Posts Tagged ‘reference’
Monitoring VAT Refunds is Misguiding Retailers about International Expenditure
Retailers, particularly in the luxury sector, are mistakenly measuring the footfall of overseas clients to their premises by measuring VAT refund applications filed by their customers on site to be redeemed at the airports. So in order to simplify the counting process, they add the amounts refunded by – for example – all Chinese clients who fill in the VAT documents in store and then decide the amount of expenditure by the Chinese during a certain period of time.
Following this addition exercise they would compare the spending rate and footfall of different nationalities using the same process.
This is happening in almost every department store in London, Paris and New York… In addition to flagship boutiques whose managers are desperate to quantify international contribution towards their overall retail turnover.
This way of calculating the international footfall in any premises depending only on VAT refunds is severely inaccurate for a simple reason: Not All International Customers Claim VAT. Actually most of Arab customers, for example, don’t claim any VAT. I personally served many rich international clients who would consider waiting in a cue at airports to claim VAT is a shameful act (one of them felt insulted by the fact that I offered to assist him with his VAT documents!).
Knowing that measuring international footfall and overseas expenditure is extremely important for businesses in cities like London, Paris, New York, etc… There is a rather simple process which determines the facts more accurately. Retailers should depend on their staff feedback to get more accurate figures. Staff members can easily report international sales to their managers or more directly to the accounting department by adjusting the way they record their sales.
Nearly all luxury retail businesses depend on computerised tills applicable to generate various sales reports. IT managers can easily add a button to the sales screen on these tills which a sales person can quickly tick to determine the nationality of the client. JOB DONE . So to simplify this, let’s say I’m serving a Russian customer… Closed the sale and went to the till to process the payment. Before I finalize the sale, the till would show me a small window in which I would have a multiple choice of nationalities. I would press for choice number 4 (this is for Russian in this example) and the till would assign the word Russian to this sale. Simples!!
One Retail Manager might argue that not all staff members can easily determine the nationality of their clients. This is right! as I always get confused between a Chinese and a Japanese customer. Let’s use the carrot here and base a small portion of the sale commission on whether the sale is accompanied by nationality of the customer or not. Through my experience, any salesperson can politely ask any customer about where they are from whether when helping them with currency conversion or simply during the process of breaking the ice or even simpler… by throwing the blame on the manager and claim that they are obliged to include the nationality of the client when processing the sale. In my courses I teach the Collecting-Feedback-in-order-to-keep-you-updated-on-our-new-releases-Trick.
There are many other solutions to this problem, but through experience I think that this is the most convenient one logistically.
Having inaccurate figures about international clients in luxury retail businesses is really dangerous as this does not only affect accounting but also buying and merchandising processes and even recruitment decisions.
I think that retailers should fix this bug in their operations before it grows out of hand and they become like the farmer who bought hay to feed his chickens.
About the Author
M Said Chaarawi is the Managing Director of UnderstandArabia Ltd… A Training and Consultancy Firm based in London UK. www.understandarabia.com
Learn Japanese Free Audio Download
Do you want to learn Japanese in a light-hearted way? If so I want to introduce a Japanese language program for you, that is Rocket Japanese. The advantage of this program is that it can provide a genuine context for you. The key to learning a foreign language is to understand the context rather than only to learn the words and sentences. When you are in an authentic environment, you should know how to use what you have learned.
The interactive audio and MegaAudio software learning game components can put you in a genuine context. This learning software can provide you something that you can only get from Rocket Japanese, such as an in-depth view of this complicated language, learn Japanese in a reasonably short amount of time and provide a multimedia format for you to use the language. All types of people with different backgrounds can learn Japanese well through Rocket Japanese, because it offers high quality information and training as well as an instant download option. Through a 31 lesson course can help you start the Rocket Japanese program easily. By this interactive audio course, you can be exposed to Japanese through reading listening and repeating.
This course has been highly recommended by the users who have been accessible to many other training courses. So believe in yourself and your choice of Rocket Japanese. Another advantage of this software is that it can guarantee you can pick up this language, if within eight days you cannot master the basic use of Japanese you will be refunded. This is the other software dare not guarantee.
Studying with Rocket Japanese, what you are to gain is not only a language but also a culture and a kind of custom which are basic for foreign language learning. You should believe that Japanese learning is not a difficult thing if you put your heart in it and choose the suitable aids. Rocket Japanese may be your best choice. Grab A Copy Click here
About the Author
where can i learn japanese language that is free but online?
http://www.infocobuild.com/language/japanese/japanese.html
Here you can learn Japanese for free. This site contains many good online resources essential to learn Japanese – Japanese Kanji, grammar, vocabulary, useful expressions as well as JLPT exams. And you can get Japanese video lessons.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: a Discussion of How Do I Love Thee?
