Do-It-Yourself Giant Borax Crystals

Giant borax crystals are perfect, whether you want to move on from borax crystal snowflakes or just want a big, beautiful crystal rock. These crystals can be grown in a geode shape or in multiple colors, making them great for mineral displays. Giant Borax Crystal Materials BoraxWaterFood coloringPipe cleaners (chenille craft sticks) Borax is sold with laundry detergents as a natural cleaner. Its also sold as an insecticide, usually as a roach killer. Check the product label for borax or sodium tetraborate. What You Do The large size of the crystals comes from two things: A structure or armature on which the crystals growControlling the cooling rate of the crystal growing solution The first thing you need to do is bend the pipe cleaners the shape you want for your crystal rock or geode. For a rock form, you can simply twist several pipecleaners end-to-end and crumple them up into a rock shape. Neatness really doesnt count because youre going to coat the entire mess with crystals. For a geode, you can spiral pipecleaners into a hollowed shell shape. Either works fine. You dont need to completely fill in the open spaces with pipecleaner fuzz, but you dont want giant gaps either.Next, find a container slightly larger than your shape. You want to be able to set the shape in the container, without having it touch the sides, with enough space that you can completely cover the form with liquid solution.Remove the shape from the container. Boil enough water to fill the container enough that it would cover your pipecleaner form. Stir in borax until it stops dissolving. One easy way to make sure you have as much borax as possible in the water is to microwave the mixture back to boiling.Add food coloring. The crystals will be lighter than the solution, so dont worry if it seems deeply colored.Place the pipecleaner shape in the solution. You may need to shake it around a bit to dislodge air bubbles to make sure it wont float.This is where the controlled cooling come into play. You want the solution to cool slowly in order to get the largest crystals. Cover the container with a towel or plate. You can wrap it in a hot towel or place it in a warm location,Allow a couple of hours for the crystals to start growing. At this point, use a spoon to dislodge the shape from the bottom of the container. You dont have to do this step, but it seems to make it easier to remove the crystals at the end if they are loosened early. Let the crystals grow several more hours or overnight.Remove the form from the container. The crystals may be perfect now or they may be fairly small and incompletely covering the shape (most common). If they are fine as they are, you can let them dry, otherwise you need more crystals.Prepare a new solution, dissolving as much borax as you can in water, adding food coloring (doesnt have to be the same color), and sinking the crystal-covered shape. Fresh crystals will grow on the existing ones, larger and better-shaped. Again, slow cooling is key for best results.You can do another round of crystal-growing or finish the project whenever you are satisfied with the crystal size. Let the crystal dry on a paper towel.If you want to preserve the crystals to display them, you can coat them with floor wax or nail polish.

Strategic International Marketing Plan US iPhone Market Assignment

Essays on Strategic International Marketing Plan: US iPhone Market Assignment The paper "Strategic International Marketing Plan: US iPhone Market" is a wonderful example of an assignment on marketing.  Dear Mr.,ABC Corporations is a leading Australian phone company dealing with modern technology cell phones and accessories. Currently, we have been having an interest in the US market and with your request for a report highlighting the reason for the interest to establish the iPhone business in the USA, please confirm the receipt of this transmittal letter and the report.The report provides a background of Apple Inc., describing why the company is ideal together with its product, iPhone. It explains the reasons for choosing the product and possible reasons why it will perform well in the country’s market. It also analyses the US environment as a target country, highlighting factors that may affect the business. Apple Inc. is a well-known company with a good product reputation, specifically iPhones. In the report, find a comprehensive analysis of economi c, legal, socio-cultural, political, technological and cultural factors that may affect us during operations in the US.We look forward to hearing from you. Please contact us for any questions and approval.Sincerely1.0 IntroductionTechnology has made trade become global today. The globalization of markets and competition has made it easy for countries to offer products and services in foreign countries with minimal expenses. This change in the global scope is attributed to the technological improvement of infrastructure leading to improvement in communication and transportation. Trade agreements monitor and promote global trade with the help of organizations like the World Trade Organization. They also ensure fair competition from global companies. This report provides a comprehensive structure and explanation of the international marketing plan of iPhones in America, through Apple Inc. Cell phones have become important gadgets in people’s lives, making it almost impossible to live without one. As technology advances, the types of phones we use also advance, adding more features to previous models of phones.The iPhone is a unique type of phone, which has gained popularity worldwide, especially among the business class population. The phone undergoes generational changes to fit customer-changing needs and keep up with new designs and technologies. This report also addresses other factors relating to international markets. The focus is on Apple Inc, the company that designs and markets iPhones and the United State of America, which is the target market. It also explains useful factors that may affect ABC operations in the U.S, like the economy, population, politics, and religion. The report covers the environment analysis of the U.S in relation to the foreign businesses, especially the iPhone, and finally, the recommendations and conclusions for both companies.

