Category: Nabil

Paragraph 1.  Online paper posted at csis.org

Perhaps the quintessential example of early U.S. foundation support was the Rockefeller Foundation’s support for the China Medical Board (CMB). Originally, the board established Peking Union Medical College, a state-of-the-art medical school and teaching hospital. When the Chinese Revolution forced the board to abandon the institution in 1950, the CMB became a health-oriented foundation operating throughout Asia. In its current incarnation, the CMB has regained its China focus but concentrates on a broader selection of institutions. It supports both medical and public health research as well as policy-related workshops and studies.11 Operating off a $200 million endowment, the CMB gives grants of $7 million–$10 million per year. Until recently, it used to fund a core of 13 medical institutions in China; it has now shifted to emphasize an application process intended to broaden the reach of the program into rural areas with greater unmet health care needs.

My comments:

Hyphen:
“A state-of-the-art” hyphenated when it is used as an adjective.

“Health-oriented”: modifying hyphen gives details about the type of foundation.

“$7 million – $10 million”: I couldn’t find rules about this type of dash. Some papers use en hyphen too.

“…in china; it has now…”: semicolon: connects both sentences. Helps build on first sentence to draw a comparative note.

Paragraph 2. Zawya Advertising.com

Co., the exclusive importer of Land Rover in Qatar, launched the newest edition to the Range Rover family – the long anticipated Range Rover Evoque during a glittering event at the newly renovated Land Rover showroom. Holding the title as the smallest, lightest and most fuel efficient model to date, the Range Rover Evoque Coupé and the Range Rover Evoque 5-door are now available at Land Rover showroom in Qatar initially in two stylish design themes: the luxurious ‘Prestige’, and the bold and sporting ‘Dynamic’.

My comments:

“…Range Rover family – the long anticipated Range Rover…” I am not sure about the purpose of using this punctuation. My guess is that it’s used to emphasize the importance of the event.

“…in two stylish design themes: the luxurious ‘Prestige’, and …” I am not used to this type of punctuation. In this example, it is intended for the name of that line of car. The col

Paragraph 3 – Sample Prose and Poetry by Frank Finale

Always, with the salt air, an aroma of sausage, peppers and onions, and God-knows-what sauces drift up and down the boardwalk. It was one of those sea-scintillating summers, every weekend an arcade dealer’s dream. I had turned twenty-one, and everything seemed right with the world—I even thought I understood Browning who believed only God could. I drank martinis, busboyed at Martell’s, and listened over and over again to Sinatra singing, “It Was A Very Good Year.”

My comments

This short paragraph has very interesting punctuation marks:

“God-knows-what”

“Twenty-one”: dash or hyphen between two first units. Example: two thousand three hundred and sixty-nine.

Punctuation in “…the world —I even thought…” is called em dash. It indicates an afterthought. It’s as if the writer is so inspired that he can barely contain the thoughts sprawling in his mind.

“It was a very good year” is in italic to convene a sense of confession to the reader.

Workshop 3. Cover note.

 

Hi,

Thank you for the opportunity to submit a section of my paper on the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the Youth Unemployment issue. This paper is for my International Organization (IO) class taught by professor Ed Laurance. The assignment is to apply concepts studied during class to an international organization and to write a 4,000 words paper. The font type must be Times New Roman and the font size is 12 with 1.5 line spacing.

The section I am submitting to your review is titled Performance Evaluation and is the last section of the paper. Evaluation in IO is very similar to most social change organizations. The challenge with IO, and particularly the ILO, is the publication of evaluation results. As you will see in the “Evaluating the Evaluation” section, this ILO started addressing this issue in 2004-05 but much work remains to be done.

I didn’t know much about the ILO before starting this paper. I would vaguely remember the name when I see movies about labor unions. Actually, most of us don’t know – or hear – much about the ILO. Except for some -political- glitches with a few of its members, the organization, in spite of its longevity (founded in 1919,) and its Nobel Prize (1969,) kept a very low profile. The organization was applauded for its treaty making and treaty monitoring functions, its tripartite structure (governments, employers, and workers delegates.)

With such a long history and numerous trophies, one would expect the ILO to be at the forefront of the globalization, trade and development debates; this is not the case. It’s only recently that the ILO woke up from a long period of stagnation and started to adopt internal and external changes. In 2004-05, and thanks to change in leadership and pressure from its partners, the ILO started a restructuring process. The agency evaluated its main functions as a standard setter and monitor of all labor related affairs.

