Clinical Laboratory Improvement Act Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Clinical Laboratory Improvement Act - Assignment Example This information is then used to assess the patient's condition, diagnose an illness, as well as impair, prevent or treat a disease. CLIA certified laboratories work in conjunction with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a means to assure that Medicare payments meet the standards and cost guidelines set by the appropriate government agency. While CLIA is a mandatory component of Medicare, it "applies to all providers rendering clinical laboratory services, whether or not Medicare claims are filed" (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 2006, p.2). In addition, CLIA has provisions for an accreditation process as well as an educational procedure. In this way, NGOs, state, and federal agencies can participate in an ongoing review conducted by CMS, the center for all services. Numerous tests have been waived by the CMS as so "simple and accurate that there is little risk of error [even] if the test is performed incorrectly" (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 2006, p.2). Facilities that wish to perform waived tests must pay a $150 biennial fee and must apply for a Certificate of Waiver. "These laboratories are not routinely inspected; however they may be inspected as part of a complaint investigation or on a random basis to determine whether or not only waived tests are being performed" (CLIA waived and PPM tests defined, 2009). In addition, the tests "pose no reasonable risk of harm to the patient if the test is performed incorrectly" and/or "are cleared by the Food and Drug Administration for home use" (CLIA waived and PPM tests defined, 2009). The original list contained eight waived tests, but recently the list has been significantly expanded. Tests that are CLIA waived include "ovulation tests that make use of visual color comparisons" (Is the Test You Need CLIA Waived, 2009). This would include home pregnancy tests. The list also includes "blood glucose using FDA-cleared monitoring instruments", which are the automated testing devices often used by diabetics to monitor their blood sugar level (Is the Test You Need CLIA Waived, 2009). In all events, tests, and devices, the user must strictly adhere to the manufacture's instructions in regards to the use, reading, and interpretation of the results. If a test is not currently listed, "the manufacturer of the test would have to apply for a certification of waiver from CMS" (Is the Test You Need CLIA Waived, 2009). In this way, CLIA is able to stay abreast of new technologies and medical advancements. 3.) What are the other levels of laboratory services and what is the process to have your lab certified Test methods are categorized into three distinct levels based on the complexity of the method. There is the Waived Complexity Level, which requires no regular inspection. In addition, there is the Moderate/High Complexity level, which requires the physician or laboratory to complete an Application for Certification. The comprehensive application includes a "description of laboratory to include name and number of tests performed annually, methodologies for each test, [and] personnel qualifications" (Moderate Complexity Testing Overview, 2004). In addition, the

Saudi Arabian Airlines aircraft maintenance Research Paper

Saudi Arabian Airlines aircraft maintenance - Research Paper Example The base of the popular airline is in Jeddah. The airline operated both international and domestic flights to more than ninety destinations in North America, Africa, Middle East, Europe and Asia. The international and domestic flights are mainly operated during the Hajj and Ramadan season. The major operation base of the airline is at the JED (Jeddah-King Abdulaziz Airport). The Dammam airport, one of the major hubs of the airline was established for commercial use in the year 1999. During the time of Dammam establishment, Dhahran International Airport was in use, but has since been turned into a military base. The airline is a recognized Arab Air Carriers Organization member. It was at one time the regions largest carrier, but following the establishment and development of some other airlines and airports, it has moved down to be the third largest since the year 2006, behind Etihad Airways and the Emirates. Function of Aircraft maintenance in the Airline The department of aircraft m aintenance in the airlines helps in supporting naval operations by the conservation of aircraft and the associated SE to the delegated maintenance level. Since all the activities of maintenance have similarities in administration, operation and mission, we find that these sections have standardized administration and organization (Mirghani, 1996). The department of maintenance helps to improve: Training and performance of maintenance personnel; maintenance efficiency and integrity for all material; equipment, system readiness and aircraft; safety; planning and scheduling of maintenance work; materials and maintenance manpower usage; end product’s end quality; Accomplishment and maintenance of combat readiness; and consistency in case of personnel or aircraft transfer between commands. All the stakeholders or parties involved in the tasks of maintenance work toward a common goal; that is ensuring that the above areas are achieved. They work under the process of management cont rol used in the department of aircraft maintenance organization. Saudi Arabian Airlines has vowed to maintain high standards of performance in all of its Saudi Airlines have endeavoured to maintain high performance standards in all features of its operation all through the year. The prompt or on-time index of performance is a key criteria of the industry that airlines strive to raise, and the Saudi Arabian Airlines usually struggles to meet the standard. Within the 1993 to 2002 period, about eight hundred and nine thousand, six hundred and twenty six flights operated successfully with an average time departure of about 90%. The airlines currently own 139 aircrafts. This includes the most advanced and latest large jets that are available in the market. Aircraft service and maintenance, punctuality and safety, are the airline’s top priority (Mirghani, 1996). The airlines utilize Information Systems to promote efficiency and productivity. Since it is the Middle East’s lar gest carrier for cargo and passengers, the airlines is also the oldest in the region. Undertake of base and line maintenance The Civil Aviation Kingdom of Saudi Arabia General Authority approved the PIA Maintenance and Engineering to carryout the line maintenance and base maintenance of the Saudi Arabian Airlines (PIA to undertake maintenance of Saudi Airlines aircraft, 2011). The activities

