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By focusing on a wide range of reading and study skills required in the academic world, Reading and Study Skills gives instructors the flexibility to address student needs that might otherwise require several texts. The highly versatile organization divides topics into focused, self-contained modules that can be covered in any order resulting in a text that can be adapted to fit any teaching or learning situation. From its step-by-step, comprehensive coverage of the essential reading and study skills, to its practical, sensible style and tone, this text encourages and motivates students to get the most out of their reading and shows them how to master key study skills in order to have rewarding college experiences.
Cut Backs.Because of the recent economic difficulties many small business or home based business owners look to their marketing campaigns to make come budgetary cut backs.However, historical data indicate that cut backs in marketing can be difficult to recover from even during the recover period.Keep reading and I'll share five marketing recession proof strategies that can boost your business.Recession Marketing.A study published by McGraw-Hill Research followed 600 companies spanning 16 different industries for five years studying their marketing, recession included.The study's data indicate that the companies who either maintained or increased their marketing budget spending had 256% sales growth as compared to those companies who cut back their marketing spending.Actually, those who did cut back their marketing had only a 19% growth during those same five years.Step Up Your Game With These 5 Strategies.1.The answer is not to make cut backs but rather to make sure you aren't wasting any of your marketing budget.You first have to have a measurable marketing method that will allow you to determine cost per lead, cost per sale and lifetime value of a customer.To not have these data is akin to throwing your money out the window.2.Provide solutions to your leads using your copy to preemptively address their concerns.During tough financial times consumers are more careful about where they spend their money.Address these financial concerns directly and before your lead is able to identify those obstacles.3.Review your UPS (Unique Selling Proposition).Does it really set you apart from your competition? Does it explain how your business will benefit your leads? Develop a powerful USP and pull your leads into your personal story.Remember, today's consumers respond much better to a personal touch than a hard sell.4.Buy low.That is, look for specials, sales and bargains from your marketing campaign providers.Take advantage of price cuts in printing, leads lists, media costs and shipping.5.Consider new media outlets such as direct mail campaigns, radio ads or even local television commercials.Send your newly strengthened USP out into the world using every marketing avenue you can afford.Opportunity for Growth.Although consumer spending changes during times of economic recession people will continue to spend money.Take advantage of these spending changes and use a preemptive approach to grab your leads' attention.Turn your efforts to marketing recession proof campaigns and start boosting your business growth today.
Okay, you're ready to write the ad of a lifetime.The one that will pull like crazy and leave them begging for your product like Somalians for food.So, do you whet their appetite with a short and sweet ad? Or write a long-copy ad that's stuffed with information?Rules vs Studies .The 80-20 rule says 80% of the people only read the headline (and maybe a caption, if you have one).But the fact is, readers will read a long-copy ad.One McGraw-Hill study looked at 3,597 ads in 26 business magazines.What they discovered was that ads with 300 or more words were more effective that shorter ads in creating product awareness, inducing action and reinforcing the decision to buy.Another ad for Merrill Lynch crammed 6, 450 words into a single New York Times page.It pulled over 10,000 responses--even without a coupon! The truth is, the reason people read ads has nothing to do with copy length."Nobody reads long ads." and other urban ad legends .People shun too many of today's ads--long or short--because several misleading myths have stubbornly remained with us.Things like "negative headlines are a downer since people want to feel good when reading your ad." Or "show the product or they'll never know what you're selling." Then there's the stuffy axiom, "there's no place for humor in business advertising." Or the ubiquitous saw, "all your ads should look the same, blend in or be swallowed up." The list goes on and on.Presented with unabashed hubris by the high priests of advertising.The basic fact is, ads really fail for three reasons.Your ads are all about you .You're telling customers what you want to hear, not what they want to know.Impressive sounding features are fine to motivate your sales force, but your customer is only interested in one thing. "What's in it for me?" This offense is particularly egregious in business-to-business advertising, which is infamous for its addiction to phrases like "the XP90 does it all" or "now with Duo-Pentium Processor"--without a hint of what these features do.Also contaminating many of today's ads are such chest-pounding headlines as "Taking the lead," "The