In this section, I briefly introduce the ILO most commonly cited challenges along with a historical apercu and touch on most recent internal and programmatic changes.

I am concerned about redundancy, conciseness, and clarity. Feedback on the introduction and the conclusion would be of great help. Footnotes and references are still in progress.

Thank you,

Nabil

 

Performance Evaluation of the International labor Organization.
Of the performance evaluation challenges listed by Gutner and Thompson in “The Politics of IO Performance: A Framework,” the ILO has seen it all. Through its century of existence, the organization went through periods of leadership deficits, inadequate staffing (self-promotion, incompetence) and resources, ineffective bureaucracies, competing norms, power politics among member states including discredit campaigns from within (attempt to measure Decent Work campaign with indexes for over 100 countries was blocked by Workers Department) and from the outside (pressure from member states: Japan and the Commission of Enquiry report on Freedom of Association; US poor track of ratification and US withdrawal 1970-80; EU/UK  refusing the respect Art. 2 of ILO Convention No87) differences in philosophical approaches to work and economy) and mandates that are lofty, incoherent, and imprecise. This in addition to two world wars, world economic revolutions and crisis, and a cultural shift in the definition of society to work.

For more on ILO troubled years, see ‘The ILO: An agency for globalization” by Guy Standing.

With globalization, the standard setting characteristic of the ILO and its efforts to regulate the labor market is increasingly difficult.  The ILO “Decent Work” grand project of late 90s, although largely criticized for its vagueness and platitude, represents a shift as it connects the agency with the UN Millennium Development Goals, and unites it with other IOs in the universal debate on poverty. This new agenda gave the ILO the opportunity to focus its core activity of standard setting. The most prominent change is in the field of evaluation.

1. Evaluating the Evaluation
In adherence to its commitment to credibility, impartiality, transparency and independence, and be consistent with internationally accepted evaluation norms standards and good practices, and with the UN Evaluation Group call for a results based management, the ILO undertook the task to evaluate not only its work but also its evaluation system. A 2010 Independent External Evaluation of the ILO Evaluation Function conducted over a period of five years, concluded that the ILO Evaluation Policy is sound, meets almost all United Nations Evaluation Group and other international evaluation bodies, and needs little modification; the main challenges the report found are related to the implementation of the Policy itself.

One of the main concerns is the –impression of- lack of independence due to the fact that the ILO evaluation unit reports to the management and administration department, rather than reporting directly of the executive head, something unique within the UN system. Use of evaluation results by the Governing body is uneven; the Decent Work Country Program Evaluations have not informed a higher-level decision and policy making. Evaluations are conducted once a year, too often. Self-evaluation is not well developed.

The report also showed that managers do not regard evaluations as essential to their work. A cultural shift is needed to have evaluation part of the policymaking, planning and performance reporting. The report recommends ILO to move to a result based management.

“Independent External Evaluation of the ILO Report” Associates for International Management Services, July 2010
ILO November 2005 – Evaluation Decision- 8^th item on the Agenda: GB.294/PF/8/4

The Youth Employment Network Evaluation System
The ILO integrated evaluation within all its programs around Youth Unemployment:

1. The Taqeem Fund for Evaluation in Youth Employment

A partnership between the Youth Employment Network, Silatech and the Jacobs Foundation, that supports small and medium sized youth employment programs from across the MENA region to design and test appropriate, efficient and innovative monitoring and evaluation solutions for their initiatives. This new initiative intends to capture the knowledge and lessons learned generated through the anticipated increased focus on youth employment / enterprise programming by governments, development partners, civil society and the private sector.
http://www.ilo.org/Search3/search.do?searchWhat=evaluation+of+youth+program&locale=en_US

2. YEN’s “Evaluation Clinics”

With World Bank funding, YEN has organized one evaluation clinic in the Middle East, supporting rigorous evaluation of youth employment projects in the region. 
The Evaluation Clinics are intensive 3-4 day trainings that focus on knowledge sharing and learning between youth employment programs with the goal of improving current evaluation practices.
http://www.ilo.org/public/english/employment/yen/whatwedo/projects/clinics.htm

Conclusion

The ILO’s successes in fulfilling its mission are as numerous as its challenges. The period between 1970 and 1990 was particularly difficult to navigate. The agency lost credibility with its main constituents as well as with its donors. The Management Based Result approach to evaluations may help the ILO with focusing its core competencies and better align itself with the current economic realities. A quick look at the agency’s website indicate that the ILO is already making strives in that field. By aligning itself behind the UN Millennium Development Goals, and with –a forceful- partnering with the World Bank, the ILO is taking a lead role in addressing the youth unemployment problem.