“How Do I Love Thee?” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning was written in 1845 while she was being courted by the English poet, Robert Browning. The poem is also titled Sonnet XLIII from Sonnets From the Portuguese.
Early Experiences
Elizabeth Barrett was born in Durham England in 1806, the first daughter of affluent parents who owned sugar plantations in Jamaica. She was home-schooled and read voraciously in history, philosophy and literature. Young Elizabeth learned Hebrew in order to read original Bible texts and Greek in order to read original Greek drama and philosophy. She began writing poems when she was 12 years old, though she did not publish her first collection for another twenty years.
Elizabeth Barrett developed a serious respiratory ailment by age 15 and a horse riding accident shortly thereafter left her with a serious spinal injury. These two health problems remained with her all of her life.
In 1828 her mother died and four years later the family business faltered and her father sold the Durham estate and moved the family to a coastal town. He was stern, protective, and even tyrannical and forbid any of his children to marry. In 1833 Elizabeth published her first work, a translation of Prometheus Bound by the Greek dramatist Aeschylus.
A few years later the family moved to London. Her father began sending Elizabeth’s younger brothers and sisters to Jamaica to help with the family business. Elizabeth was distressed because she openly opposed slavery in Jamaica and on the family plantations and because she did not want her siblings sent away.
Early Writing
In 1838 Elizabeth Barrett wrote and published The Seraphim and Other Poems. The collection took the form of a classical Greek tragedy and expressed her deep Christian sentiments.
Shortly thereafter, Elizabeth’s poor health prompted her to move to Italy, accompanied by her dear brother Edward, whom she referred to as “Bro.” Unfortunately he drowned a year later in a sailing accident and Elizabeth retuned to London, seriously ill, emotionally broken, and hopelessly grief-stricken. She became reclusive for the next five years, confining herself to her bedroom.
She continued to write poetry, however, and published a collection in 1844 simply titled, Poems. It was also published in the United States with an introduction by Edgar Allan Poe. In one of the poems she praised one of the works of Robert Browning, which gained his attention. He wrote back to her, expressing his admiration for Poems.
Robert Browning
Over the next twenty months Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning exchanged 574 letters. An admiration, respect, and love for each other grew and flourished. In 1845 Robert Browning sent Elizabeth a telegram which read, “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett. I do, as I say, love these books with all my heart – and I love you too.” A few months later the two met and fell in love.
Inspired by her love for Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett wrote the 44 love poems which were collected in Sonnets From the Portuguese and which were eventually published in 1850. Her growing love for Robert and her ability to express her emotions in the sonnets and love poems allowed Elizabeth to escape from the oppression of her father and the depression of her recluse.
Her father strongly opposed the relationship so she kept her love affair a secret as long as possible. The couple eloped in 1846 and her father never forgave her or spoke to her thereafter.
Move to Italy
Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her husband, Robert, went to Pisa, Italy and soon settled in Florence where she spent the rest of her life, with occasional visits to London. Soon Elizabeth’s health improved enough to be able to give birth to the couple’s only child, Robert.
In 1850 she published Sonnets From the Portuguese. Some have speculated that the title was chosen to hide the personal nature of the sonnets and to imply that the collection was a translation of earlier works. However, Robert’s pet name for Elizabeth was “my little Portuguese,” a reflection on Elizabeth’s darker, mediterranean complexion, possibly inherited from the family’s Jamaican ties.
While living in Florence, Elizabeth Barrett Browning published 3 more considerable works. She addressed Italian political topics and some other unpopular subjects, such as slavery, child labor, male domination, and a woman’s right to intellectual freedom. Though her popularity decreased as a result of these choices, she was read and heard and recognized throughout Europe. She died in Florence in 1861.
The Poem, “How Do I Love Thee?”
Sonnet XLIII, “How Do I Love Thee?” is probably Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s most popular love poem. It is heartfelt, romantic, loving, elegant, and simple. It is also quite memorable.
The love poem starts with the question, “How Do I Love Thee?” and proceeds to count the ways. Her Christian spirituality testifies that she loves Robert “to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.” She then professes seven more ways that she loves Robert. Her “passion put to use in my old griefs” refers to the depth of her former despair. The love that “I seemed to lose with my lost saints” refers to the lost loves of her mother and her brother.
