared learners on the basis of other characteristics and experiences which some people have suggested might be as good as age in predicting or explaining a learners eventual success in mastering a second language. For example, he looked at the relationship between eventual mastery and the total amount of time a speaker had been in the United States as well as the amount of formal ESL instruction each speaker had had. The findings were remarkable, because thirty-two from the thirty-three learners who start learning English before the age of 15 years old scored 4+ or the 5 level. The homogeneity of the post-puberty learners seemed that the success of learning a second language was almost inevitable. On the other hand, was a variety in the levels that the post-puberty achieved. The majority of the post-puberty learners achieved +3 level, but a wide if distribution of levels achieved. The variety of the performance of this group were look more like the performance range were expected if someone were measuring success in learning, almost in any kind of skill or knowledge Patkowskis (in Lightbown, 1999:62-63) first question, Will there be a difference between learners who began to learn English before puberty and those who began learning English later?, was answered with a very resounding yes. Thus Patkowski found that the age of acquisition is very important factor for the development of native-like m astery of a second language and that does not only affect the accent. The experience and the research showed that native-like mastery of spoken language is difficult to achieve by older learners. Also, the ability to distinguish grammatical and ungrammatical sentences in a second language seems that is also affected by the age factor. However, according to Dornyei (2009:242) learners who are young enough in the critical period are still failing to master the L2 to a native like level. And, on the other hand are adult learners whose AoA is late, for example learners in their twenties, that has to be after the offset of the Critical Period and they succeed in acquiring native like proficiency. Also, there are evidences against the Critical Period hypothesis, an example that provided by Flege (2006 in Dornyei, 2009:242) are young learners of L2 whose L1 influence the pronunciation and it could still be detected after a long period in the host environment. And in another investigation that took place in 2007 by Jia and Fuse is that none of the ten immigrant children whose development followed by five year period in the USA manage to master the regular past tense -ed suffix at a minimum of 80% accuracy level, even thought the youngest children were 5 to 6 years old in the arrival and when the participated in mainstream schooling with additional English teaching. Birdsong (2006 in Dornyei, 2009:243) point out that few studies that have identified in early starter L2 learners that they should achieved native like proficiency but they do not as the Critical period defeating, native like adult L2 learners has received more attention in the literature. Common figures of post pubertal learners who reach a native like level range between 5 to 10% of learners in naturalistic environments. However there are two important points that adults can also do it. First, Birdsong (2007 in Dornyei, 2009:244) observed in his study that the late learners can success in phonetic training and also are having highly motivated to improve L2 pronunciation. Second, it appears that if you dig deep enough you can find chinks in the L2 armour, or even the most successful L2 adult learner. There various ways of accessing the native-like speaker judgment of L2 pronunciation, oral and written production tasks, even grammaticality judgements in more sophisticated probes such as examining subtle phonetic differences in voice onset time or intonation contour. It seems that even if standard measures identify someone to belong within the native-speaking range obtained of performance-usually within two standard deviations of the mean rating obtained for a native-speaking norm group- more elaborate techniques can still detect subtle deviations from the native norm. To conclude, there are many beliefs if age affects second language acquisition, if younger learners or older learners are better, if younger learners or older learners can achieve a native like language and if there is a critical period. In my opinion, learning a second language in younger age is more effective because is easier to save or remember new things, however if you are older learner there is a benefit to be able to practise the second language. And for my personal experience practising your second language and use the second language is how you learn it, instead of just learning a second language only in school context, through books, exercises, etc. In the second part of the native like proficiency I do not believe that the age matters but it matters from the person. Some people are more motivated to achieve a native like proficiency and they will try more, but other they just want to speak a second language and be able to understand them, nothing else. And for the third p art, if there is a critical period, I will agree as they say the children are like sponge, I will also agree with the part that says there is a time you stop learning as I believe in some point in your life you cannot handle new things, new words or new grammar but it happen in different stages for every person.

