...16 Common mistakes You are going to look at the text from three emails that contain words which can often be confused. Underline the correct or most appropriate word. EMAIL 1 I am writing with (1) connection/reference/regarding to our telephone conversation this morning about your order 7895LG. I must (2) regret/apologise/sorry for the delay in processing this order. I can now confirm that the goods have been shipped and should (3) arrive/reach/deliver you within 10 working days. We have taken special (4) care/attention/caution to make sure that the items are exactly as you requested. Once again, please (5) take/have/accept our apologies. If you have any further questions, do not (6) stop/fail/hesitate to contact me again. EMAIL 2 I was (1) sorry/unhappy/afraid to hear about the damage to the products that you received this morning. However, I am (2) afraid/apologise/regret that we cannot (3) accept/except/have responsibility in this (4) topic/material/matter. All our products are (5) controlled/checked/looked very carefully before leaving the factory, and the damage in this case must have been caused in transit. I (6) propose/suggest/tell that you contact the shipping company directly about possible compensation. In the meantime, we can ship the same order to you again, if it would help. If you give us a firm instruction to do so (7) until/by/within the next few days, it should reach you (8) until/by/within the end of the month. EMAIL...
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...Common Business Plan Mistakes Writing a business plan is often a crucial first step to getting your start-up off the ground. A good plan can help you raise money, recruit members of your management team, set your marketing strategy and, perhaps best of all, refine your thinking. A plan riddled with errors? That can sink you. Here are 10 mistakes that entrepreneurs frequently make when crafting their business plans, according to Akira Hirai, a consultant in California who advises start-up companies on elements of business-plan writing, including competitive analysis and financial forecasting. Being All Things to All People You cannot expect a business plan to appeal to every possible audience. With this in mind, try to pick one business model, and to focus on one industry or one problem. Otherwise, you risk spreading yourself too thin, and potentially creating a sprawling plan that makes a bad first impression. Being Boring If a potential client gets two pages into your plan and is bored, that's a terrible sign. It is important to have the reader interested right from the executive summary on the very first page. And don't neglect your cover page: a well-designed logo never hurts. Measuring the Size of the Market Too Optimistically Although it may seem impressive if you project vast markets and the potential for huge sums of revenue, outsize financial estimates often appear gimmicky to investors. Worse, big numbers often make you sound as if you don't know what you're...
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...7 common investment mistakes to avoid BY Al and Mark Rosen September 11, 2014 Everyone’s guilty of investment mistakes. Here are seven of the most common blunders to stay away from: 1. Falling in love with the story If you fall for the story behind a company, or its product, you may not see fundamental flaws, poor market conditions, or overpricing of the stock. Marketing experts agree the best sales job is achieved through telling a story and not by talking numbers and facts. Stories get you emotionally invested, far beyond what plain facts could ever do. 2. Believing things are different this time Believing you stumbled on something new or different in the investment world can get you in trouble. Simply put, it’s never different. The odds of successful investing never change. No matter the decade, only a certain percentage of investments will outperform the rest. Monumental shifts occur over a lifetime, not overnight. So stick to the tried and true. Nobody ever went broke by steering clear of new kinds of investments, especially anything that reeks of financial engineering. 3. Confusing good ideas with good investments Sometimes people will use a product or service — think social media or online gaming — and immediately classify it as a can’t-miss investment. The first mistake is usually the assumption that they are early to the game and have caught something the rest of the investing public has missed. The next mistake is extrapolating personal usage into expectations...
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...Sheltie to do? Chase aircraft! We live north of DFW Airport and can easily see planes flying over our house on final approach. Humphrey can see them too. He doesn't like them. Humphrey used to leap into the air trying to catch the planes, but never got close. Now, he just barks at them until they leave. As far as Humphrey's concerned, he's chasing the planes away. He knows it's happening because every time he barks at one, it goes away. Humphrey associates his barking with the plane's leaving and concludes one causes the other. In a way, he's right. The plane shows up and Humphrey barks until it leaves. Getting cause and effect wrong is all too common. Service callbacks increase. Is this the result of a lack of training, poorly designed incentives, bad products, or something else? It could be anything. The mistake is to note a correlation and draw a conclusion without understanding the relationships. In another example, a business owner hears from the media about the poor state of the economy. Nervous, he reduces expenses, cutting marketing and delaying business investment. Sure enough, business falls off, but the slide is more a result of the owner's actions than the economy. A competitor fills the void left by the first owner by increasing marketing and investing in growth. He figures the economy might make growth more difficult, so he needs to put forth more effort. In any economy, companies prosper and fail. This suggests the economy may not be as important...