 

 

What is your Semicolon Personality?

1C: 3 points

Make note of how the author has used the semicolon for future reference.

2C: 2 points

See that they may have some use but aren’t sure what it is.

3C: 3 points
Are excellent stylistic devices.

Total: 8 points.

You are a confident writer that is not threatened by the semicolon. The semicolon is an advanced tool, so one who uses it tends to take chances with language and strives to make it the best it can be. However, there is a danger. Because the semicolon is fairly formal and classy, overuse can indicate pretentiousness.

Going through my papers posted on the blog, I realized that I didn’t use semicolons in my writing. “A Dash of Style” demonstrates how the use of semicolons can help with stronger and more elegant writing.

Example 1: Excerpt from workshop 2 – revisions

“However inclusive this definition of “Culture” might be, it’s important to draw on a couple of examples that could illustrate how the term got lost due to either common public misconceptions or academic language vulgarity, perhaps both.”

Same paragraph with use of semicolon:

“However inclusive this definition of “Culture” might be, it’s important to draw on a couple of examples that could illustrate how the term got lost due to either common public misconceptions or academic language vulgarity; perhaps both.”

Example 2: Excerpt from workshop 2 – revisions

“A cultural act has to have a seed. It’s not generated in a vacuum. It requires the transmission of knowledge and taste that involves work, labor and technique. It needs a social group, knowledge, and a creative, renewed, and appreciated continuity.”

Same paragraph with use of semicolon:

“A cultural act has to have a seed; it’s not generated in a vacuum. It requires the transmission of knowledge and taste that involves work, labor and technique. It needs a social group, knowledge, and a creative, renewed, and appreciated continuity.”

The most interesting thing that has happened to me this past month – and probably for the past three months – is going to MIIS. It took me forever to make the decision to drop my full-time job and attend graduate school. Rare are those who thought I was brave. Numerous are those who were kind enough not to treat me –almost- as insane. They may be right. With the economy the way it is, jobs are scarce and when you are working in a field that you love and doing well at it, why leave? What is it there for me after two (maybe more) years of school and sixty thousand dollar in loans? I am not sure I have an answer to this question right now. All I know is that each week – sometimes each day- I repeat my mantra “I am at school. I am at school.” as if I may wake up one morning, forget I have a class, and find myself driving to work and opposite direction to Monterey.

 

This past month at MIIS, I developed a project – which I have been thinking about for the past few years – into a grant proposal. I also found a couple of students who are interested in partnering with me and taking the project to next phase. I also met with representatives from Frontier Market Scout and laid out possible proposals for projects in Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia.  Two weeks ago, I was in San Francisco for an internship interview that (at my great surprise) almost turned into a job interview. The company was closing in on an investment program in a couple of Arab countries and is moving into evaluation phase. I left the interview with words like “a great fit” and “when can you start” resonating with me during the drive back to Monterey.

Writing errors that annoy me the most are errors related to clarity, concision, and cohesion. For me, clarity refers to the purpose of writing. Why one writes about a particular topic? What is it about that topic, or the writer’s opinion, which is so essential, that it requires the sacred act of writing? In my opinion, clarity of the intent largely contributes to the clarity of the writing.

Clarity of intent often, if not always, impacts conciseness. As John Wesley puts it “the ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” When a writer is clear about the purpose, she or he would most likely be concise in her/his style and distills her/his proses to the most essentials.

Most recently, and after closing each last page of each book or paper I read, I ask myself the question: what is it exactly the writer needed to convey in three hundred and something pages that couldn’t fit in thirty or forty? This is where I think cohesion comes in; cohesion in style, structure and maybe most importantly, cohesion between the writer, the writing, and the reader the writing is intended to.