Hitler Essay -- essays research papers fc

Hitler’s Rise to Power Which Created New Germany Hitler’s first step of being chancellor was to call for elections to be held in the March of 1933. Before the elections were held, however, on the 27th of February a week before the election the Reichstag burnt down. A Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, was caught inside the burning building with lighters and matches on him. Hitler used this event to arrest many communists and to request Hindenburg to issue an emergency law, For the Protection of the People and State. (German Aircraft of WWII† by Kenneth Munson, 1978 pg45-75) The Nazis won 288 seats Hitler now persuaded the Reichstag to pass the Enabling Act, which would change the constitution and give him the ability to pass laws without the consent of the Reichstag. By a vote of 441 to 94, the Enabling Act was passed. He was now the legal dictator of Germany. Hitler’s plans for Germany were three points: *Rearmament *Employment *Expansion Almost as soon as the Nazis came to power, Germany began to change. In October 1934 Hitler authorized an increase in the size of the German Army, and in two months it had grown to 280, 000 soldiers. In March 1935 he announced the reintroduction of conscription, with plans to build up the army to thirty-six divisions or 500, 000 soldiers. The existence of the new German Air Force known as the Luftwaffe was made public. Hitler intended to ignore the military clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. The navy was not overlooked. The Kriegsmarine was given the task of making the construction of submarines, which had proven to be an effective weapon in World War I. Submarines construction began in 1934 and the number of Unterseeboots or U-Boats grew to fifty-seven. In 1935 the pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee was launched, followed by the Scharnhorst and the Gneisau. The new German Air Force, called the Luftwaffe, took the task of rebuilding Germany’s air power with enthusiasm. By 19 39 it boasted 4200 front-line aircraft. In September 1936 Hitler introduced the Four Year Plan that aimed to make Germany totally self-sufficient in essential commodities such as oil, iron ore, textiles and food. When the Nazis came to power there were six million Germans unemployed, which equated to one-third of the workforce. The Nazis regarded unemployment as an urgent and growing issue. Unemployment in Germany dropped due to ... ... The Bf109G or Gustav had very good high-altitude performance, so a new high pressure cabin had to be fitted. The aircraft was very heavy. It was fast but it did not handle well. Engineers then fitted a nitrous oxide injection system, which resulted in 406mph at 28 500ft. The Gustav, which had started to come off production lines in 1942, was perhaps the first aircraft to be designed as a platform for a variety of weapons systems. A well-flown Gustav presented the RAF’s Spitfire pilots with a formidable foe- they could out-turn the Spitfire, yet the Gustav was out-gunned. During 1942 a total of 2664 Messerschmitt Bf109s were produced. The Gustav was camouflaged by a three-tone grey color scheme proved effective over the low countries and the North Sea. The Bf109F and G as well as earlier variants served in the all of the major campaigns in Europe and Africa, but the most significant was the Battle of Britain. Messerschmitt Bf109 Bibliography *â€Å"German Aircraft of WWII† by Kenneth Munson, 1978 *â€Å"The Guide to Axis Fighters of WWII† by Bill Gunston, 1980 *â€Å"Take Off† by Chris Dorrington, 1993 *â€Å"Republic to Reich†by K.J Mason, 1996 *†www.Google>com†

Semiotics and Instructional Technology Essay -- Signs Writing Symbols

Semiotics and Instructional Technology Abstract The purpose of my paper is to define and discuss semiotics and relate it to instructional technology. Discussing Semiotics Huyghe says that if you are a semiologist, then you study systems of signs (Huyghe, 1993, p.1). This area of discussion can cover a broad range of topics from hieroglyphic writing to "Masks and the semiotics of identity." "In semiotic terms, an icon is a variety of sign that bears a resemblance to its object; a diagram, for example, is an icon of that which the diagram represents (Pollock, 1995, p. 1). In Bourland-Davis’ article, she draws from Johnson and Hackman to discuss semiotics as a form of symbolic communication (Bourland-Davis, 1998, p. 2). In Bourland-Davis’ article (Bourland-Davis, p. 2), Johnson and Hackman state that ‘human (symbolic) communication †¦ generates new and relevant combinations of associations of existing elements (materials, words, ideas, facts, sounds, movements, colors, lines, mathematical notations, procedures, etc.) through lateral (divergent) thinking’ (as cited in Johnson and Hackman, 1995, p.15). Sometimes the most effective way to represent an abstract problem is by using symbols, as students learn to do in high-school algebra (Matlin, 1998, p. 347). Often by comparing an idea to an object that can be symbolically related somehow, the level of understanding is increased, and then that object can later be used as a trigger mechanism for recalling the specifics of that concept (Matlin, 1998, p. 351). "†¦a visual image can let us escape from the boundaries of traditional representations. At the same time, however, the visual image is somewhat concrete; it serves as a symbol for a theory that has not yet bee... ...of identity. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute: Vol. 1 (pp. 581-597). Scott, Robert Ian. (1995). Messages and meanings: An essay/review – Messages and Meanings: An introduction to semiotics by Marcel Danesi. Et Cetera: Vol. 52 (pp. 482-486). Winn, William. Toward a rationale and theoretical basis for educational technology. ETR&D: Vol. 37 (pp. 35-46). Zenger, Weldon F. & Zenger, Sharon K. (1999). Schools and curricula for the 21st century: Predictions, visions and anticipations. NASSP Bulletin: Vol. 83 (pp. 49-60). Textbooks Used: Anglin, Gary J. (1995). Instructional Technology: Past, Present and Future. (2nd ed.). In Barbara L. Grabowski, Message Design: Issues and Trends. (pp. 222-225). Colorado: Libraries Unlimited, Inc. Matlin, Margaret W. (1998). Cognition. (4th ed.). Texas: Harcourt Brace College Publishers.