Narratives in Conversation Free Essays

Narratives in Conversation By Agatha Xaris Villa INTRODUCTION This essay focuses on the study of the narrative most prevalent in everyday conversations – the conversational narrative. First, it discusses a definition of the narrative from a structural level based on the structure of conversational narrative presented by William Labov (1972). Next, it enumerates some of the important functions which the narrative is able to achieve both on a personal level and also on the interpersonal. We will write a custom essay sample on Narratives in Conversation or any similar topic only for you Order Now Lastly, it ventures to explore the notion of the narrative based on its context – language and society, culture. NARRATIVES: A STRUCTURAL PERSPECTIVE In the 1960s and 1970s, William Labov developed what is now commonly believed to be the general structure of a narrative. His research involved ‘a focus on spontaneous recounting of experience’ and the capturing of vernacular, unmonitored speech. He interviewed African American youths in South Harlem and asked them whether they had ever encountered a life-endangering experience. He found that the stories which ensued from these interviews ‘reduced the effects of observation to a minimum’ (Labov, 2001) and referred to them as oral narratives of personal experience. Through his study, Labov noted some very important structural characteristics of oral narratives. First, he observed that the events featured in narratives often appeared in the order in which they actually happened. According to his definition, the narrative was a way of retelling (i. e. narrating) the action sequence of an event that had already happened. Therefore, parts of conversation considered to be ‘narrative’ was limited to the discursive data contributing to the recounting of the turn of events. All other parts which were not directly related to the story served the purpose of backing up the story. He claimed that these oral narratives usually had a basic structure composed of any of the following six basic parts: (1) Abstract, (2) Orientation, (3) Complicating action, (4) Evaluation, (5) Resolution and (6) Coda. Using a transcript of ‘Sample Stories – Stories about mothers’ (CD-ROM 1, Band 6)(Appendix 1. 1), we may illustrate these elements as they occur in actual oral narratives. The data presented has two speakers: a female interviewer (A) and a male interviewee (B). The transcript also features two accounts: the first is with regards to (B)’s early memories of his mother who was training as an educational psychologist and the second of which occurred sometime during his adolescence. By definition, an abstract is a synopsis of what the story is about. Looking at the transcript of ‘Stories about mothers’, it is useful to note that the first story offered by (B) seems to lack an abstract. This, however, is understandable as his story was elicited by (A)’s question regarding childhood memories of his mother. Therefore, the interviewer provided the abstract prior to the beginning of the narrative. In the second story, the abstract is located in line 21-22 wherein (B) cites when his mother was ‘most sympathetic’ to him – during his ‘adolescent rebellion stage’. Typically, the orientation appears first in the narration and begins by citing the basic details of the story: that is, the ‘who’, the ‘what’, ‘where’ and ‘what were they doing’ of the narrative. In our transcript we can detect the beginning of an orientation in lines 5-10 in which (B) recounts when his mother had begun studying educational psychology and some of the tests she carried out on him and his brother. The complicating action effectively answers the question – ‘then, what happened? ’ An example may be found in line 11 where (B) said recalls his mother’s reaction to a ‘slightly alarming’ result of an inkblot test. The complicating action is the only element which Labov believed to be a pre-requisite to a narrative. On the other hand, evaluation is the only element which does not necessarily happen in sequential order in a story. It may occur in any part of the story, most noticeably at the story’s climax and answers the question – ‘so what? ’. It may come in the form of ‘external evaluation’ (narrator steps in to give an evaluation)(e. g. line 10: referring to the intelligence tests as ‘actually fine’) or ‘internal evaluation’ such as intensifiers (which emphasize on aspects of a story)(e. g. ‘†¦she took it very, very seriously’. ), paralinguistic features (e. g. the use of sound effects, facial expressions and gestures) and the taking on of other people’s voices (Bakhtin, 1981). Evaluation is important to the narrative as it is a way for narrators to emphasize important parts of the story by drawing the attention of his listeners by adding more information. An obvious paralinguistic feature which we can deduce from the transcript was (B)’s use of tone and pause. At about line 11, he starts using a rather loud and fast-paced voice but the dynamic changes in line 13 before (B) voices out his mother saying ‘Oh I see†¦Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ followed by a pregnant pause for ‘dramatic effect’. It may be argued that tone and the pauses were used evaluatively and therefore is a very good example of how people are able to use language creatively even in everyday conversation. In a narrative, the resolution is what we refer to as the concluding action – what finally happened. For example, in conclusion to the memory of the slight scare regarding the inkblot test, we are told that (B)’s mother reassures him that he needn’t worry because she was ‘just learning’ (line 15-16). The final element, the Coda, tells us how the story is relevant to the storyteller or his audience in the present time. A potential coda may be found in line 18 where (B) jokes that he now thinks that the results of his mother’s tests were ‘right’. The Labovian categories regarding the narrative structure has been criticized for ‘constricting’ what can be considered a story but continues to have significant impact on narrative study even today. It persists to be a useful procedure in narrative analysis by providing a succinct set of categories for defining ‘stories’. Furthermore, while it emphasizes on the ‘flow’ relationship between ‘experience, cognition and representation’ – it spends a fair amount of time taking the language into consideration before attempting to make sense of it (Squire, 2008). NARRATIVES: A FUNCTIONAL PERSPECTIVE Rather than identifying narratives according to their structural characteristics, we may also define narratives according to the function they accomplish in relation to the storyteller and his or her audience. In the process of storytelling, the narrator is not only able to recount the happenings of past events but in addition, the resultant narrative is imbued with select aspects of the teller’s