 

Purpose of this paper

I attempt to clarify the meaning of the word “Culture.” This is important to me because:

• People use the world culture without knowing what it really means and often in wrong context.
• The question “where are you from” pushes my -ethnic- buttons and often leaves me speechless.

• Discussions about “Ethnic Art Development Grants” and “Cultural Equity Initiatives.”

I believe the language is accessible and I used TNR, 12 points size.

My challenges include structuring my ideas and expressing them in clear and concise manner. It’s a challenge for me to second-guess whether the reader will be able to read between the lines.

How to keep the reader intrigued and engaged without having to spell everything out? I know I have to write cleanly since I want to communicate with her/him. I have challenges finding the balance between the requirements of technical writing and writing about topics that I am passionate about.
Most helpful feedback would be on cohesion of the overall article, sentence transitions within paragraphs, and connecting structures. I don’t know if this paper would lead to an academic exercise  but inputs on technicalities of academic writing would very helpful. For instance which sections could be more/better explored? What perspectives could be added?

Thank you!

In this revision, I took some of the feedback into consideration and moved some ideas and sections around particularly in the introduction and conclusion. I also ended on an ironic note adopting a term that I criticized in my paper. I may revise the conclusion again and end it with a couple of questions that could lead to a mush deeper study of the theme. Thank you for all the feedback!

 

———————————————————————————————————-

In November 2001, and in the wake of the September 11th attack on the United States, the UNESCO General Assembly third round table titled “The intangible heritage: A mirror of Cultural diversity” adopted the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity and identified Cultural Diversity as the “common heritage of humanity” and “an important step to humanize globalization.” This title got me wondering about the meaning of cultural diversity.

How is it that our common cultural heritage “cultural diversity” is to “humanize globalization when universal marketing techniques are dictating how we should live, communicate, and feel. When we adopt work behavior to suit off-shored companies’ business styles. When Satellite TVs are not a luxury anymore and often comes before running water. We feel better when our life is as close as possible to those depicted in soap operas, movies and commercials. And most of us don’t even know what “Culture” refers to anymore.

Questioning the terms “Cultural Diversity” and “Cultural Heritage” could lead one to a definition quest. There are hundreds of entries and definitions in academic dictionaries, Internet search engines, and academic studies for the word “culture.” What does it exactly mean?

“Culture” in Latin is not a name that designates things but actions that have physical support and that produce physical reference or “products.” The Collins Robert dictionary translates “une methode de culture” as “a farming method.” Indeed, since the time of ancient Romans, the word “Culture” has always been associated with the seeds, the earth, water, and the vegetable or fruit obtained. To cultivate the soil is then the use of the sum of our knowledge, creativity and labor in order to obtain the fruit or the vegetable.

In the Arabic language, the root of the word “Culture” designs the action of cutting, pruning, refining, adjusting, and in general the use of knowledge, experience, and techniques to create, and increase the efficiency of an instrument be it wood, silver, or iron.

The definitions above refer to actions that use human ingenuity and put all the weight of the cultural act on the quality of the labor, technique and skill learned from previous generations. Therefore, the cultural act is a seed for the transmission of knowledge that needs a social group where the transmitter, the one who knows, is respected. One can only imagine how elders in primitive tribes were revered for their contributions to the younger generations.

However inclusive this definition of “Culture” might be, it’s important to draw on a couple of examples that could illustrate how the term got lost due to either common public misconceptions or academic language vulgarity, perhaps both.

In fifteenth-century Europe, there were already talks about the Art of Medicine, the Art of Iron building, and the Art of Woodcarving. More recently, “Culture” has become synonymous with “Art,” which includes poetry, literature, paintings, and so on. We also talk about the culture of jail mates, the culture of the drug addict, the surfing culture. Popular magazines, TV show hosts, and university courses badly done enforce concepts such as “Popular Culture” and “Bourgeois Culture.” Some might even add that culture is the fact of thinking, and everything gets mixed.

Well-meant generalizations are made by turning Culture into a series of specific behaviors that become close to the pathological obsession “Jalousie in the Mediterranean countries is Cultural” or ” this kid can’t go to the swimming pool with the rest of the classroom, we’ve got to respect the culture of his parents.”