How to Say Nothing in Five Hundred Word Essay

Paul McHenry Roberts (1917-1967) taught college English for over twenty years, first at San Jose State College and later at Cornell University. He wrote numerous books on linguistics, including Understanding Grammar (1954), Patterns of English (1956), and Understanding English (1958). Freshman composition, like everything else, has its share of fashions. In the 195Os, when this article was written, the most popular argument raging among student essayists was the proposed abolition of college football. With the greater social consciousness of the early ’60s, the topic of the day became the morality of capital punishment. Topics may change, but the core principles of good writing remain constant, and this essay as become something of a minor classic in explaining them. Be concrete, says Roberts; get to the point; express your opinions colorfully. Refreshingly, he even practices what he preaches. His essay is humorous, direct, and almost salty in summarizing the working habits that all good prose writers must cultivate. — Editors’ note from JoRay McCuen & Anthony C. Winkler’s Readings for Writers , 3rd ed., Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980 It’s Friday afternoon. and you have almost survived another week of classes. You are just looking forward dreamily to the weekend when the English instructor says: â€Å"For Monday you will turn in a five hundred-word composition on college football.† Well, that puts a good hole in the weekend. You don’t have any strong views on college football one way or the other. You get rather excited during the season and go to all the home games and find it rather more fun than not. On the other hand, the class has been reading Robert Hutchins in the anthology and perhaps Shaw’s â€Å"Eighty-Yard Run,† and from the class discussion you have got the idea that the instructor thinks college football is for the birds. You are no fool. You can figure out what side to take. After dinner you get out the portable typewriter that you got for high school graduation. You might as well get it over with and enjoy Saturday and Sunday. Five hundred words is about two double -spaced pages with normal margins. You put in a sheet of paper, think up a title, and you’re off: WHY COLLEGE FOOTBALL SHOULD BE ABOLISHED College football should be abolished because it’s bad for the school and also for the players. The players are so busy practicing that they don’t have any time for their studies. This, you feel, is a mighty good start. The only trouble is that it’s only thirty-two words. You still have four hundred and sixty-eight to go, and you’ve pretty well exhausted the subject. It comes to you that you do your best thinking in the morning, so you put away the typewriter and go to the movies. But the next morning you have to do your washing and some math problems, and in the afternoon you go to the game. The English instructor turns up too, and you wonder if you’ve taken the right side after all. Saturday night you have a date, and Sunday morning you have to go to church. (You can’t let English assignments interfere with your religion.) What with one thing and another, it’s ten o’clock Sunday night before you get out the typewriter again. Y ou make a pot of coffee and start to fill out your views on college football. Put a little meat on the bones. WHY COLLEGE FOOTBALL SHOULD BE ABOLISHED In my opinion, it seems to me that college football should be abolished. The reason why I think this to be true is because I feel that football is bad for the colleges in nearly every respect. As Robert Hutchins says in his article in our anthology in which he discusses college football, it would be better if the colleges had race horses and had races with one another, because then the horses would not have to attend classes. I firmly agree with Mr. Hutchins on this point, and I am sure that many other students would agree too. One reason why it seems to me that college football is bad is that it has become too commercial. In the olden times when people played football just for the fun of it, maybe college football was all right, but they do not play college football just for the fun of it now as they used to in the old days. Nowadays college football is what you might call a big business. Maybe this is not true at all schools, and I don’t think it is especially true here at State, but certainly this is the case at most colleges and universities in America nowadays, as Mr. Hutchins points out in his very interesting article. Actually the coaches and alumni go around to the high schools and offer the high school stars large salaries to come to their colleges and play football for them. There was one case where a high school star was offered a convertible if he would play football for a certain college. Another reason for abolishing college football is that it is bad for the players. They do not have time to get a college education, because they are so busy playing football. A football player has