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...their mistakes? I believe most do, but the real question is 'How much?'. As the saying goes, "Experience is the name we give to our mistakes". The lessons we learn from life are the result of all the mistakes we've made in the past. There are two kinds of people, Those that view their mistakes as failures, and those that view it as a stepping stone to greatness. Everyone messes up occasionally, we're only human. But learning how to deal with it is a fundamental part of growing up. Some people do not give up even when they do not succeed. They refuse to accept defeat and continue to try even when common sense tells others there's no use in trying. Nobody likes making mistakes. But, unless you want to go through life as a complete recluse, you are guaranteed to make one every now and then. If you learn from mistakes correctly, they can propell you forward.You must also realize that mistakes are an essential part of self improvement. Don’t be overwhelmed with guilt and regret, analyze how you can learn from them. The importance of understanding mistakes cannot be understated. On one hand, you have people that never correctly identify their problems, blaming themselves for being inadequate and incapable of performing the task at hand. Unfortunately, it is our natural instinct to try to justify our actions. When you make a mistake, the initial reaction is to blame someone else.When mistakes are made, the boss is unlikely to be interested in justifications. We justify mistakes for...
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...There are many training mistakes most companies do the top five are; Training is an afterthought, they are out of tune with their audience, they did not follow standard training models, training out of business context, and they neglect to forge business partnerships [ (Stackpole, 2008) ]. For the first mistake training is an afterthought, consensuses in the industry dictates that a good training program should account for 10% to 13% of the total project budget. For being out of tune with their audience is when the trainer needs to connect with the materials and the audience and present the information in an interactive and engaging matter. In following standard training models you need to stress the importance of formal learning models. This is best practices for teaching different kinds of learners. For training out of business context, is when the trainer has to understand the business and organizational functions, this is where the confident technicians often miss the boat. Finally, when they neglect to forge business partnerships is when you reach into the user community is a good option. Find out what the other facilities in your company are doing and what is working well for them [ (Stackpole, 2008) ]. Some companies tend to ask, “What if we invest money on employee training, and our employees leave?” The cost of not training them is far greater if they do not train their employees who then stay. The return on investment from an effective training program can...
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...10 Grammar Mistakes That Make You Look Stupid Version 1.0 May 23, 2005 These days, we tend to communicate via the keyboard as much as we do verbally. Often, we're in a hurry, quickly dashing off e-mails with typos, grammatical shortcuts (I'm being kind here), and that breezy, e.e. cummings, no-caps look. It's expected. It's no big deal. But other times, we try to invest a little care, avoiding mistakes so that there's no confusion about what we're saying and so that we look professional and reasonably bright. In general, we can slip up in a verbal conversation and get away with it. A colleague may be thinking, Did she just say "irregardless"?, but the words flow on, and our worst transgressions are carried away and with luck, forgotten. That's not the case with written communications. When we commit a grammatical crime in e-mails, discussion posts, reports, memos, and other professional documents, there's no going back. We've just officially gone on record as being careless or clueless. And here's the worst thing. It's not necessary to be an editor or a language whiz or a spelling bee triathlete to spot such mistakes. They have a way of doing a little wiggle dance on the screen and then reaching out to grab the reader by the throat. So here we are in the era of Word's red-underline "wrong spelling, dumb ass" feature and Outlook's Always Check Spelling Before Sending option, and still the mistakes proliferate. Catching typos is easy (although not everyone does it). It's the...