Jalousie is not a cultural fact, but its psychological analysis or “Othello” are Cultural. A spiritual quest, a particular technique, writing a philosophical book, even about religion are cultural facts. Having a lot of kids in our times is not a cultural fact. The gas chamber or torture techniques are not cultural creations, as they don’t involve a spiritual or material “production,” but a destruction and a degradation of the human being. In contrast, the one who starts to sing and have his comrades sing with him in the gas chamber in order to lighten the weight of pain, the one who starve himself in order to have the human rights respected, both create situations full of their experience, spirituality, and the know how of their philosophy, and that carries inevitably the specific seal of the human.

A cultural act has to have a seed. It’s not generated in a vacuum. It requires the transmission of knowledge and taste that involves work, labor and technique. It needs a social group, knowledge, and a creative, renewed, and appreciated continuity. The cultural tradition would be then the sum of the creations, the art performances, and the knowledge and know how, memorized and taught, to use as a base for new creations. Cultural Creation or Cultural Creativity in its finest expression is an adaptation of how we tell our story as human beings.

So let’s face it: globalization is turning our planet to one large common market and UNESCO’s lofty definition “intangible cultural heritage is not just the memory of past cultures, but is also a laboratory for inventing the future” can not do anything about it, let alone its call for humanization of globalization. Globalization is not only impacting our culture but it is the new “culture.”

 

Sources and References:

UNECSO: http://www.unesco.org/confgen/press_rel/021101_clt_diversity.shtml
Discussions and interviews at the Centre Culturel Arabe
Robert & Collins Dictionary

Maria Webster Dictionary
Le Grand Robert

El-qamous al-arabi

 

 

 

 

Our video presentation focuses on adverbs and adjectives. During our first meeting, Leo and I reviewed the work samples posted on Moodle and researched resources available on the websites recommended by the instructor. We soon realized that the possibilities are endless and that we have to narrow down our options. On Thursday, we discussed and agreed on the approach that we will take for this assignment, and laid out a work plan.  Our presentation will focus on the main rules about nouns as adverbs and as adjectives with examples and one exception for each rule.

We created and emailed a survey to students to gauge their interest. Based on the responses to the survey, we crafted a working document outlining the main components of the video presentation.

We then interviewed students using some of the survey questions. Once edited, the students’ interviews will serve as an opening to the video presentation and will be followed by our own introduction to the topic. Two TESOL students have also agreed to provide expertise on the subject. Slides with exercises and examples will be incorporated within the video. Finally, we are planning to close the presentation with a summary of the main take-outs.

300 words summary of the week’s reading “Four Most Serious Errors”

The article covers some basic rules of building a sentence in English. It decomposes the different components of a sentence and offers insights on the four most serious errors.  The author argues that well researched papers suffer from fragmentation, run-ons sentences, subject-verb agreement, and verb form and tense.

In the first part, we learn about the “Sentence,” which is the standard form of written communication. A complete sentence has to have a subject, a verb and a complement. It is important to distinguish the types of subjects, i.e., a subject can be a person, a thing, or a place, and the rules about prepositional phrases. A table with most common prepositions and examples are provided to help the reader understand these rules.

The second section distinguishes between the three types of verbs. Actions verbs convey the most important action in a sentence. Helping verbs, such as “am,” “is,” “are,” are used to complete the main verb of the sentence, and linking verbs are connectors and show no action.

The chapter about fragments explains how to find and correct the five common kinds of fragments. A fragmented sentence leads to confusion. The misplacement of a period for instance could throw the reader off because period indicates that a thought has been expressed and the sentence is finished. Therefor, dependent words, prepositions, and -ing verbs should not follow a period. The author offers tools to recognize fragments, lists the types of fragments and gives examples on how to correct them.

The last section deals with run-ons sentences, a problem that often occurs when a writer uses two independent clauses or a fused sentence to express more than one thought. It is very important the rules related to the use of period, semicolon, comma, and dependent words to avoid both run-ons sentences and fragmentation.

 

Hi,

These are the three topics I am interested in:

1. Tense use: example below

Original:

First-time applicants and artists, groups and organizations who didn’t apply for the past two years are REQUIRED to attend a grant orientation session.

Revised:

First-time applicants and artists, groups and organizations who haven’t applied for the past two years are REQUIRED to attend a grant orientation session.

1. Adverb placement: also, yet, always, ever, rarely, seldom and never

3. Writing with a purpose