Management of Financial Resources in Coca Cola

Management of Financial Resources in Coca Cola This assignment is made as part of the course work of the subject of Management of Financial Resources, since any strategic plan for any organization consists of different aspects of the business that ranges from planning, implementation and control. Therefore management of internal and external performance of any organization is a critical part of any strategic plan. Since management of internal and external performance of organization is dependent upon the resource decisions made by top management, the resource strategies are of vital nature. This assignment will explore the various aspects of resource decision by analyzing the performance management strategy of a selected organization. In below line its has been discussed that what are the resource needs of the organization, different methods that are used to allocate, manage and control the resources within the formulation of the strategic plan. Moreover this paper also discusses the various strategies applied to identify and rectify the resource gaps. Introduction to the Organization For the understanding of the subject and for analyzing the practical implications of the theories, I have selected Pakistans leading beverage company Coca Cola Pakistan (Coke), which is a subsidiary of Coca Cola Export Corporation. While operating in highly competitive and predominant market by Pepsi, Coke have been able to give tough competition to Pepsi and gain a good market share in beverage and soft drink markets of Pakistan. Their business model is called COBO, which is an abbreviation of Company Operated Bottler Organizations. Since they are competing with a huge player in Pakistan which had a first movers advantage and they also have a different business model from their main competitor, their strategic planning is highly dependent upon the right resource management throughout the organization. With the increase in their market share and penetration, their resource planning is being more vital and critical for the achievement of their objective. Below we shall see how Coke has been able to manage their resource in relation to the theoretical background from the literature (Brown Gilbert, 2006). Resources Required within a Strategic Plan A general strategic plan for different organizations takes care of different kinds of resources, these resources ranges from financial resources, physical resources, human resources and technological resources. These resources are acquired and allocated according to different business level and organizational level strategies. These resource allocation and identification also has a direct link with overall business strategy of the firm (Grant, 2005). Here we see that overall business strategy of Coke for their Pakistan operations is cost leadership, therefore the entire resource management will revolve around this business philosophy, since every department will be working towards the same goal therefore their resource allocation will be done accordingly (Grant, 2005). Financial Resources financial resources are the backbone for any organization and should be managed carefully, as they are necessary for every kind of business operation, their timely and efficient management is vital. Coke, for its Pakistan operations are managing their financial resource with the consultation of their Asian region offices (David, 2004). These financial resources are acquired from head offices after the completion of their business plans for the year. These financial resources are acquired for marketing, research, production planning and infrastructure. Every department is required to submit their business forecast at the end of the year and then these forecasts are converted into financial forecast for the following year (David, 2004). Physical Resources physical resources include building, production plants, physical infrastructure for offices, and logistics. These resources are also vital for any business and their management has strategic importance. Since Coke is involved in FMCG business, their logistics management has a very important role to play in the overall success of their business. As competition is increasing, they have to manage their logistics to provide timely delivery to the maximum areas of the market to gain market share that is why their logistics management facilities are of the maximum importance in their entire physical resource management plan (Saloner et al., 2000). Human Resources In modern business environments, human resources are the most important resources that an organization can have, in most of the case these are the resource that can make or break the future of any organization. Therefore business companies and Coke as well put the maximum emphasis on allocating the right resources at the right time and at the job (Saloner et al., 2000). In case of Coke they have realized the importance of training and development of their sales team and other human resources, right from the hiring processes, training and development and compensation and benefits, the company does not compromise on quality and manage the resources up to the industry standards, they believe that their competitive