Innovative Ideas for Teaching English

Dec 11th 2008 From The Economist print edition Asia's two big beasts are shivering. India's economy is weaker, but China's leaders have more to fear THE speed with which clouds of economic gloom and even despair have gathered over the global economy has been startling everywhere. But the change has been especially sudden in the world's two most populous countries: China and India. Until quite recently, the world's fastest-growing big economies both felt themselves largely immune from the contagion afflicting the rich world. Optimists even hoped that these huge emerging markets might provide the engines that could pull the world out of recession. Now some fear the reverse: that the global downturn is going to drag China and India down with it, bringing massive unemployment to two countries that are, for all their success, still poor—India is home to some two-fifths of the world's malnourished children. The pessimism may be overdone. These are sti...

Time is short. Dance, sing, be joyous! If there were no nuclear destruction possible, no threat, you could have postponed. You could have said, "Tomorrow we will dance." But now there may be no tomorrow; you cannot postpone. This is for the first time that tomorrow is absolutely doubtful for all. Individually it is always doubtful: tomorrow may never come, even the next breath may not come in. Individually death is always imminent, but this time it is something global, universal. The whole earth may disappear, may explode. You can cry and weep and you can beat your head against the wall; that will not stop nuclear destruction and its threat. In fact, it may bring it closer and faster because sad people, miserable people, are dangerous people. Misery creates destructiveness. Politicians have enough atomic energy piled up to destroy this earth not only once but several hundred times. If the whole of humanity can start dancing, rejoicing, feasting ^ seeing that the threat...

To mark the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war, the award-winning journalist returns to the city where he was born and lived for 30 years Ghaith Abdul-Ahad , The Guardian , Baghdad was never a beautiful city. A sprawling sea of low rise, dusty concrete cubes with few green spaces, it is a typical Middle Eastern architectural disaster, expanding without any real urban planning from the 1950s. But if you knew the city you could find your corners: a narrow, zigzagging alleyway, an Ottoman courtyard, the shade of a lemon tree in spring. One of my favourites was the Mutanabi book market. The cafes and teahouses lining the old street had became a hangout for journalists, poets and artists, and with them had come the book market. It was here that I used to buy my illegal photocopies of Marx's Communist Manifesto - in Arabic - and Orwell's 1984. Last week, I went back to Mutanabi. To reach it I travelled through bullet-pocked Bab al-Mu'adham, past countless checkpoints: Shia ...

* 76 p.c. accept offers to work in India * Highest international salary accepted was Rs. 1.44 crore per annum * 30 per cent to join consulting sector, 11 to start their own ventures AHMEDABAD: Contrary to the apprehensions of a general slowdown in the international economy affecting management institutions, students of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, fetched an average of 20 per cent higher salaries this year compared to last year. With the campus placements of the two-year Post-Graduate Programme in Management, Post-Graduate Programme in Agri Business Management, and the newly introduced one-year Post-Graduate Programme in Public Management and Policy completed successfully, a happy IIM-A director, Samir Barua, said at least his institution was not impacted by the economic crisis. ‘Most preferred institute’ He also said that the IIM-A continued to be the most preferred institute for recruitment not only in terms of the diversity of the organisations that participate...

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Read the question stem for each question and then answer the questions about them.   http://www.testmagic.com/Knowledge_Base/critical_reasoning/warm_ups_01_answers.htm # Simplified Question Stems 1. The best movie showing in the US right now is Mission Ridiculous, Part XXIV-- it has been in the #1 position for three weeks. How can we weaken this argument? We could show that a popular movie is not necessarily a good movie. In other words, just because it's popular doesn't mean it's good. How can we strengthen this argument? We could show that a popular movie is always a good movie. In other words, there is a direct relationship between popularity and quality (probably not true in this case).   2. All mammals have hair. Therefore, elephants have hair. If so, what is the "missing step," or "hidden assumption." An elephant is a mammal.   3. Lucy Magic has recently suggested that all people should go to sc...