to practice every afternoon from three to six and then he is so tired that he can’t concentrate on his studies. He just feels like dropping off to sleep after dinner, and then the next day he goes to his classes without having studied and maybe he fails the test. (Good ripe stuff so far, but you’re still a hundred and fifty-one words from home. One more push.) Also I think college football is bad for the colleges and the universities because not very many students get to participate in it. Out of a college of ten thousand students only seventy-five or a hundred play football, if that many. Football is what you might call a spectator sport. That means that most people go to watch it but do not play it themselves. (Four hundred and fifteen. Well, you still have the conclusion, and when you retype it, you can make the margins a little wider.) These are the reasons why I agree with Mr. Hutchins that college football should be abolished in American colleges and universities. On Monday you turn it in, moderately hopeful, and on Friday it comes back marked â€Å"weak in content† and sporting a big â€Å"D.† This essay is exaggerated a little, not much. The English instructor will recognize it as reasonably typical of what an assignment on college football will bring in. He knows that nearly half of the class will contrive in five hundred words to say that college football is too commercial and bad for the players. Most of the other half will inform him that college football builds character and prepares one for life and brings prestige to the school. As he reads paper after paper all saying the same thing in almost the same words, all bloodless, five hundred words dripping out of nothing, he wonders how he allowed himself to get trapped into teaching English when he might have had a happy and interesting life as an electrician or a confidence man. Well, you may ask, what can you do about it? The subject is one on which you have few convictions and little information. Can you be expected to make a dull subject interesting? As a matter of fact, this is precisely what you are expected to do. This is the writer’s essential task. All subjects, except sex, are dull until somebody makes them interesting. The writer’s job is to find the argument, the approach, the angle, the wording that will take the reader with him. This is seldom easy, and it is particularly hard in subjects that have been much discussed: College Football, Fraternities, Popular Music, Is Chivalry Dead?, and the like. You will feel that there is nothing you can do with such subjects except repeat the old bromides. But there are some things you can do which will make your papers, if not throbbingly alive, at least less insufferably tedious than they might otherwise be. AVOID THE OBVIOUS CONTENT Say the assignment is college football. Say that you’ve decided to be against it. Begin by putting down the arguments that come to your mind: it is too commercial, it takes the students’ minds off their studies, it is hard on the players, it makes the university a kind of circus instead of an intellectual center, for most schools it is financially ruinous. Can you think of any more arguments, just off hand? All right. Now when you write your paper, make sure that you don’ t use any of the material on this list. If these are the points that leap to your mind, they will leap to everyone else’s too, and whether you get a â€Å"C† or a â€Å"D† may depend on whether the instructor reads your paper early when he is fresh and tolerant or late, when the sentence â€Å"In my opinion, college football has become too commercial,† inexorably repeated, has bought him to the brink of lunacy. Be against college football for some reason or reasons of your own. If they are keen and perceptive ones, that’s splendid. But even if they are trivial or foolish or indefensible, you are still ahead so long as they are not everybody else’s reasons too. Be against it because the colleges don’t spend enough money on it to make it worthwhile, because it is bad for the characters of the spectators, because the players are forced to attend classes, because the football stars hog all the beautiful women, because it competes with baseball and is therefore un-American and possibly Communist-inspired. There are lots of more or less unused reasons for being against college football. Sometimes it is a good idea to sum up and dispose of the trite and conventional points before going on to your own. This has the advantage of indicating to the reader that you are going to be neither trite nor conventional. Something like this: We are often told that college football should be abolished because it has become too commercial or because it is bad for the players. These arguments are no doubt very cogent, but they don’t really go to the heart of the matter. Then you go to the heart of the matter. TAKE THE LESS USUAL SIDE One rather simple way of getting into your paper is to take the side of the argument that most of the citizens will want to avoid. If