advantage is derived from their human resources and they are the deciding factor for this (Barney, 1991). Technological Resources Whether it is high end technological industry or production set up or service industry, the importance of application of technology in unquestionable, technology application throughout the organizational processes can stand alone be a source of competitive advantage, therefore organization manage their technological resources in their strategic plan while keeping the future requirements in mind (Saloner et al., 2000). Coke, having the same vision has applied state of the art technology their business processes through an ERP system in Pakistan, where they can manage their supply chain and value chain efficiently and have an edge on their competitors. In their strategic plan, technological needs forecasting and management is of strategic importance and every short term and long term plan this factor in also kept in mind (Saloner et al., 2000). Methods of Resource Allocation Resource allocation is an important part of any strategic plan; this step is intended towards the alignment of the organizational plan and the operational plan, because without the efficient and effective resource allocation, company cannot be able to execute any strategic plan. Therefore it has been suggested by the management practitioners that organization should align the resource allocation strategy with business unit strategy and resource allocation should reflect and get inspirations from business strategy (Brown Gilbert, 2006). In below line we have discussed how our selected organization allocates the resources and what are the steps that are taken for this section of strategic planning. Planning of Resources The first step in resource management for selection organization is to plan the resources, this step includes the evaluation of current resources, Coke at the time of strategic planning, evaluates the current resources available to the organization. In this step it is checked that whether these resources are in fit with future plan. Forecasting of Resources After the making of the resources evaluation report Coke checks the strategic plan and see if the current resources will be able to achieve the goals and needs for the future requirements derived from the strategic plan of the organization (Brown Gilbert, 2006). Once it has been identified that organization will be requiring more resources for their upcoming strategic plan then the next step is to forecast the resources required to different departments and at different times for the effective implementation of the plan. In this process all the departments are required to forecast their required resources for the time period specified in the strategic plan so that budgeting of the resources can be done. Resource Allocation- The second last step for the resources management would be to budget the resources of Coke, this step involves the careful evaluation of the forecasted resources for each department and then allocating required budgets for each of them (Brown Gilbert, 2006). For example, if strategic plan requires expansion of the market by the company then may be logistics department would required more logistics to cope with the market expansion strategy of Coke. For this purpose they would be looking to have more fleets or human resources for management of logistics in the new or expanded markets. After the allocation of the budgets the resource allocation process moves to the next step that is contingency planning. Contingency Planning As Coke is operating in highly competitive environment and such competitive environments are always rapidly changing, therefore Coke has made this a practice to allocate some financial resources as part of their contingency planning so that if organization has to make some unexpected decisions then they are able to have the required financial resource. Resource Monitoring and Controlling Method As it important for Coke and any other organization to have a close look on monitoring of their resource management strategy, we have discussed below that how Coke make sure that everything is according to plan. Budget Cost Method For the better management of the resources and to eliminate the waste organization has a mechanism that manages the budgets of each of the department. As each of the department have their own budget, organization through their team heads makes sure that every activity and utilization of budget is in line with the strategic direction set in the strategic plan (Grant, 2005). For this purpose they have management committee that reviews and approves every expense and utilization of the resource, this committee makes sure that every department is using their budget in a way that their actions are in line with the strategic plan of the organization. Identification of Resource Gaps Shortage of any resources in any business units of the organization with respect to their business needs is called resources gaps. Coke for their business operations in Pakistan keep on reviewing their business needs, business plans and then indentifying the resources gaps for current and future business needs (Grant, 2005). For this purpose they review their resource management plan twice a year and then they identify any resources which are short for their current business need. Resource gaps are also found at the time of the making of strategic plan for coming years. They also fill the identified resource gaps for future and current need. Conclusion Strategic plans are at the heart of every organization, and resource management is at heart of every strategic plan, therefore for organizations to thrive in business and gain the sustainable competitive advantage it is very important to strategically manage their resource. For strategic management of the resources, organizations have to create a link between their strategic plan and their resource management plan. This way they can gain the required results from their planning and gain the competitive advantage.