promise of tomorrow, today," or "A tradition of quality." They sound good but say nothing.Your ads are boring .You've got to break the boredom barrier--big time.Many ad gurus say blend in, be one of the pack and survive.No wonder so many ads look alike, proudly showing big pictures of their products, or worse yet, featuring a giant photo of the company's CEO--usually with a caption that's been scrubbed clean of originality or compelling information.If you want people to stop and read your ad, you have to make the ad more interesting than the editorials in the publication you're in.Give them real news, a fresh new way to look at what you're offering them.Stand out from the crowd.Start trends, don't follow them.One of the most interesting car ads I ever saw showed the car only sparingly; instead, it featured an animation of a human heart beating furiously to the soundtrack of an accelerating engine.Breakthrough stuff.Your ads don't make human contact .They're not reaching readers on an emotional level.We all want to be liked, appreciated and loved.We want to feel secure in our lives and our jobs.So be a mensch.Create ads that touch the soul.Use an emotional appeal in your visual, headline and copy.Don't just show a car on the road; show the guy captivating his sweetheart with the car.If your buyers were on the moon, would they care about your car's styling? No.They'd get an ugly, crawly vehicle that got them from crater to crater.Selling computers to business? Show the guy getting a raise or promotion for selecting your latest model.You're selling the emotional end result, the human need-based bottom line, not a box, or vehicle with four wheels and an engine.So if you're struggling with the notion of whether to write a long- or short-copy ad, you can do both and still get results.The key is not length or lack of it, but information, interest and involvement in your customer's needs.These are the ingredients to creating a successful ad.
Listening well is as powerful a means of communication and influence as to talk well.-John Marshall.Listening is an indicator of openness of mind.It prepares the ground for understanding and solving of issues.Listening helps one gather and imbibe a wide array of information.A careful listener has the influence to enlist cooperation of the all those who are part of the problem.No knowledge is added when one talks but listening adds new knowledge.Listening touches hearts.A listener is a part of solution, and never a part of problem.Words have no meaning but people have, which can be understood only when one listens.A witty maxim "A wise man listening to a fool will learn more than a fool listening to a wise man" explains clearly the importance of listening.Provision of two ears and one mouth to a human being symbolically explains the importance of listening as double that of speaking.The average time spent on listening is 53% while that spent on writing, speaking and reading together 47%.Ironically, all the training programs are usually focused on the latter and almost little on the former though it is critical and occupies a major chunk of communication.The Importance of Listening in Organizational Communication.While listening is very important for inter personal relationships or social life, it is more important for all those running the organization while pursuing its goals.Organizations run not only on the rails of information with all diverse dimensions, but also on the emotions and non-rational human angles.Grasp of full range of information and proper treatment of human expectations are possible with best listening only.One would set out on learning best listening skills only when he is convinced about the importance of listening.Now a discussion is attempted on the importance of listening.Meenakshi Raman and Prakash Singh (2006, pp.90-91) have enumerated the benefits of listening for the leaders and teams.A) Listening helps know the organization.B) Listening helps in making better policies.C) Listening mollifies complaining employees.D) Listening is important of the success of the open-door policy.E) Listening helps to spot sensitive areas before they become explosive.F) Listening forms a bond of respect.G) It increases accuracy, confidence and productivity.H) Innovative solutions evolve through listening.Listening helps one get fairly complete information, which is not the case with poor listening.Poor listening acts like piece of cloth with many holes in it.A problem with more than one dimension can be sorted out only when the information about all the dimensions of the problem is taken.Full understanding of a problem is just one step from solving it.Listening is a tool for understanding.And establishes the missing links of the problem.A solution based on half information would either fail to work or may not last longer.Listening helps planning for future and formulating better policies.Listening gives clarity and accuracy about the problem and also gives confidence to those involved.Try this technique of attentive listening on all unresolved issues and see the difference.Listen to all points and all parties to the problem and you would see the solution instantly.The listener can gather cues about future problems from the way the presenters gesticulate or speak out their minds.A discerning listener not only gets full information about the current problem but also enough signals about the future problems.Due