Critical Thinking Reflection Paper Essay

The question that I selected is â€Å"Will receiving a college degree improve your career opportunities?† The obvious answer to this question is yes. However, I want to be sure of my answer by backing it up with critical thinking skills to determine that I have come up with the correct answer. One step to critical thinking is making sure that one’s answer can be well supported by factual information. A fallacy is an argument that is based on a weak argument with little to no supportive factual information. To make sure that my answer to the above question is a valid argument, I would need to conduct research and list all of the information that I find. I may look into statistical information such as the employment rate of those with college degrees as compared to those without a college degree in a particular career field. Another aspect of critical thinking is checking one’s answers and determining that they are well supported and well researched ideas. It is important to questions one own ideas and looking at them from a skeptical point of view to find any weaknesses in the argument. This process can be applied to any area of life where a decision must be made. To ensure that I continue to use critical thinking skills throughout my life I can practice using critical thinking for simple situations, therefore making critical thinking a habit rather than a forced thought.

A Talk About Oral English Teaching Problems and Solutions Essay

As a result, spoken language becomes more and more important. Nowadays, almost everyone knows the importance of learning English, it is taught as a compulsory subject at elementary school, secondary school and university in China. A lot of people consider that vocabulary is the key to learning English, so they prefer to memorize words as many as possible. It is true that one cannot communicate effectively or express his ideas in both oral and written forms without a sufficient vocabulary. However, we all know that the effect of learning language is marked by the students’ communication ability. There is a phenomenon which we called â€Å"Dumb English† in China, which means a large number of students can only read and write instead of speaking. Although vocabulary is an indispensable element in learning foreign language, a more important one is how to speak that language out. However, after several years of learning, students’ spoken English is also poor. They cannot express their thoughts in English in daily life. They are afraid of communicating with native speakers in English. What’s worse. They even cannot figure out what others say in English. Why did these phenomenons happen? Three reasons are introduced. The first one is that there are still many problems existing in spoken English teaching, such as absence of English learning environment, the Grammar-Translation Methods, and teachers paying much attention to vocabulary and grammar. The second one is the subjective reason: students are afraid of speaking English. They are scared of being laughed at by others if they say something wrong. There is a saying: â€Å"Practice makes perfect. † They are lack of practice, so their spoken English is poor. The third one is the objective reason, for example, the non-English environment, the different culture between China and western countries. This paper will only focus on the problems existing in spoken English teaching in High school and suggests some teaching strategies to deal with these problems to help improve students’ spoken English and communicative competence. Theoretical Framework 1 1. 1 The requirements of the New English Curriculum Standard The overall aim of the New English Curriculum Standard is to develop students’ overall language ability. Such abilities are grounded in the development of language skills, language knowledge, affects, cultural awareness and learning strategies. Language skills contain listening, speaking, reading and writing. And the requirements of speaking skills in junior high school advocate what students can do in the speaking process as following listed: the third level requires students can tell some simple and short stories. The fourth level requires students can use simple words to describe his own or others’ experiences with the teacher’s help. And the fifth level requires students can exchange ideas and complete tasks corporately. New English Curriculum Standard,2001). It has six designing principles: Firstly, it aims for educating all students, and emphasizes quality-oriented education. Secondly, it promotes learner-centeredness, and respects individual differences.

Marketing Strategy for Aston Martin Cars

A critical analysis of the Aston Motors company has showed that the company has a number of strengths that it can based on for its economic success. Some of these include the ability to produce very good quality of cars.This can be traced back to the company's excellent group of engineers who design and recommend the use of high quality materials for their newly designed models. It is also important to note that although the panel of engineers can recommend the best materials, it is the supplies department of the company that is actually responsible for this strength.Second, the company has a very good reputation in the market on which it can capitalize to win the customers amid a very competitive motor manufacturing industry.The company is very well known for producing cars that have severally won in motor sport competitions and which are known for their uniqueness in terms of quality and body as well as chassis designs.Another strength for this company emerges from this aspect of q uality expertise and a good capital base in that it has the capacity and potential to increase its designs and quality products.The brand name of Aston Motors company is Aston Motors and it is very much selling in the market. The company can also consider its reputable brand name as one of its major strengths because it can form a strong basis of the company's further expansion plans.Due to its powerful brand name, the company's branch based in south Africa realised annual sales that were about three times the number of cars it expected to sale. Specifically, it had predicted an annual sale of about forty cars in its first year since establishment in South Africa but it turned out that the actual sales were something to do with one hundred and fourteen cars (Bright 2007).Several weaknesses have also been identified in the Aston Motors company or in the way it makes its daily operations. First, the company was established to have poorly competed in the motor industry especially with when compared with some of the major industries in small car manufacturing.Second, the top management of the company has continuously neglected to address the needs of middle class population all over the world who form a sizeable potential market.Instead, it has chose to address the needs of a very thin segment of the society who are mainly the noble people, the celebrities and companies that sponsor motor sports when they need to buy cars for their candidates (Doolittle 2003). This has been perceived negatively by most people irrespective of race or geographical location.A close look at the history of the Aston Motors company shows that the company has not made faired well in terms of making profits out of its business operations. It is an historic trend that can be traced back to the first world war (Gartman 1994)..Although there are other small car manufacturing companies that have performed much worse than this, for example the Lotus motors, each company operates on its own and the performance of one company can not be a measure of how another is performing.Therefore the Aston Motors company should not use the failure of a few of it competitors as an excuse of its continues poor performance.