Essay on Symbolism in The Glass Menagerie -- Glass Menagerie essays

Symbolism in The Glass Menagerie Symbolism plays an integral part in Williams’s play, The Glass Menagerie. Examples of the use of symbolism include the fire escape, as an escape from the family, the phonograph, as an escape from reality, the unicorn, as a symbol for Laura's uniqueness and the father’s photograph, representing something different to each character. Through regonition of these symbols, a greater understanding of the play’s theme is achieved. Throughout the play, Tom Wingfield was torn by a responsibility he felt for his mother and sister and the need to be his own man. He used the fire escape most in the play. He went outside to stand on it when he smoked, to escape the nagging from his mother, and to make his final independence from his family. Tom didn't like being responsible for his mother and sister, working day-in and day-out at a job he hated. He wanted to escape down those stairs and never come back. In scene V Tom speaks to the audience about what he observes from the fire escape, Paradise Dance Hall. The dance hall to him was what he wanted, everyone was living exciting lives "hot swing music and liquor, dance halls, bars and movies, and sex that hung in the gloom..." Tom longed to live a more exciting life. In the final scene Tom says "I descended the steps of this fire escape for a last time and followed, from then on, in my father's footsteps, attempting to find in motion what was lost in space." Tom wanted to be free and to him the fire escape was the exit into freedom. Movies were also an important part of Tom's life. He went to the movies when he and his mother argued or when he felt he needed some excitement. In scene IV Amanda asks "Why do you go to the movies so much, Tom?" and... ...nger; anger that he's abandon them and is doing what he wants. The symbols used in the play are a means of escape. For Tom it's the movies and the fire escape, for Laura it's the Victrola and her glass and for the father, it's his picture. He's escaped from the responsibility of raising and paying for their family. Works Cited and Consulted Beattie, Elisabeth L. "The Glass Menagerie." Masterplots, ed. Frank M. Magill. Revised Second Ed. Vol. 5. Pasadena: Salem Press, 1996. Bigsby, C. W. E. "Entering the Glass Menagerie." The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams, ed. Matthew C. Roudane. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Williams, Tennessee. Conversations with Tennessee Williams, ed. Albert Devlin. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1986. Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1995. Essay on Symbolism in The Glass Menagerie -- Glass Menagerie essays Symbolism in The Glass Menagerie Symbolism plays an integral part in Williams’s play, The Glass Menagerie. Examples of the use of symbolism include the fire escape, as an escape from the family, the phonograph, as an escape from reality, the unicorn, as a symbol for Laura's uniqueness and the father’s photograph, representing something different to each character. Through regonition of these symbols, a greater understanding of the play’s theme is achieved. Throughout the play, Tom Wingfield was torn by a responsibility he felt for his mother and sister and the need to be his own man. He used the fire escape most in the play. He went outside to stand on it when he smoked, to escape the nagging from his mother, and to make his final independence from his family. Tom didn't like being responsible for his mother and sister, working day-in and day-out at a job he hated. He wanted to escape down those stairs and never come back. In scene V Tom speaks to the audience about what he observes from the fire escape, Paradise Dance Hall. The dance hall to him was what he wanted, everyone was living exciting lives "hot swing music and liquor, dance halls, bars and movies, and sex that hung in the gloom..." Tom longed to live a more exciting life. In the final scene Tom says "I descended the steps of this fire escape for a last time and followed, from then on, in my father's footsteps, attempting to find in motion what was lost in space." Tom wanted to be free and to him the fire escape was the exit into freedom. Movies were also an important part of Tom's life. He went to the movies when he and his mother argued or when he felt he needed some excitement. In scene IV Amanda asks "Why do you go to the movies so much, Tom?" and... ...nger; anger that he's abandon them and is doing what he wants. The symbols used in the play are a means of escape. For Tom it's the movies and the fire escape, for Laura it's the Victrola and her glass and for the father, it's his picture. He's escaped from the responsibility of raising and paying for their family. Works Cited and Consulted Beattie, Elisabeth L. "The Glass Menagerie." Masterplots, ed. Frank M. Magill. Revised Second Ed. Vol. 5. Pasadena: Salem Press, 1996. Bigsby, C. W. E. "Entering the Glass Menagerie." The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams, ed. Matthew C. Roudane. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Williams, Tennessee. Conversations with Tennessee Williams, ed. Albert Devlin. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1986. Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1995.