the assignment is an essay on dogs, you can, if you choose, explain that dogs are faithful and lovable companions, intelligent, useful as guardians of the house and protectors of children, indispensable in police work — in short, when all is said and done, man’s best friends. Or you can suggest that those big brown eyes conceal, more often than not, a vacuity of mind and an inconstancy of purpose; that the dogs you have known most intimately have been mangy, ill-tempered brutes, incapable of instruction; and that only your nobility of mind and fear of arrest prevent you from kicking the flea-ridden animals when you pass them on the street. Naturally personal convictions will sometimes dictate your approach. If the assigned subject is â€Å"Is Methodism Rewarding to the Individual?† and you are a pious Methodist, you have really no choice. But few assigned subjects, if any, will fall in this category. Most of them will lie in broad areas of discussion with much to be said on both sides. They are intellectual exercises, and it is legitimate to argue now one way and now another, as debaters do in similar circumstances. Always take the that looks to you hardest, least defensible. It will almost always turn out to be easier to write interestingly on that side. This general advice applies where you have a choice of subjects. If you are to choose among â€Å"The Value of Fraternities† and â€Å"My Favorite High School Teacher† and â€Å"What I Think About Beetles,† by all means plump for the beetles. By the time the instructor gets to your paper, he will be up to his ears in tedious tales about a French teacher at Bloombury High and assertions about how fraternities build character and prepare one for life. Your views on beetles, whatever they are, are bound to be a refreshing change. Don’t worry too much about figuring out what the instructor thinks about the subject so that you can cuddle up with him. Chances are his views are no stronger than yours. If he does have convictions and you oppose him, his problem is to keep from grading you higher than you deserve in order to show he is not biased. This doesn’t mean that you should always cantankerously dissent from what the instructor says; that gets tiresome too. And if the subject assigned is â€Å"My Pet Peeve,† do not begin, â€Å"My pet peeve is the English instructor who assigns papers on ‘my pet peeve.†Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ This was still funny during the War of 1812, but it has sort of lost its edge since then. It is in general good manners to avoid personalities. SLIP OUT OF ABSTRACTION If you will study the essay on college football [near the beginning of this essay], you will perceive that one reason for its appalling dullness is that it never gets down to particulars. It is just a series of not very glittering generalities: â€Å"football is bad for the colleges,† â€Å"it has become too commercial,† â€Å"football is big business,† â€Å"it is bad for the players,† and so on. Such round phrases thudding against the reader’s brain are unlikely to convince him, though they may well render him unconscious. If you want the reader to believe that college football is bad for the players, you have to do more than say so. You have to display the evil. Take your roommate, Alfred Simkins, the second-string center. Picture poor old Alfy coming home from football practice every evening, bruised and aching, agonizingly tired, scarcely able to shovel the mashed potatoes into his mouth. Let us see him staggering up to the room, getting out his econ textbook, peering desperately at it with his good eye, falling asleep and failing the test in the morning. Let us share his unbearable tension as Saturday draws near. Will he fail, be demoted, lose his monthly allowance, be forced to return to the coal mines? And if he succeeds, what will be his reward? Perhaps a slight ripple of applause when the thirdstring center replaces him, a moment of elation in the locker room if the team wins, of despair if it loses. What will he look back on when he graduates from college? Toil and torn ligaments. And what will be his future? He is not good enough for pro football, and he is too obscure and weak in econ to succeed in stocks and bonds. College football is tearing the heart from Alfy Simkins and, when it finishes with him, will callously toss aside the shattered hulk. This is no doubt a weak enough argument for the abolition of college football, but it is a sight better than saying, in three or four variations, that college football (in your opinion) is bad for the players. Look at the work of any professional writer and notice how constantly he is moving from the generality, the abstract statement, to the concrete example, the facts and figures, the illustrations. If he is writing on juvenile delinquency, he does not just tell you that juveniles are (it seems to him) delinquent and that (in his opinion) something should be done about it. He shows you juveniles being delinquent, tearing up movie theatres in Buffalo, stabbing high school principals in Dallas, smoking marijuana in Palo Alto. And more than likely he is moving toward some specific remedy, not just a general wringing of the hands. It is no doubt possible to be too concrete, too illustrative or anecdotal, but few inexperienced writers err this way. For most the soundest advice is to be seeking always for the picture, to be always turning general remarks into seeable examples. Don’t say, â€Å"Sororities teach girls the social graces.