Before you begin the verb tense lessons, it is extremely important to understand that NOT all English verbs are the same. English verbs are divided into three groups: Normal Verbs, Non-Continuous Verbs, and Mixed Verbs. Group I Normal Verbs Most verbs are "Normal Verbs." These verbs are usually physical actions which you can see somebody doing. These verbs can be used in all tenses. Normal Verbs to run, to walk, to eat, to fly, to go, to say, to touch, etc. Examples: I eat dinner every day. I am eating dinner now. Group II Non-Continuous Verbs The second group, called "Non-Continuous Verbs," is smaller. These verbs are usually things you cannot see somebody doing. These verbs are rarely used in continuous tenses. They include: Abstract Verbs to be, to want, to cost, to seem, to need, to care, to contain, to owe, to exist... Possession Verbs to possess, to own, to belong... Emotion Verbs to like, to love, to hate, to dislike, to fear, to envy, to ...

India's noted management education capability has got another name to contend with -- Indian School of Business, a Hyderabad-based business school that has been ranked among the top 20 such institutions by Financial Times, London. ISB is the first business school from India to have found a place in the FT rankings. None from the premier Indian B-schools from the Indian Institute of Management stable has ever made it to this list, which has ranked ISB as 20th best globally. "While the average student experience at ISB is 5 years, the IIMs have students with a lesser experience, as such, the two are non-comparable," ISB Dean M Rammohan Rao said in a statement. "We wish to see many more Indian B-schools follow the trend and reach where we are today, or even ahead of us," he added. ISB has affiliations with three of the world's renowed business schools - Kellogg School of Management, The Wharton School and London Business School, and 5 per cent of...

V. Words and Expressions Commonly Misused (Many of the words and expressions here listed are not so much bad English as bad style, the commonplaces of careless writing. As illustrated under Feature , the proper correction is likely to be not the replacement of one word or set of words by another, but the replacement of vague generality by definite statement.) All right. Idiomatic in familiar speech as a detached phrase in the sense, "Agreed," or "Go ahead." In other uses better avoided. Always written as two words. As good or better than. Expressions of this type should be corrected by rearranging the sentence. My opinion is as good or better than his. My opinion is as good as his, or better (if not better). As to whether. Whether is sufficient; see under Rule 13 . Bid. Takes the infinitive without to. The past tense is bade. Case. The Concise Oxford Dictionary begins its definition of this word: "instance of a thing's occurring; usual...

NEW DELHI: Outside, the eager crowd reminds you of a cricket stadium before an ODI game. Big securitymen form an uncompromising barricade with a thick rope. Finally, they see reason and relent. Once inside, the conduct of the guards is easier to understand. There are already enough people inside to make a politician happy, if he was delivering an election speech. Standing out in the crowd is a bored leggy blonde in a shimmering silver dress leaning by a bright red car. At the moment, few, if any, are looking at her. For what everybody has gathered to see at Hall No 11 in Pragati Maidan is not just another small car. They come to see hope emerge on wheels. For this 'lakhtakia' car, as street people have already named it, has enabled millions to dream of a life beyond the motorbike. And, to the discerning observer, has the potential of changing the demography of car ownership in India. As Ratan Tata himself said later in the day, it was the image of a lower middle-class man on a ...

Samir K Barua India has surprised not just the world but also itself with GDP growth of over 7.5% per year over the last several years. The achievement is remarkable in the backdrop of often incoherent and inconsistent policies that are a part and parcel of a vibrant democracy that faces pulls and pressures from different quarters. In the limited and insufficient space allotted to me I propose to float a few straws in the wind to explain this improbable phenomenon and look ahead at what is in store for us as a nation and what we need do to ensure that we build on a great platform that has been set up for us. The biggest strength of the Indian economy has been the immense diversity of its manufacturing and service sectors. Think of any business and we as a nation are in it. This ensures that the impact of even calamitous developments such as a significant rise in the price of crude or unexpectedly quick appreciation of the rupee on the economy as a whole is moderated . At the macro lev...

Sunil Mittal After four years of high GDP growth, even a diehard optimist would be sceptical as to whether the economy would will be able to turn in similar numbers again next year. Given the fact that the present buoyancy is based on reasonably sound economic fundamentals, I have reasons to believe that the momentum is here to stay. My optimism is, of course, based as much on the fundamentals of the economy as my inherent faith in the growth appetite of India Inc. As per the Mid-Year Review tabled in the Parliament in December, the economy has grown by 9.1% in the first half of 2007-08. But more than the robust growth figures, what actually strengthens my faith in the economy’s ability to sustain growth is the fact that inflation has eased below 4% after more than a year. This surely augurs well for the economy in the coming days. I believe, like last year, industry and services will continue to be the primary drivers of growth. In telecom, we are quite bullish about another robust ye...