E-bay Case Study

At least 30 million people will buy and sell well over $20bn in merchandise (in 2003) – more than the gross domestic product of all but 70 of the world's countries. More than 150,000 entrepreneurs will earn a full-time living selling everything from diet pills and Kate Spade handbags to  £30,000 BMWs and hulking industrial lathes. More automobiles, of all things, sell on eBay than even no. 1 US dealer AutoNation. So what does this add up to? ‘This is a whole new way of doing business,' says Whitman. ‘We're creating something that didn't exist before.It wasn't planned, but as users plunged into consumer electronics, cars, and industrial gear, eBay followed. Today, eBay has 27,000 categories, including eight with gross sales of more than  £1 billion each.eBay’s business modelValue in eBay is created by proViding a virtual world ¬wide market for buyers and sellers and collecting a tax on transactions as they happen. The business model of eBay relies on it s customers being the organisation's product-development team, sales and marketing force, merchandising department, and the security department.The organisation, headed by Meg Whitman, was founded in 1995, when Pierre Omidyar launched a basic site called Auction Web. His girlfriend wanted to trade her collection of Pez dispensers, but Omidyar had a broader vision in mind, namely empowering everyday consumers to trade without the need for large corporations. He even wanted traders to be responsible for building the community and deciding how to build the website. It worked; soon he found himself answering e-mails from buyers and sellers during the day and rewriting the site's software at night to incorporate their suggestions, which ranged from fiXing software bugs to creating new product categories.Some 100,000 messages from customers are posted per week in which tips are shared, system glitches are pointed out and changes are lobbied for. The COO, Brian Swette, is quoted as saying, ‘The trick is to keep up with what  buyers and sellers want. We've had to constantly change how we run. We start from the principle that if there's noise, you better listen.' Currently the technology allows every move of every potential customer to be traced, yielding rich information.Structurally, the business model is realised through 5,000 employees, roughly half of whom are in customer support and a fifth in technology. A key role in eBay is ‘category manager', a concept Whitman brought to eBay from her days in marketing giant P&G. Category managers direct the 23 major categories as well as the 35,000 subcategories, from collectibles to sports gear, to jewellery and watches, and even jet-planes.Conventional companies might spend big money on getting to know their customers and persuading them to provide feedback, but for eBay such feed ¬back is often free and offered without the need for enticement. Even so some of the company's most effective ways of getting us er input do not rely on the Net and do not come free. eBay organises Voice of the Customer groups, which involve flying in a new group of about 10 sellers and buyers from around the country to its San Jose (Californian) every few months to discuss the in depth. Teleconferences are held for features and policies, however small a change involve. Even workshops and classes are held teach people how to make the most of the site. Participants tend to double their selling activity on after taking a class.The company is governed from both outside and The eBay system has a source of automatic control in the form of buyers and sellers rating each other on each transaction, creating rules and norms. There's an educational system that offers classes around the country on how to sell on eBay. Both buyers and sellers build up reputations which are valuable, in turn encouraging further good behaviour in themselves and others.When that wasn't quite enough, eBay formed its own police force to patro l the listings for fraud and kick out offenders, the Trust and Safety Dept, now staffed by several hundred eBay employees worldwide. They do every ¬thing from trolling the site for suspicious listings to working with law enforcement agencies to catch crooks. eBay also has developed software that recognises patterns of  behaviour common to previous fraud cases, such as sellers from Romania who recently started selling large numbers of big-ticket items.eBay’s managementMeg Whitman's style and past has heavily influ ¬enced the management of eBay. When she joined the company in 1998, it was more of a collection of geeks, handpicked by the pony-tailed Omidyar, than a blue-chip – something which underpinned Omidyar's recruitment of Meg. Meg, an ex-consultant, filled many of the senior management roles includ ¬ing the head of the US business, head of interna ¬tional operations and vice-president of consumer marketing with consultants.The result: eBay has become data and metric driven. ‘If you can't measure it, you can't control it', Meg says. Whereas in the early days you could touch and feel the way the organisation worked, its current size means it needs to be measured. Category managers are expected to spend their days measuring and acting upon data within their fiefdom.Some measures are standard for e-business and include how many people are visiting the site, how many of those then register to become users, how long each user remains per visit, how long pages take to load and so on. A measure Meg likes is the ‘take rate', the ratio of revenues to the value of goods traded on the site (the higher the better). She meas ¬ures which days are the busiest, directing when to offer free listings in order to stimulate the supply of auction items. Noise on the discussion boards is used to understand whether the community is in ‘supportive' or ‘ready to kill you mood' on a scale of 1 to 10. Normal for eBay is around3.  