† Say, â€Å"Sorority life teaches a girl how to carry on a conversation while pouring tea, without sloshing the tea into the saucer.† Don’t say, â€Å"I like certain kinds of popular music very much.† Say, â€Å"Whenever I hear Gerber Sprinklittle play ‘Mississippi Man’ on the trombone, my socks creep up my ankles.† GET RID OF OBVIOUS PADDING The student toiling away at his weekly English theme is too often tormented by a figure: five hundred words. How, he asks himself, is he to achieve this staggering total? Obviously by never using one word when he can somehow work in ten. He is therefore seldom content with a plain statement like â€Å"Fast driving is dangerous.† This has only four words in it. He takes thought, and the sentence becomes: In my opinion, fast driving is dangerous. Better, but he can do better still: In my opinion, fast driving would seem to be rather dangerous. If he is really adept, it may come out: In my humble opinion. though I do not claim to be an expert on this complicated subject, test driving, in most circumstances, would seem to be rather dangerous in many respects, or at least so it would seem to me. Thus four words have been turned into forty, and not an iota of content has been added. Now this is a way to go about reaching five hundred words, and if you are content with a â€Å"D† grade, it is as good a way as any. But if you aim higher, you must work differently. Instead of stuffing your sentences with straw, you must try steadily to get rid of the padding, to make your sentences lean and tough. If you are really working at it, your first draft will greatly exceed the required total, and then you will work it down, thus: It is thought in some quarters that fraternities do not contribute as much as might be expected to campus life. Some people think that fraternities contribute little to campus life. The average doctor who practices in small towns or in the country must toil night and day to heal the sick. Most country doctors work long hours. When I was a little girl, I suffered from shyness and embarrassment in the presence of others. I was a shy little girl. It is absolutely necessary for the person employed as a marine fireman to give the matter of steam pressure his undivided attention at all times. The fireman has to keep his eye on the steam gauge. You may ask how you can arrive at five hundred words at this rate. Simple. You dig up more real content. Instead of taking a couple of obvious points off the surface of the topic and then circling warily around them for six paragraphs, you work in and explore, figure out the details. You illustrate. You say that fast driving is dangerous, and then you prove it. How long does it take to stop a car at forty and at eighty? How far can you see at night? What happens when a tire blows? What happens in a head-on collision at fifty miles an hour? Pretty soon your paper will be full of broken glass and blood and headless torsos, and reaching five hundred words will not really be a problem. CALL A FOOL A FOOL Some of the padding in freshman themes is to be blamed not on anxiety about the word minimum but on excessive timidity. The student writes, â€Å"In my opinion, the principal of my high school acted in ways that I believe every unbiased person would have to call foolish.† This isn’t exactly what he means. What he means is, â€Å"My high school principal was a fool.† If he was a fool, call him a fool. Hedging the thing about with â€Å"in-myopinion’s† and â€Å"it-seems-to-me’s† and â€Å"as-I-see-it’s† and â€Å"at-least-from-my-point-ofview’s† gains you nothing. Delete these phrases whenever they creep into your paper. The student’s tendency to hedge stems from a modesty that in other circumstances would be commendable. He is, he realizes, young and inexperienced, and he half suspects that he is dopey and fuzzyminded beyond the average. Probably only too true. But it doesn’t help to announce your incompetence six times in every paragraph. Decide what you want to say and say it as vigorously as possible, without apology and in plain words. Linguistic diffidence can take various forms. One is what we call euphemism. This is the tendency to call a spade â€Å"a certain garden implement† or women’s underwear â€Å"unmentionables.† It is stronger in some eras than others and in some people than others but it always operates more or less in subjects that are touchy or taboo: death, sex, madness, and so on. Thus we shrink from saying â€Å"He died last night† but say instead â€Å"passed away,† â€Å"left us,† â€Å"joined his Maker,† â€Å"went to his reward.