to full grasp of issues, efforts to solve problems can be launched much before the problem becomes too unwieldy if one listens properly.Listening gives non-verbal cues about the speaker's original intention of the message.An attentive listener makes out the real and complete meaning of what the speaker is communicating.The speaker's tone, facial expressions, gesticulations etc, which the listener can read effortlessly, would either confirm fully or contradict what the former says orally.This is why people would travel thousands of miles to communicate in face-to-face situation, though the same can be done on phone or fax or videoconference.In the face-to-face communication where full attentive listening is possible, not only the full grasp of the problem is had but the attitude of the parties about the issue is also known to each other.Listening establishes bonds of trust and respect.Problems and their solutions depend very much not only facts on pure facts but also non-factual dimensions like emotions, respect, affection etc.Listening dissolves the defensive attitude of the other party.Active listening spawns respect in the other party and may relent in doubting.Listening makes complaining employees retrospect and soft to the issue and listener.Listening, in a way, reduces tensions.Even when no solution is found, the listeners are empathized with, since they perceive that everything what should be done was done.Besides this, listening motivates the speakers to say goods things and take immediate actions on what the listener suggested.Causes of Poor Listening.There are several and varied reasons for poor listening besides lack of awareness that listening is important.Dan Bobinski, (Seven Deadly Sins of Not Listening http.//www.Hodu.Com/not-listening.Shtml) has summed up seven deadly sins that lead to poor listening.Filtering, second-guessing, discounting, relating, rehearsing, forecasting, and placating contribute to poor listening.Filtering refers to listener's acceptance of what is palatable and rejection of what does not suit him.Second-guessing is looking out for hidden motives.Discounting is born of disrespect for the speaker and derides at the content.Relating is imbibing which has references to the listener's experience or background and missing out the rest as useless.Rehearsing is being busy with thinking about what to say when the speaker finishes his point.Forecasting is thinking very much ahead about an idea given by the speaker.Placating is agreeing with what everyone else says in order to avoid conflict, the result of which is missing out understanding.Similarly, Prof.Mathukutty ( 2001, pp.68-72) has identified nine contributors to poor listening.They are.1) inadequate language.2) difficult physical conditions like external disturbances.3) non-serious listening.4) lack of interest.5) antipathy towards speaker.6) over-enthusiasm for speaker.7) lack of confidence.8) impatience.9) strong convictions about the topic.Prof.Asha Kaul has mentioned eight deterrents to listening process.Lack of interest, ego, preoccupation with self, shuttling between past and present, fear, preconceived notions, feeling that he already knows (familiarity trap), and stress.We will discuss the most prominent reasons for poor listening in the following paragraphs.Mismatch between thought speed and speaking speed. A mind (of any human being while he is listening) can process 400 words per minute whereas a human being can speak only about 125 words only.During this free time gap available to the listener's mind, it wanders away into other topics since it has idle capacity and get distracted from the speaker's topic.This is one of the reasons why the mind wanders fast from one subject to the other.Lack of awareness. While there are various and numerous training programs conducted for reading, writing and speaking, no training program is ever conducted for listening, which on an average constitutes more than reading writing and speaking put together in total communication time.Mistaken belief that others would expect you to solve their problems. It is an erroneous belief that others would speak to us only in expectation of some contribution and would solicit us to solve their problem.But a few may solicit some help but majority want to share their feelings, achievement, grief, information etc.It is better to listen with an open mind than turn a deaf ear.Installation of filters. Communications come from different angles with different kinds of inputs.An individual neither has the capacity to absorb all nor is it useful to take everything that comes.Hence, an individual innately sets up filters in his mind to attend to some and disregard some by sifting through the information that comes.In the process of disregarding the presumably useless matter, he may turn ear to some useful information also.Secondly, the filter has another form when the listener thinks that he knows the topic and nothing much is left to learn from the speaker.This condition is known as closed- mindedness.In this condition also, the listener fails to get what is communicated.In such situation, he would only engage his mind in forming criticism or to deny the speaker's opinions or framing his argument as opposed to that of the speaker.It is how he misses the point.Thirdly, the speaker may already have an opinion about the speaker.This condition is known as premature evaluation.If it is a