Ca tegory managers in eBay, unlike their counter ¬parts in Procter and Gamble, can only indirectly control their products. They have no stock to reorder once levels of toothpaste or washing-up liquid run low on the supermarket shelves. They provide tools to buy and sell more effectively. ‘What they can do is endlessly try to eke out small wins in their cate ¬gories – say, a slight jump in scrap-metal listings or new bidders for comic books. To get there, they use marketing and merchandising schemes such as enhancing the presentation of their users' products and giving them tools to buy and sell  better.'Over and above this unusual existence, the work envir-onment can be tough and ultracompetitive, say ex-eBayers. Changes often come only after PowerPoint slides are exchanged and refined at a low level, even ¬tually presented at a senior level and after the change has been approved in a sign-off procedure which includes every department. An advance in the ways shoes could be searched for took ten months to happen. Aware that analysis can mean paralysis, Meg commissioned consultants (who else) to benchmark the rate at which change is indeed implemented in eBay.eBay was rated as average amongst the com ¬panies surveyed. Over time eBay has upgraded its ability to ensure the technology does not rule. Until the late 1990s, the site was plagued with outages, including one in 1999 which shut the site down for 22 hours courtesy of software problems and no backup systems. Former Gateway Inc. Chief Information Officer Maynard Webb, who joined as president of eBay's technology unit, quickly took action to upgrade systems. Now the site is down for less than 42 minutes a month, despite much higher traffic.Meg is a leader who buys into the company in more ways than one. Having auctioned some $35,000 worth of furnishings in her ski condo in Colorado to understand the selling experience, she became a top seller among the company's employees and ensured that her learning from the experience was listened to by fellow top execs. Meg is also known for listening carefully to her employees and expects her managers to do the same. As the business is as much, if not more, its customers, any false move can cause revolts within the community that is eBay.Most of all eBay tries to stay aware and flexible.Nearly all of its fastest-growing new categories emerged from registering seller activity in the area and quietly giving it a nudge at the right moment. For example, after noticing a few car sales, eBay cre ¬ated a separate site called eBay Motors in 1999, with special features such as vehicle inspections and shipping. Some four years later, eBay expects to gross some $1 billion worth of autos and parts, many of which are sold by professional dealers.The democratic underpinning of eBay, whilst easily embraced by customers, can, however, take some getting used to. New managers can take six months to understand the ethos. ‘Some of the terms you learn in business school – drive, force, commit  ¬don't apply', says former PepsiCo Inc. exec William C. Cobb, now senior vice-president in charge of eBay's international operations. ‘We're over here listening, adapting, enabling.'

Aesthetic Reading: Reading for Appreciation and Enjoyment Essay

Aesthetic reading is for entertainment. * Reading to explore one. * In Aesthetic reading, the reader’s attention is centered directly on what he likes through during his relationship with that particular text.† * Non-academicals purposes of reading. Aesthetic Stance is for experience * Recreational reading. * Fulfills an important function in lives. * Reading for pleasure or aesthetic reading, been described as â€Å"the most hidden literary practice†. * Aesthetic reading been viewed as â€Å"symbolic withdrawal†. Reading for appreciation * One that is designed to head the learner to understand and enjoy something. Let’s get the most out of Literature * Reading literary selections like poems, short stories, novels, plays, or essays, not only provide pleasure. * It also develop your analytical skills as you must consider each part of the text separately before you can interpret the meaning of the entire work and eventually appreciate it. Poems express ideas in a tighter, more compact way than prose as they do not include details and explanations common to the short story or novel. They are more concentrated, suggestive, and rhythmical than prose as they resort to the use of symbols, figurative language, and imagery, which tend to leave more to a reader’s imagination rather than giving everything he needs to know. Poems may be: * Lyric poem expresses the observations and the feeling of a single speaker. * Narrative poems are stories told in prose. Often narrative poems, even ballads have all the elements of the short stories, such as plot, characters and setting. Poems may take the form of: * Haiku – an unrhymed verse form, consisting of three lines. The first and third lines contain five syllables while the second line consists of seven syllables. * Tanka – another verse form. It has thirty-one syllables arrange in five lines (five, seven, five, seven, seven). * Cinquain – a poetic unrhymed form consisting of five lines. * Diamante – a seven line, diamond shaped poem.