† Or we try to take off the tension with a lighter clichà ©: â€Å"kicked the bucket,† â€Å"cashed in his chips,† â€Å"handed in his dinner pail.† We have found all sorts of ways to avoid saying mad: â€Å"mentally ill,† â€Å"touched,† â€Å"not quite right upstairs,† â€Å"feebleminded,† â€Å"innocent,† â€Å"simple,† â€Å"off his trolley,† â€Å"not in his right mind.† Even such a now plain word as insane began as a euphemism with the meaning â€Å"not healthy.† Modern science, particularly psychology, contributes many polysyllables in which we can wrap our thoughts and blunt their force. To many writers there is no such thing as a bad schoolboy. Schoolboys are maladjusted or unoriented or misunderstood or in the need of guidance or lacking in continued success toward satisfactory integration of the personality as a social unit, but they are never bad. Psychology no doubt makes us better men and women, more sympathetic and tolerant, but it doesn’t make writing any easier. Had Shakespeare been confronted with psychology, â€Å"To be or not to be† might have come out, â€Å"To continue as a social unit or not to do so. That is the personality problem. Whether ’tis a better sign of integration at the conscious level to display a psychic tolerance toward the maladjustments and repressions induced by one’s lack of orientation in one’s environment or — † But Hamlet would never have finished the soliloquy. Writing in the modern world, you cannot altogether avoid modern jargon. Nor, in an effort to get away from euphemism, should you salt your paper with four-letter words. But you can do much if you will mount guard against those roundabout phrases, those echoing polysyllables that tend to slip into your writing to rob it of its crispness and force. BEWARE OF PAT EXPRESSIONS Other things being equal, avoid phrases like â€Å"other things being equal.† Those sentences that come to you whole, or in two or three doughy lumps, are sure to be bad sentences. They are no creation of yours but pieces of common thought floating in the community soup. Pat expressions are hard, often impossible, to avoid, because they come too easily to be noticed and seem too necessary to be dispensed with. No writer avoids them altogether, but good writers avoid them more often than poor writers. By â€Å"pat expressions† we mean such tags as â€Å"to all practical intents and purposes,† â€Å"the pure and simple truth,† â€Å"from where I sit,† â€Å"the time of his life,† â€Å"to the ends of the earth,† â€Å"in the twinkling of an eye,† â€Å"as sure as you’re born,† â€Å"over my dead body,† â€Å"under cover of darkness,† â€Å"took the easy way out,† â€Å"when all is said and done,† â€Å"told him time and time again,† â€Å"parted the best of friends,† â€Å"stand up and be counted,† â€Å"gave him the best years of her life,† â€Å"worked her fingers to the bone.† Like other clichà ©s, these expressions were once forceful. Now we should use them only when we can’t possibly think of anything else. Some pat expressions stand like a wall between the writer and thought. Such a one is â€Å"the American way of life.† Many student writers feel that when they have said that something accords with the American way of life or does not they have exhausted the subject. Actually, they have stopped at the highest level of abstraction. The American way of life is the complicated set of bonds between a hundred and eighty million ways. All of us know this when we think about it, but the tag phrase too often keeps us from thinking about it. So with many another phrase dear to the politician: â€Å"this great land of ours,† â€Å"the man in the street,† â€Å"our national heritage.† These may prove our patriotism or give a clue to our political beliefs, but otherwise they add nothing to the paper except words. COLORFUL WORDS The writer builds with words, and no builder uses a raw material more slippery and elusive and treacherous. A writer’s work is a constant struggle to get the right word in the right place, to find that particular word that will convey his meaning exactly, that will persuade the reader or soothe him or startle or amuse him. He never succeeds altogether – sometimes he feels that he scarcely succeeds at all — but such successes as he has are what make the thing worth doing. There is no book of rules for this game. One progresses through everlasting experiment on the basis of ever-widening experience. There are few useful generalizations that one can make about words as words, but there are perhaps a few. Some words are what we call â€Å"colorful.† By this we mean that they are calculated to produce a picture or induce an emotion. They are dressy instead of plain, specific instead of general, loud instead of soft. Thus, in place of â€Å"Her heart beat,† we may write, â€Å"her heart pounded, throbbed, fluttered, danced.† Instead of â€Å"He sat in his chair,† we may say, â€Å"he lounged, sprawled, coiled.† Instead of â€Å"It was hot,† we may say, â€Å"It was blistering, sultry, muggy, suffocating, steamy, wilting.