The Glass Menagerie Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Glass Menagerie - Research Paper Example She is drawn carefully as an idol of beauty, delicacy and purity as her glass toys. Her acute self –coconsciousness and as a result great shyness prevents her from coming out of her comfort zone. One of her legs is crippled and this has led to her feeling of inferiority and withdrawal from the outside world. Levy saysâ€Å"She avoids the outside world, and as a result †¦has no life outside preoccupation with her own vulnerability â€Å"But more than this her emotional fragility can said as her main flaw. Amanda tells â€Å"She notices things and I think she broods about them. A Few days ago I came in and she was crying â€Å". According to Smith Laura can be considered as a tragic fellow and her fragility is her flaw. The extreme nervousness of Laura is the reason for her seclusion and thus by the drop from the school and college. When Jim was talking to her she herself somehow came out of her shyness. She is confined herself in the security of her house and rarely co me out of that. According to Cardullo, Laura is a romantic symbol familiar to the landscape of nineteenth-century American society â€Å"the fragile almost unearthly ego brutalized by life in the industrialized depersonalized cities of the Western world â€Å" Just as Laura find place among her glass menagerie, all the characters especially Amanda and Tom have their own dwelling places. The main misfortune of the characters is only due to their remaining in the comfort zone. This drawback in the character leads to a kind of seclusion and loneliness. Amanda never comes out of her reminiscence of the past. She relates all the present events with that of the past ones occurred in her own life. The main flaw of the character Amanda is her inability to understand her son Tom. She tries to guide him but every word he considers as interference in his personal freedom. Tom wants to be adventurous, but she seems to be ignorant of it. The continual friction between Tom and his mother shows lack of understanding. Almost every encounter leads to quarrel. She frightens Tom by imposing on him the heavy responsibility of family support. Her vehement condemnation of Tom as a dreamer and manufacturer of illusions gets on his nerves and drives him away from home. â€Å"Amanda is almost alienated from her children and she also suffers from loneliness. When she is disturbed she finds happiness by balancing herself between her past and present. Her cloths her speech and her ideals for her children make her appear to be a middle aged southern belly, garrulous and sill by narrow and spinsterish in her attitude towards life. At times she appears foolish and ignorant and her approach to life seems unrealistic â€Å". But Dr. Pearl Mchaney in a lecture points out that Amanda is trying to love her children. â€Å"There are so many things in my heart that I cannot describe you! I’ve never told you but I-loved your father†¦Ã¢â‚¬  Another character who shares the equal re sponsibility of the tragic ending of the family is Tom Winfield. Tom is condemned by most people as an irresponsible runaway. Tom can be said as a person ‘meditating between in present and past’. Neither his job at the warehouse nor his life and home satisfies hunger for adventure . He demands

Week 5 discussion Questions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Week 5 discussion Questions - Essay Example The second weakness are of mine is economics. Economic is a very useful academic discipline that can help managers in various ways. For example managers can use economic analysis to determine the supply and demand of its products. I t can also help managers determine the optimal sales price to achieve the highest profits possible. The reason I’m weak at economic is because it economics the professor who teach these subjects seem to always incorporate graphs in their discussion. Every time I see a economic graph it becomes very hard for me to interpret to the results. Also in economics there seems to be a lot of models and concepts that are extremely difficult to understand. Since these two disciplines are important for me achieve professional goal and will put a lot of extra efforts in the future courses I may take in any of these two subject matters. The two business majors that have greatest utilize and maximum value for a corporation is managerial accounting and business research. Business research can be used in different ways to add value to a corporation. For example business research can be used to perform market research of potential expansion site in foreign territory. Researchers used either primary research or secondary research. Primary research occurs when the research perform original research, while secondary research is learning for a particular subject matter by reading and analyzing the written work in sources such as journal article, magazines, databases, and websites (Allbusines, 2009). Another research technique that can be very useful for managers is generic benchmarking. Generic benchmarking is a technique in which a company investigates business practices in other industries in order to imitate them. Managerial accounting measures and reports financial and nonfinancial information that helps managers