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...Common Presentation Mistakes to Avoid The workshop I attend is called “Common Presentation Mistakes to Avoid”. This workshop was about mistakes everyone makes when giving a presentation. No one is perfect but using guidelines regarding presentation practice and when you practice presentation the way you give them it will turn out how you plan. Even the best presentation can be destroyed by a bad presenter from the person who mumbles, to the one who talks too fast, to the one who just wasn’t prepared. But perhaps nothing is as irritating as the person who misuses and abuses. There are seven step I learn to go over before giving a presentation and what are the solution to making those problems better but the top three of the mistakes are “ Not knowing your topic:, Ignoring your audience” and “Not Practicing” . These steps will not only prepare me for presentation in school but also increase my skills for my career. The first mistake is not knowing your topic. Not addressing assignment or problem and missing main parts of topic. You can memorized the content but when someone ask you a question about it, you panic and don’t know how to answer it. You never prepared for questions and all you know about this topic is what is written on the slides. A better solution so this don’t happen is to know your material as well, that you could easily do the presentation without an electronic enhancement such as PowerPoint. Nothing will ruin your credibility as a presenter faster, than not...
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...Choosing the Right HRIS Solution In a white paper from 2007, Violet Nguyen stated “An effective HRIS should be able to provide and track all of the information a company needs on current and former employees. The right HRIS helps to reduce the workload of the HR staff, allowing them to be more productive and work more efficiently.” According to Nguyen when it comes to Human Resource professionals complaints the most common are, “It’s not user friendly.” “The reports are too complicated to access.” “It’s not capable of doing what I need it to do.” When selecting an HRIS system it is important to focus on these three key points: Know what is needed, determine and prioritize requirements, and consider future changes. (Nguyen) To determine what you need you have to assess the desired high-level functions. These core functions will include the ability to track employee data, benefits, training, applicants, and attendance. It should also administer and process payroll. There are many other functions that can be considered, but those systems can be more complicated, to install, configure, implement and use. The most important part of the HRIS system selection process is to consider all the functional and system requirements for the system. Be sure to evaluate requirements in a detailed, methodical and complete manner. (Nguyen) Nguyen writes that when considering the functional requirements it is important to determine it is necessary to determine the main purpose of the system...
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...1. In today’s world direct competitors are allowed to take their stand. Yet competition for profits goes beyond established industry rivals to include four other competitive forces as well: customers, suppliers, potential entrants, and substitute products. The extended rivalry that results from all five forces defines an industry’s structure and shapes the nature of competitive interaction within an industry. For instance, the global auto industry appears to have nothing in common with the worldwide market for art masterpieces or the heavily regulated health-care delivery industry in Europe where we can apply porter’s threat of substitution. In which health care medicines are manufactured majorly in Asian countries and it’s cheaper to manufacture there instead of manufacturing in European country. So, EU has implemented taxes while importing medicines from India and China in order to grow domestic market. 2. In 21st century dynamic environment is there in order to succeed, different companies needs to tie the knot to be successful. Different companies have expertise in their field and each company needs advantage from one another to make its own technology better. The accuracy, speed and precision of IT systems means the difference between winning or losing customers, keeping supply chains profitable, and solidly translating new concepts into revenue-producing products and services. The world’s best-run services businesses have customer-driven IT as part of their DNA. It...
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...company has lack of international experience. Therefore they made a lot of mistakes while they were trying to expand the company’s international manufacturing presence. The first mistake was that they tried to implement their incentive system instead of the system that existed in acquired plants. Willis didn’t take into account the cultural differences between countries. For example, European managers and workers were philosophically opposed to piecework and seemed to value vacation time more highly than extra income from bonuses. I think that for implementing new incentive scheme Lincoln also chose wrong mode of entry into European market. Afterwards European plants went into troubles. Another mistake was that corporative executives paid little attention to their subsidiaries; the whole company became very decentralized. HQ didn’t know real causes of troubles in their plants and deemed that their incentive scheme would increase productivity and solve their financial problems, it was also low level of collaboration between plants. After that the headquarter of company realized full scale of troubles and tried to assemble an International Strategic Liaison Team to analyze the foreign operations. In this step they also made a mistake. Instead of assembling this team from managers which were aware of situation In European plants it was comprised entirely of Cleveland-based managers. All these mistakes in common made Lincoln’s early international expansion efforts unsuccessful. 2...