The love poem ends with the declaration that time and death will not diminish her love for Robert because “if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.”
How Do I Love Thee
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,–I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!–and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
About the Author
Garry Gamber is a public school teacher and entrepreneur. He writes articles about politics, real estate, health and nutrition, and internet dating services. He is the owner of The Dating Advisor and is the National Director of Good Politics Radio.
English – Lingqua franca
English as a lingua franca
In recent years, the term ‘English as a lingua franca’ (ELF) has emerged as a way of referring to communication in English between speakers with different first languages. Since roughly only one out of every four users of English in the world is a native speaker of the language (Crystal 2003), most ELF interactions take place among ‘non-native’ speakers of English.
Although this does not preclude the participation of English native speakers in ELF interaction, what is distinctive about ELF is that, in most cases, it is ‘a ‘contact language’ between persons who share neither a common native tongue nor a common (national) culture, and for whom English is the chosen foreign language of communication’ (Firth 1996: 240). Defined in this way, ELF is part of the more general phenomenon of ‘English as an international language’ (EIL) or ‘World Englishes’. (For comprehensive overviews, see Jenkins 2003; McArthur 1998; Melchers and Shaw 2003.) EIL, along with ‘English as a global language’ (e.g. Crystal 2003; Gnutzmann 1999), ‘English as a world language’ (e.g. Mair 2003) and ‘World English’ (Brutt-Griffler 2002) have for some time been used as general cover terms for uses of English spanning Inner Circle, Outer Circle, and Expanding Circle contexts (Kachru 1992). The traditional meaning of EIL thus comprises uses of English within and across Kachru’s ‘Circles’, for intranational as well as international communication. However, when English is chosen as the means of communication among people from different first language backgrounds, across linguacultural boundaries, the preferred term is ‘English as a lingua franca’ (House 1999; Seidlhofer 2001), although the terms ‘English as a medium of intercultural communication’ (Meierkord 1996), and, in this more specific and more recent meaning, ‘English as an international language ‘ (Jenkins 2000), are also used.Despite being welcomed by some and deplored by others, it cannot be denied that English functions as a global lingua franca. However, what has so far tended to be denied is that, as a consequence of its international use, English is being shaped at least as much by its nonnative speakers as by its native speakers. This has led to a somewhat paradoxical situation: on the one hand, for the majority of its users, English is a foreign language, and the vast majority of verbal exchanges in English do not involve any native speakers of the language at all. On the other hand, there is still a tendency for native speakers to be regarded as custodians over what is acceptable usage. Thus, in order for the ELT Journal Volume 59/4 October 2005; doi:10.1093/elt/cci064 qThe Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved. 339 Downloaded from eltj.oxfordjournals.org by guest on March 1, 2011 concept of ELF to gain acceptance alongside English as native language, there have been calls for the systematic study of the nature of ELF—what it looks and sounds like and how people actually use it and make it work—and a consideration of the implications for the teaching and learning of the language. Empirical work on the linguistic description of ELF at a number of levels has in fact been under way for several years now. Research has been carried out at the level of phonology (Jenkins 2000), pragmatics (Meierkord 1996), and lexicogrammar (Seidlhofer 2004, which also offers an overview of descriptive work to date). ELF corpora are now also being compiled and analysed, such as the English as a lingua franca in Academic settings (ELFA) corpus (Mauranen 2003) and the general Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) (Seidlhofer 2004). While space prevents summarizing the findings of this research here, two illustrative examples can be mentioned. Thus, Jenkins (2000) found that being able to pronounce some sounds that are often regarded as ‘particularly English’ but also particularly difficult, namely the ‘th’ sounds /u/ and /D/ and the ‘dark l’ allophone [ł], is not necessary for international intelligibility through ELF. Similarly, analyses of ELF interactions captured in the VOICE corpus clearly show that although ELF speakers often do not use the third person singular present tense ‘-s’ marking in their verbs, this does not lead to any misunderstandings or communication problems.
This gradually accumulating body of work is leading to a better understanding of the nature of ELF, which in turn is a prerequisite for taking informed decisions, especially in language policy and language teaching (McKay 2002). Thus, the features of English which tend to be crucial for international intelligibility and therefore need to be taught for production and reception are being distinguished from the (‘non-native’) features that tend not to cause misunderstandings and thus do not need to constitute a focus for production teaching for those learners who intend to use English mainly in international settings. Acting on these insights can free up valuable teaching time for more general language awareness and communication strategies; these may have more ‘mileage’ for learners than striving for mastery of fine nuances of nativespeaker language use that are communicatively redundant or even counter-productive in lingua franca settings, and which may anyway not be teachable in advance, but only learnable by subsequent experience of the language. It should be stressed, however, that linguistic descriptions alone cannot, of course, determine what needs to be taught and learnt for particular purposes and in particular settings—they provide necessary but not sufficient guidance for what will always be pedagogical decisions.