Sustainable Operations Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Sustainable Operations Management - Essay Example Its main focus is on the efficiency and effectiveness of the processes involved in value creation for sustainable development and growth. The term sustainability aims at keeping a balance between the human needs and prevention of the ecosystems on which our future generation depends. In specific, it refers to the exploitation of resources with the orientation of technological changes and minimal environmental damage to the present as well as future needs. The adoption of sustainable development theory is at an ever growing pace with the increased awareness of eco-friendly environment and analysis has indicated that since after the introduction of UN Agenda 21 (Moore, pp. 20-28, 2008), things seem to accelerate significantly in this area. In order to compete with the global market, businesses are paying more attention towards the environmental consequences of their products or services. They have realized the importance of operations strategy to support the company’s objectives and corporate goals. This trend has transformed the nature of operations to green product design, triple bottom line reporting and close-loop supply chains (Lippmann, pp. 1-9, 1999). The involvement of operations management is present from strategic to tactical and operational levels. Its activities include â€Å"site location, layout and structure, inventory management, traffic and materials handling, equipment selection and maintenance, designing technology supply chains, etc† (Metz, 1998). In this regard, this paper will focus on the issues companies confront while developing their policies regarding sustainable development (Moore, pp. 29-33, 2008) in the area of supply chain management. Supply Chain Management The term supply chain interchangeably used as ‘demand chain’ or ‘value chain’ refers to the voluntary commitments made by the companies to manage better relations with the suppliers (Metz, 1998). It manages in three different directions: t he information flow in all the departments, the funds flow and the materials flow to the concerned places. As the aim of this assignment is to identify and discuss some of the key issues faced by the companies in the development of a sustainable supply chain policy, it has been an observation that companies have realized that the value they provide to their customers in the form of a product or service is not enough to survive in this competitive world (Webb, pp. 1-5, 2000). There is a constant need to address and resolve the sustainability issues throughout the supply chain. â€Å"Some of the most popular and important approaches to SCM includes collaborative planning, outsourcing, customers-suppliers partnership and ISC (integrated supply chain) design† (OECD, 1999). In specific, there are three dimensions on the basis of which a sustainable supply chain policy is developed. Particularly, UN Agenda 21 (Moore, pp. 29-33, 2008) divided the dimensions in two categories: social and economic. However, this paper has identified environmental, social, and ethical concerns that directly affect the performance and image of the company. Environmental Issues: a) the use of natural resources b) gas emissions c) waste management concerns d) harmful substances e) energy consumption f) deforestation g) global warming h) ozone depletion i) Nuclear radiation. Social Issues: a) Role and responsibility of the company towards the social

What is knowledge Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

What is knowledge - Essay Example Diverse methodological approaches and various working definitions of knowledge has further created confusions. While knowledge management might yet be able to be claimed to a coherent scientific paradigm, recent publications indicate an increased conceptual and methodological rigor is needed to establish knowledge management as recognized scholarly discipline. The emergence of research and practical information on aspects of managing knowledge indicates that knowledge management is more than the latest management fad. Epistemology, the study of knowledge, has a log honorable tradition in philosophy, starting with early Greek philosophers. Questions such as†what do we know?† and â€Å"what does it mean to say that someone know something?† have been discussed in philosophical literature. The idea of a formal logical analysis of reasoning about knowledge is somewhat more recent, but goes back at least to Von Wright’s work in the early 1950’s.the first book-length treatment of epistemic logic- the logic of knowledge- is Hintikka’s seminal work knowledge and belief, which appeared in 1962. The 1960’s saw a flourishing of interest in this area of philosophy community. The major interest was in trying to capture the inherent properties of knowledge. Axioms for knowledge were suggested, attacked, and defended. ... in philosophy, starting with early Greek philosophers. Questions such as"what do we know" and "what does it mean to say that someone know something" have been discussed in philosophical literature. The idea of a formal logical analysis of reasoning about knowledge is somewhat more recent, but goes back at least to Von Wright's work in the early 1950's.the first book-length treatment of epistemic logic- the logic of knowledge- is Hintikka's seminal work knowledge and belief, which appeared in 1962. The 1960's saw a flourishing of interest in this area of philosophy community. The major interest was in trying to capture the inherent properties of knowledge. Axioms for knowledge were suggested, attacked, and defended. More recently, researchers in such diverse fields as economics, linguistics, AI (artificial intelligence), and theoretical computer science has become interested in reasoning about knowledge. While, of course, some of the issues that concerned the philosophers have been of interest to these researchers as well, the focus of attention has shifted. For one thing, there are pragmatic concerns about the relationship between knowledge and action.It may seem, what ever the merits of a metaphysical description of the world, that knowledge itself cannot be one of its objects, for knowledge is of the world, or not at least not only in the world. But there is nothing that is not in the world. The supposition that there is, in this case, is largely due to a picturesque conception of the self and a related conception of knowledge which have dominated most of continental philosophy at least since Fichte, although Hume warned against them in 1739.they may be