Transitivity - Definition and Examples

Transitivity s In the broadest sense, transitivity is a method of classifying verbs and clauses with reference to the relationship of the verb to other structural elements. Put simply, a transitive construction is one in which the verb is followed by a direct object; an intransitive construction is one in which the verb cannot take a direct object. In recent years, the concept of transitivity has received special attention from researchers in the field of Systemic Linguistics. In Notes on Transitivity and Theme in English, M.A.K. Halliday described transitivity as the set of options relating to cognitive content, the linguistic representation of extralinguistic experience, whether of phenomena of the external world or of feelings, thoughts, and perceptions (Journal of Linguistics, 1967). An Observation The traditional notion of a transitive verb referred to a simple dichotomy: a transitive verb was a verb which required two argument NPs to form a grammatical clause, whereas an intransitive clause required only one. However, there are many languages where this basic distinction does not adequately cover the range of possibilities. (Ã…shild NÃ ¦ss, Prototypical Transitivity. John Benjamins, 2007) Verbs That Are Both Transitive and Intransitive Some verbs are both transitive and intransitive, depending on how they are used . . .. In response to the question, What are you doing? we can say Were eating. In this case eat is being used intransitively. Even if we add a phrase after the verb, such as in the dining room, it is still intransitive. The phrase in the dining room is a complement not an object. However, if someone asks us, What are you eating? we respond by using eat in its transitive sense, Were eating spaghetti or Were eating a large gooey brownie. In the first sentence, spaghetti is the object. In the second sentence, a large gooey brownie is the object. (Andrea DeCapua, Grammar for Teachers. Springer, 2008) Ditransitive and Pseudo-Intransitive Constructions More complex relationships between a verb and the elements dependent upon it are usually classified separately. For example, verbs which take two objects are sometimes called ditransitive, as in she gave me a pencil. There are also several uses of verbs which are marginal to one or other of these categories, as in pseudo-intransitive constructions (e.g. the eggs are selling well, where an agent is assumedsomeone is selling the eggsunlike normal intransitive constructions, which do not have an agent transform: we went, but not *someone sent us. (David Crystal, A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Blackwell, 1997) Levels of Transitivity in English Consider the following sentences, all of which are transitive in form: Susie bought a car; Susie speaks French; Susie understands our problem; Susie weighs 100 pounds. These illustrate steadily decreasing levels of prototypical transitivity: Susie is less and less of an agent, and the object is less and less affected by the actionindeed, the last two dont really involve any action at all. In short, the world provides a very wide range of possible relations between entities, but English, like many other languages, provides only two grammatical constructions, and every possibility must be squeezed into one or the other of the two constructions. (R.L. Trask, Language and Linguistics: The Key Concepts, 2nd ed., ed. by Peter Stockwell. Routledge, 2007) High and Low Transitivity A different approach to transitivity . . . is the transitivity hypothesis. This views transitivity in discourse as a matter of gradation, dependent on various factors. A verb such as kick, for example, fulfills all the criteria for high transitivity in a clause with an expressed object such as Ted kicked the ball. It refers to an action (B) in which two participants (A) are involved, Agent and Object; it is telic (having an end-point) (C) and is punctual (D). With a human subject it is volitional (E) and agentive, while the object will be totally affected (I) and individuated (J). The clause is also affirmative (F) and declarative, realis, not hypothetical (irrealis) (G). By contrast, with a verb such as see as in Ted saw the accident, most of the criteria point to low transitivity, while the verb wish as in I wish you were here includes even irrealis (G) in its complement as a feature of low transitivity. Susan left is interpreted as an example of reduced transitivity. Although it h as only one participant, it rates higher than some two-participant clauses, as it fulfills B, C, D, E, F, G and H. (Angela Downing and Philip Locke, English Grammar: A University Course, 2nd ed. Routledge, 2006)