About the Author
Kurapati Malathi Latha,
W/o.Sri.M.V.Satyanarayana,
Flat No.202, Govind Palace,
Opp: Jyothi Apartment,
Alwal,
Secunderabad-500010.
Ranga Reddy(Dt.).
Andhra Pradesh,
India.
Cell: 9652114711, 7207129061 & 9000314166.
- Presently working as Asst. Professor for English in JBIET, Yenkapplly, Moinabad, Hyderabad.
EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS
- Presently pursuing PhD in English(Phonetics) from Dravidian University of Kuppam.
- Completed M.Phil in English (Phonetics & improvement of spoken English) from Sri Venkateswara University – Thirupathi.
- Completed M.A – English from Kakathiya University.
- M.A – Economics from Osmania University
- Bachelor of Arts from Kakathiya University.
- Intermediate from Board of Intermediate Education.
- SSC from Board of Secondary Education.
i’m an ivy league hopeful. help.?
hi, i’m a freshman from maine.
i’m 13 years old, i skipped kindergarden.
i really want to go to harvard.
my freshman classes are:
geometry honors
english honors
world studies honors
gym
env sci honors
spanish 1
i got all a’s [which is 93+ here]
what i originally wanted to take throughout my high school career is what follows:
sophmore:
AP biology
pre calculus honors
early america honors
english 10 honors
gym
health
spanish 2 honors
junior:
ap chemistry
ap english
ap calculus
modern america honors
gym
spanish 3
senior:
ap physics
ap english
ap stats
gym
ap spanish
but here’s the thing. for my application was a sophmore, they won’t let me into pre calculus because my summer course for algebra 2 will not “count” because it’s not vigorous enough [even though it's a college course]
ap bio is iffy at this point because i dont meet the prerecquisite.
do i have a shot of getting into an ivy league if i do not get into the AP biology class next year?
Grades and courses are not the only things that matter. The best schools look at other things like community service, organizations you belong to, and what you’ve done outside the classroom. A great deal of weight is given to the essay you write describing why you want to attend. Harvard is looking for diversity, not just people who are book smart.
i need to find courses in singapore that teaches Japanese drum?
Suggest you check with the Japanese Association (Japanese expatriates community) or Japan Embassy.
European Social and Political Studies, UCL? Any equivalent courses at other universities?
I know it wont be the same but I dont really WANT to study in London… I’m also looking at Politics with International relations at Warwick. I’m currently in Y12 and studying French, English Lit, Chemistry and History
dunno. try LSE
What school would you recommend for learning spanish? University of Guadalajara, IMAC, other?
Language schools in Guadalajara!
How much do you want to learn? There are many private schools in Guadalajara that are excellent. You can take a very intense course and learn fast if you have the desire to really learn and you will pick it up fast. There are even free lessons given at the American Legion here or lessons at the American Society for 50 pesoa an hour.
Kids Online French – Kids learn french Easily
French is a beautiful language and has traditionally been learned by kids at school in many English speaking countries. French is spoken in places like Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Quebec and parts of Northern Africa. French is one of the more difficult foreign languages to learn for adults or children, however with certain kids online French techniques being used, children can find it a little easier to learn.
The following example shows an easy method of memorizing French words. This is called a link-word technique, a kind of memory memorization method that can be used to learn any new language. The edge that the link-word technique has is how French words are linked to an English word by using matching sounds between the words.
As you read the following example, try and imagine that you are stood right where the example is taking place. Retain the capitalized key words in your mind and try and remember the details. Think about it several times and let it sink in until you can recall it without reading.
English word = chicken
French word = le poulet
Visualize a CHICKEN explaining to a giant PULLEY how it wants to be lifted in the air.
Of course, this is a silly scenario, but it causes your mind to remember the words permanently. It does not even have to be exact. Focus on the sounds created when pronouncing the French words, for this is the key to the link word technique.
This is just one technique that can be used for Kids Online French and can help children learn to speak the beautiful french language with relative ease.
For more on how Kids Online French works, then i also recommend you learn about the four key educational elements that are essential to help children learn any new language.
About the Author
Your kids will have a great advantage over thier peers by using a Kids Online French course that they can use in their own time. Watch and take pride when your kids learn French quickly and effectively.