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...Leadership An interdisciplinary team requires many different disciplines working together to accomplish the same goal of excellent patient care by focusing on outcomes. Two strategies that enable a nurse on an interdisciplinary team to exert leadership without occupying a formal leadership role is knowing what issues need to be addressed and taking a stance to do something about them and remaining positive. By speaking up, the nurse brings concerns to light and reduces patient risks. The nurse also needs to have a clear, concise, and appropriate plan of care for the patient that everyone on the team is aware of. Also, remaining positive and not contributing to “whining” or “finger pointing” will help make the members of the team support and respect the nurse's input. By attempting these strategies, the nurse is able to keep the patient's best interest at hand. It is extremely important for a nurse to be actively involved in an interdisciplinary team because the nurse is the front line of patient care. The nurse spends the majority of her day at the patient's bedside. This gives the nurse an opportunity to really get to know the patient and what needs the patient may have. In order to adequately meet the needs of the patient, the nurse must take the lead role in the patient's plan of care. The nurse has the responsibility of seeing the “big picture” and making all the “tools” the other disciplines have to offer work together in harmony. Effective teamwork, open communication...
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...As long as you learn from your mistakes, nothing is lost. Even your mistakes made are then one of ‘all things’ which work together for good for them that love Me. As long as you come to Me, and I can teach you about the things you did wrong or could do better, there’s no need for remorse, which never helped much, anyway. But you can turn right around, determine to keep an eye on that weakness, ask Me to help you be on guard & ‘deliver you from evil’, strengthen the feeble knees & the hands that hang down, & go to work on building new, healthier habits. And that’s what you call ‘progress’ & learning. Mistakes are an essential part of the meaning of life. It’s just the inborn sinful human nature not to want to obey me at first. The Devil comes up with his contra immediately & pipes up, ....’Sssssso, did God reaaally ssssay ssso...?’ And you know what’ll happen next. You’ll make a mistake. Call it a sin – you miss the mark. I have to punish you, you learn the lesson, and that’s the cycle of things at the present state of creation under the curse. It will not always be so. This is only practice with weights, so that soon you’ll be able to fly. It took that road of humbling, the road of making mistakes, the road of failure, to come to the realization of My unconditional love for you. You cannot turn back time, and everyone has made mistakes, but you’re not meant to make the same mistakes over & over. Some mistakes you don’t even realize until much later, some only when you get here...
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...character of the short story “Save as many as you ruin”. He has a daughter, Lucy, whose mother, Issy, died tragically many years prior to when the story takes place. Gerard has made many mistakes in his life, and in the story we hear about how he recovers from one of the biggest ones, when he once again meets the love of his life after many years of separation. The themes and topics discussed in the text include making mistakes, losing and finding love, coincidences and being a spectator in life. We are introduced to Gerard as a pensive man who wanders in the snow, deep in thoughts about his life and how short and insignificant it is. “Gerard thinks of his own footprints and how soon they will disappear. He exhales into the world and his breath disappears. (…) He wonders if his life is an extraordinary one” (p. 1, l. 7-9). Although he does ponder a lot about whether or not he is making the best of his life, he is not active in doing anything about the things that he may be discontent with. He gave in to temptation once when he initiated the affair with Issy, a mistake that turned out to be a fatal turning point in his life. He lost Laurel, the love of his life. He also lost Issy, which must have caused a lot of pain and regret even though he never loved her. But in spite of all the trouble his past mistake causes him, he also gains what turns out to be the most precious thing around which his life evolves - his beloved daughter, Lucy. She and Laurel are the only two “women” he has...
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...minutes. This is a CLOSED BOOK test. No notes or text books are allowed. A paper English dictionary and a university approved calculator may be used. Statistical Tables are not required If you leave the room during the test you may not re-enter. You may not leave within the last 5 minutes of the test On the Answer Sheet provided indicate your answer by circling whichever option A, B, C, D or E applies. There is ONE correct answer for each question. If you select more than one answer then you will receive zero marks for that question, even if one of the answers you have selected is correct. So select only one answer. There are 30 questions on this paper. Each correct answer will gain 1 mark. If you make a mistake, correct the mistake and make sure that your final choice of answer is clearly indicated. If your answer is not clear then marks cannot be awarded. At the end of the test hand your completed Answer Sheet and this Question Paper to the tutor. To prevent cheating, there are many different versions of the test being used. The only way we can tell which paper you have answered is if we receive your Question Sheet at the end of the test. The Question Sheet must have your name on it. DO NOT ask another student to hand in your papers. ----------------------- TEST PAPER No. Name: …………………………………………………. Student...
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