negative opinion, he would close his mind and miss the point.If he has a highly positive opinion, he may show over-enthusiasm to confirm his impression and thus may miss the point.Fourthly, some individuals have a low opinion about them and take any input as an attack on their weaknesses.They would not allow the information to come and remain busy in defending themselves.Distraction. The listener is distracted from the topic due to external disturbances, poor public address systems, disinterested co-audience etc.Certain personal factors like disturbing situation in the family etc also would distract the listener.All these distractions are attributed to 'noise' surrounding the listener.Lack of interest. If the listener has no interest in the topic or the speaker, he cannot listen.Inadequate language. The inadequate language of either the speaker or the listener would hinder the listening process.The language of the speaker should match that of the listener.Bad listening habits. Listener fails to get the point of the speaker as a result of his poor listening habits.These habits also constitute barriers to listening.If the barriers to listening, some of which have been discussed in the preceding, are person- specific and if an individual practices them continuously, they become habits.A brief mention of them is made here.1)Labeling the topic as uninteresting just by getting to know the title of the topic drives a person away from the important points.2)If the delivery is found to be poor, one may jump to the conclusion that topic is not worthy of listening.3)If one gets over-stimulated and angry about one or a few disagreeable points, he would miss the rest of the topic.4)Some persons concentrate only on facts and but not the principles that underlie such facts.5)One habit of listening is looking for logical order in the presentation.But some speakers don't appear to be orderly though they make strong points, which may be missed out if one is too concerned about the order.6)Some individuals pretend attention, though their minds are elsewhere and thus missing the points.7)Some listeners tend to create or tolerate distractions, which will not allow him to get the meaning intended.8)Some persons try to follow the easy points and evade the difficult ones, which may actually connect the whole.9)The attitude of criticizing the speaker or his delivery obstructs the listening and understanding.10)Some people wait to catch and attack the speaker when the speaker's views are contrary to those of the listeners.11)Another similar habit is that some people are busy rehearsing what they have to say without listening to what is being communicated by the speaker.All the aforementioned barriers present themselves along the stages of the process of listening.Familiarity with the stages of listening and the concomitant pitfalls would help one get over them while listening.
Quotes offer readers good tidings.They help create new thoughts and a happy profound life.Quotes are like sets of standards, plans, and vision for a successful life.They are like a set of good teachers and a council of wise men around us.They bequeath profound opinions, workable procedures, and a spark of prudent leadership qualities.From all walks of life -wise men and women, philosophers, educators, writers, saints, presidents, heroes, leaders and ordinary workers, drop us a life and example worth remembering.They become to us a living stream of hope and challenge.1."The Art of Wordly Wisdom by Baltasar Gracian" weaves a set of oracles.It is written three hundred years ago by the Jesuit scholar.It is translated by Christopher Maurer.Christopher Maurer is the editor and translator of the works of poet Lorca.2."The Quotable Writer," is another book of quotes.It is, however, a compilation from several other authors.It is published by McGraw-Hill Books.William A.Gordon is the editor.These two books are reader friendly.The texts come beating with the day to day affairs of life.They can be easily memorized because they suggest rich thoughts and revelations.With regard to the writing quotes; the quotes could apply to aspiring or professional writers.They spark writing prompts and exciting reflections.The "Maxims and Reflections" of La Rochefoucauld are similar to Gracian's.It was noted that La Rochefoucauld learned from it from the salon of his friend Mme.De Sable.The Oracle has been spoken in many tongues.Today, a lot of books come out like the compilation, list, anthology, among others.These are done to preserve history and literature.As long as the the author or writer is annotated, the work is acceptable.Authors and editors try to explore and create new forms of reading materials to cater to the readers.Moreover, they're compiled to make it easy for the students and busy professionals to do research work and updates.Quote books are very popular today, even online.The messages the quotes give are short and profound, so they are used from time to time.But please, don't forget to mention the writer/author and respect the copyright laws.Finally, as to a quote the world needs today. Gracian's quote about discipline "Always behave as though others were watching.".Many quotes about life tell about life deeply.If we study each quote closely, most of them speak about love, discipline, and success; each written by the writers to push forward a person's quest for meaning, light and progress of the human race.