identity. Through the narrative, the storyteller tells his audience the ‘kind of person’ he sees himself as. (Toolan, 2006, p. 63). Narrative identity may be projected in the narrator’s use of evaluative language. Sometimes during the course of an oral narrative, the speaker might use different styles (style-shifting) or language varieties (i. . codeswitching) in order to ‘create voices’ for their characters and may serve to help in the transmission of identity and allegiance (Maybin, 1996). In ‘Stories about Mothers’, (B) portrayed himself as an active participant in his mother’s tests. In retrospect, he seems to be telling us that at present, he is rather fond of his childhood memories of his mother (perhaps alluding that he has a good relationship with his mother now) and that he has since grown out of his rebellious teenage stage (he’s ‘mature’ now). Narratives not only serve a personal function but may also serve an important interpersonal purpose. According to the work of Norrick on nuclear families (1997), participation in co-narration (which is common practice in families and others in close relationships) is a way for family members to demonstrate and therefore solidify their position within the family. He believes that family membership may be measured by the contribution that a member is able to provide to the act of shared narration. Through the shared arration of past or recurring events, individuals exhibit shared group identity and allegiance. Norrick also points out that shared narration may also function as a way to demonstrate shared values within families. While an outsider may not have the advantage of having shared experiences with other family members and so be unable to participate in the co-telling of past events, he or she may use his or her own experiences which are similar to those of the family in order, t hereby adopting values inherent with the family. In this way, outsiders may gain acceptance as ‘insiders’ of the family. All this is in agreement with Bruner’s suggestion that ‘our sensitivity to narrative provides the major link between our own sense of self and our sense of others in the social world around us’ (1986). NARRATIVES: A CONTEXTUAL PERSPECTIVE In order to gain a full understanding of the narrative, one must take context into serious consideration because stories are constantly under the influence of the narrator’s representation of experience as well as of language, society and culture. While it is a narrator’s prerogative to portray the characters and events of his story in a manner of his choice, the details of the story and the way that it is told is largely influenced by the storyteller’s personal notions of himself, those around him and events. Stories, whether they are in written or oral form are all representations of the narrator’s experience (Toolan, 2006, p. 68). External and internal evaluations are important tools used by the narrator to be able to represent their experience of people and events through the narrative. In addition, evaluation may also be ‘embedded’ into narratives when narrators directly quote a character (Toolan, 2006, p. 68). In ‘Stories about mothers’, [B] repeatedly gives voice to his mother by quoting some of the things she used to say (e. g. You’ll be fine! ). How experiences are represented all depends on the narrator’s personal constructs. Personal constructs are inner worlds and perceptions that determine the way that we ‘see’ people and events and are largely determined and affected by language, culture and society. The importance of taking the socio-cultural context of a narrative is important especially when we move to decoding the ‘meaning’ behind narratives. In 1975, Grice explained that everyday conversations were being guided by four maxims: the maxims of Quality, Quantity, Relation and Manner (Toolan, 2006, 72). These maxims (inferential norms or so called conversation implicatures) explain how individuals are able to ‘logically’ comprehend meaning in conversation but may be insufficient when trying to explain how stories or jokes are understood. Nair (2002) proposed that in the process of narrative inferencing (i. e. , the way that we figure out what a story means), cultural cooperation between the narrator and the audience is of utmost importance. The implications regarding the importance of impliculture in narrative inferencing is that we are reminded that (1) there are aspects of narratives which are culturally situated and must be interpreted in the context of the same culture and (2) therefore, only individuals who share the same cultural identity may fully interpret cultural narratives. The relationship between the narrative and culture is further demonstrated by the fact that stories of folklore and native traditions have been passed on from generation to generation in the form of the narrative. In this way, narratives contribute to the preservation and transmission of cultural identity and belonging. CONCLUSION Stories are commonplace in everyday life. In fact, it has been said that conversational English is largely in the form of the narrative (Maybin, 1996) – in laidback conversations with friends and relatives to our more professional interactions with colleagues in the workplace. They can be identified through their structural characteristics, the personal and interpersonal functions they serve in everyday social life and are both the result and inferred from the socio-cultural context and yet, the oral narrative remains a natural part of human life from the cradle to the grave – from the silly bed time stories we are told in childhood, to the epitaphs told in ‘our memory’ at our lives end. REFERENCES Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination. Austin. State University of Texas Press. Bruner, J. 1986). Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press. Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In Cole, P. and Morgan, J. (eds) Syntax and Semantics. 3: Speech Acts. New York: Academic Press. Labov, W. (1972). Language in the Inner City. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press. Labov, W. (2001). The Social Stratification of English in New York City. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maybi n, J. (1996)(Ed). Chapter 1 ‘Everyday Talk’. In Maybin, J. and Mercer, N. eds) Using English from conversation to canon. Routledge/The Open University. pg. 21-27 Nair, R. B. (2002). Narrative Gravity. Chapter 5 ‘Rationality and relevance’. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Norrick, N. R. (1997). Language in Society, 26(2). pg. 199-220. Squire, C. (2008). Reading Narratives. http://www. uel. ac. uk/cnr/documents/CNRWIPJune04Squire. doc (accessed: July 2008) Toolan, M. (2006). Chapter 2 ‘Telling Stories’. In Maybin, J. and Swann, J. (eds) The art of English: everyday creativity. The Open University. pg. 54-76 How to cite Narratives in Conversation, Essays

