Exercise 1-5

Exercise 1

WRITING LETTERS THAT DO THE JOB

By : Alexander Hamilton

A good business letter makes its point and says goodbye. It’s clear, it’s crisp, it’s businesslike. That sounds easy. And often it is. Chances are, you’ve written any number of good business letters without half trying. Some Letters, though, present problems. They’re confused or rambling or – worst of all – pointless. The reader, who may be an important customer, shrugs in bafflement and mutters, “So what?” or “what am I supposed to do about this?” If your letter is unintentionally rude or pompous, you may have difficulty getting back in that customer’s favor.

This section will help you write consistently sharp and purposeful letters that reflect well on you and your company. It’s not a literary process, and you don’t need to worry about whether you’re a word person or a numbers person. It’s a common sense process, that’s been worked out by dozens of communication experts, many of whom are consultants to corporations. There’s a considerable effort these days to improve the quality of business correspondence, and much thinking has gone into the skills and attitudes necessary for busy executives to master the letter – writing craft.

A DO and a DON’T

Let’s begin with the advice of Carl Goeller, a professional who conducts courses in business writing in New York. He’s achieved the ultimate simplification – one essential DO and one essential DON’T – to be kept in the forefront of your mind whenever you begin to write.

“DO… ”write to communicate. Your first and foremost mission in writing is to tell somebody something.”

“DON’T…” try to impress with your writing. The harder you try, the more transparent you are…, and the more difficult your writing is to read”.

Goeler doesn’t stop there. He’s synthesized these admonitions into a single golden rule; the first principle of effective writing: “I’m writing to communicate…., not impress”

 

Exercise 2

Subtracted from Jakarta Post

By

LARA PARPAN

SINGAPORE    (AFP): A light-hearted campaign to encourage Singaporeans to speak proper English and move away from a popular but corrupted form known as Singlish may prove to be one of the government’s greatest challenges.

With the backing of no less than Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, the Speak Good English Movement was launched this month.

The campaign was begun over concern among government officials that Singlish, using Chinese syntax and literal translation of Chinese phrases along with a smattering of Malay and other Asian words, may emerge as the common language in Singapore.

Widespread use of Singlish, will erode Singapore’s bid to become a world-class economy and make its citizens seem less intelligent, said Goh.

He said it was time for Singaporeans to stop saying: “You see me no up.” Translated into the queen’s English, the phrase means: “You look down on me.”

A question such as “Where is the toilet?” would be “This place got  toilet or not ?” in Singlish.

After a fun time with friends, one teenager might say to the other: ”Woh, lau! Shiok, man!” (“Wow, I had a great time! That was really fun!”)

The prime minister said that younger Singaporeans “should not take the attitude that Singlish is cool or feel that speaking Singlish makes them more Singaporean.”

But Catherine Lim, a well-known author of fiction set in Singapore, said Goh’s words warning against Singlish shouldn’t be the last word on the issue.

“Leave Singlish alone in the entertainment and literary arts.” she said at a forum held in conjunction with the Speak Good English Movement.

Like  love  and  religion,  language  is  inexhaustible. It  touches  the  deepest sense of self. It is notoriously     resistant    to     any attempt  to confine it.” said Lim who uses colloquialisms in novels set in Singapore, a largely ethnic Chinese former British colony of 3.1 million local residents and some 700.000 foreigners.

She expressed concern that creativity may be stifled if  Singlish was banned outright.

“My fear as a writer in this overall climate is this: suppose you have a bright young writer  who writes with Singlish. I bet you no publisher will accept it (the work) because of fear … and that would be a great loss,” Lim said.

Even academics concede the place of Singlish in daily life.

Leong Liew Geok, an English literature lecturer, said she “demands mastery of the rules of English and its practical application” from her students but supported “linguistic flexibility.”

This is the “ability to adapt to the social and cultural context of the situation,” or the various levels of engagement. For instance, she said, “standard English is not appropriate” in a food hawker center.

Exercise 3

a.     Translation is the process of transforming message from one language into another by reconstructing sentence of the target language; it alters not the single stones of a building, but the order of columns.

b.     Entering the jungle alone in the dark night with a revolver on his hands, he shot at nine simply believing in his feeling, amazingly …, it really worked. It was he, the famed war-horse, Rambo.

c.      Although Roman law advanced and was codified in the Eastern Empire (under Constantine), it became lost to the West. The end of legal teaching produced a great simplification in the execution of laws (Bloch 1966b:83). Land law, which now consisted in edicts by the Germans, resembled more the scattered pronouncements of Hammurabi (Chapter 1) than the systematic creations of the Romans.

a.    This product is considered worldwide to be the most proven, tested and trusted one for deep diving purposes. Not only has it been used for civil, but also for military, especially for naval training and combat operation purposes.  It has also met or exceeded all requirements fixed by the authority.

b.    Faced with your ambiguous stance, we decide not to continue the engagement of our business contract, and herewith require you to return all the stocks available in your store immediately lest they expire.

Exercise 4

a.    In recent years, a number of techniques have been promulgated for the localized, non-surgical reduction of adipose tissue. These range from mechanical heating devices, occlusive plastic wraps and garments, to electrical pulse generators which produce repetitive muscular contractions in the affected areas.

b.    Taylorism is a variation on the theme of efficiency; it is a late 19th and early 20th century instance of the larger recurring theme in human life of increasing efficiency, decreasing waste, and using empirical methods to decide what matters, rather than uncritically accepting pre-existing ideas of what matters. Thus it is a chapter in the larger narrative that also includes, for example, the folk wisdom of thrift, time and motion study, Fordism, and lean manufacturing. It overlapped considerably with the Efficiency Movement, which was the broader cultural echo of scientific management's impact on business managers specifically.

Exercise 5

a.     Intellectual property rights are crucial to protecting the investments that companies and individuals make in developing new products and ideas. We protect our intellectual property and respect the intellectual property rights of others.

b.    Motivation is the activation or energization of goal-oriented behavior. Motivation is said to be intrinsic or extrinsic. The term is generally used for humans but, theoretically, it can also be used to describe the causes for animal behavior as well. This article refers to human motivation. According to various theories, motivation may be rooted in the basic need to minimize physical pain and maximize pleasure, or it may include specific needs such as eating and resting, or a desired object, hobby, goal, state of being, ideal, or it may be attributed to less-apparent reasons such as altruism, selfishness, morality, or avoiding mortality. Conceptually, motivation should not be confused with either volition or optimism.