† However, it should not be supposed that the fancy word is always better. Often it is as well to write â€Å"Her heart beat† or â€Å"It was hot† if that is all it did or all it was. Ages differ in how they like their prose. The nineteenth century liked it rich and smoky. The twentieth has usually preferred it lean and cool. The twentieth century writer, like all writers, is forever seeking the exact word, but he is wary of sounding feverish. He tends to pitch it low, to understate it, to throw it away. He knows that if he gets too colorful, the audience is likely to giggle. See how this strikes you: â€Å"As the rich, golden glow of the sunset died away along the eternal western hills, Angela’s limpid blue eyes looked softly and trustingly into Montague’s flashing brown ones, and her heart pounded like a drum in time with the joyous song surging in her soul.† Some people like that sort of thing, but most modern readers would say, â€Å"Good grief,† and turn on the television. COLORED WORDS Some words we would call not so much colorful as colored — that is, loaded with associations, good or bad. All words — except perhaps structure words — have associations of some sort. We have said that the meaning of a word is the sum of the contexts in which it occurs. When we hear a word, we hear with it an echo of all the situations in which we have heard it before. In some words, these echoes are obvious and discussible. The word mother, for example, has, for most people, agreeable associations. When you hear mother you probably think of home, safety, love, food, and various other pleasant things. If one writes, â€Å"She was like a mother to me,† he gets an effect which he would not get in â€Å"She was like an aunt to me.† The advertiser makes use of the associations of mother by working it in when he talks about his product. The politician works it in when he talks about himself. So also with such words as home, liberty, fireside, contentment, patriot, tenderness, sacrifice, childlike, manly, bluff, limpid. All of these words are loaded with associations that would be rather hard to indicate in a straightforward definition. There is more than a literal difference between â€Å"They sat around the fireside† and â€Å"They sat around the stove.† They might have been equally warm and happy around the stove, but fireside suggests leisure, grace, quiet tradition, congenial company, and stove does not. Conversely, some words have bad associations. Mother suggests pleasant things, but mother-in-law does not. Many mothers-in-law are heroically lovable and some mothers drink gin all day and beat their children insensible, but these facts of life are beside the point. The point is that mother sounds good and mother-in-law does not. Or consider the word intellectual. This would seem to be a complimentary term, but in point of fact it is not, for it has picked up associations of impracticality and ineffectuality and general dopiness. So also such words as liberal, reactionary, Communist, socialist, capitalist, radical, schoolteacher, truck driver; operator, salesman, huckster, speculator. These convey meaning on the literal level, but beyond that — sometimes, in some places — they convey contempt on the part of the speaker. The question of whether to use loaded words or not depends on what is being written. The scientist, the scholar, try to avoid them; for the poet, the advertising writer, the public speaker, they are standard equipment. But every writer should take care that they do not substitute for thought. If you write, â€Å"Anyone who thinks that is nothing but a Socialist (or Communist or capitalist)† you have said nothing except that you don’t like people who think that, and such remarks are effective only with the most naive readers. It is always a bad mistake to think your readers more naive than they really are. COLORLESS WORDS But probably most student writers come to grief not with words that are colorful or those that are colored but with those that have no color at all. A pet example is nice, a word we would find it hard to dispense with in casual conversation but which is no longer capable of adding much to a description. Colorless words are those of such general meaning that in a particular sentence they mean nothing. Slang adjectives like cool (â€Å"That’s real cool†) tend to explode all over the language. They are applied to everything, lose their original force, and quickly die. Beware also of nouns of very general meaning, like circumstances, cases, instances, aspects, factors, relationships, attitudes, eventualities, etc. In most circumstances you will find that those cases of writing which contain too many instances of words like these will in this and other aspects have factors leading to unsatisfactory relationships with the reader resulting in unfavorable attitudes on his part and perhaps other eventualities, like a grade of â€Å"D.† Notice also what etc. means. It means â€Å"I’d like to make this list longer, but I can’t think of any more examples.†