Personal Leadership Model free essay sample

Personal Model of Leadership Natasha Velez Grand Canyon University PSC-410 Servant Leadership August 30, 2010 Personal Leadership Model In order to respond to society and the world it must begin with a decision to act in the true sense of the word leadership. There is no right or wrong model of leadership and to make a better world, society needs a variety of leadership models in place. In other words, leadership doesn’t have to be a formal, exalted position. It is rather as the definition states: taking actions in any setting which will bring about change by motivating others (Millard, 2008). Furthermore the group does not have to be a formal group to accomplish a common goal or shared vision. One’s essence of true leadership is embodied by a framework of values, behaviors of values, sense of purpose and impact of contributions that I as a leader can refer to as one explores different models of leadership over the course of one’s life Values Values can be defined as a person’s standards of behavior or one’s judgment of what is important in life. We will write a custom essay sample on Personal Leadership Model or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Ones values are created from life’s experiences and feelings and based on one’s beliefs. What I value in my personal and work life is: integrity, respect, teams/team building and commitment. These values provide a foundation for example a mission statement if you will to my life. If I know where I’m head I cannot fail. Behaviors Behavior describes the actions that take place due to one’s values. Because I value integrity I follow through with what is needed and expected of me. Respect is also important to me so I make it a point regardless of others behavior towards me, to treat them as the old saying goes â€Å"The way I would want to be treated. Additionally I believe that teams and building is important for an organization to survive and putting in place team exercises promote a healthy organization. I too value commitment. I see commitment in the sense of corporate social responsibility (CSR) so I am committed to making positive contribution to society. Areas of Focus I would like to be known for always following through which is why I value integrity. No one likes to be talked down to or disrespected, so in return members of our team treat each other’s fairly and with the upmost respect. Team building activities improves and reduces conflicts between team members, increase awareness of each individuals worth and usefulness, as well as bonding and binding the team together for the common good of the organization (Rose 2010). Lastly the commitment to CSR I will only do business with those that support and promote this responsibility. Impact Having an organization in which everyone is committed to finishing the job will have great value. Working in a team based organization will help members not only respect one another but also provide members to recognize each members worth or contributions. It is possible to achieve success the demanding market without compromising one’s ethical principles yet it can be down by promoting corporate social responsibility. As I continue to explore life and the many different leadership models I understand things may change. Yet, I hold true to my values now.