Friday 25 July 2008

Friday self-study: How to write a good introduction of accademic essay




A.
I am doing exercise from Jim's self-study blog:
  1. Looking at the information on both the websites http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/introductions.htm http://www.uefap.com/writing/writfram.htm
what should a good introduction contain?
  • establish the context, background and/or importance of the topic
  • indicate a problem, controversy or a gap in the field of study
  • define the topic or key terms
  • state of the purpose of the essay/writing
  • provide an overview of the coverage and/or structure of the writing

  1. On the University of Manchester page, look at the suggested language for different sections of the introduction. Which verb tenses are most commonly used in each section? (write down a verb tense and an example for each…)
- Establishing the importance of the topic: use simple present and present continuous, present perfect
ex:
X is an important component in the climate system, and plays a key role in Y.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the .....
In the new global economy, X has become a central issue for ......

- Establishing the importance of the topic (time frame given): simple present, present perfect or passive voice
ex:

The past decade has seen the rapid development of X in many .......
Xs are one of the most widely used groups of antibacterial agents and have been extensively used for decades to .......

- Highlighting a problem or controversy in the field of study: present perfect, present continuous, simple past
ex:
To date there has been little agreement on what ......
There is increasing concern that some Xs are being disadvantaged ......
One major issue in early X research concerned.......

- Highlighting a knowledge gap in the field of study: present perfect, simple present
ex:
So far, however, there has been little discussion about
The experimental data are rather controversial, and there is no general agreement about

- Focus and aim: future tense, simple present, simple past
ex:
This paper will review the research conducted on ......
The aim of this paper is to determine/examine ......
The aim of this study was to evaluate and validate ......

- Outline structure: simple present, present perfect or passive voice, future tense
ex:
The main questions/issues addressed in this paper are: a), b and c).
This paper has been divided into four parts. The first part deals with ....
The first section of this paper will examine ......

- Explaining keywords: future tense
ex:
While a variety of definitions of the term X have been suggested, this paper will use the definition first suggested by Smith (1968) who saw it as .......
Throughout this paper the term X will refer to/will be used to refer to .......
In this article the acronym/abbreviation XYZ will be used.


B. Another part of exercise:
http://www.englishforuniversity.com/search/label/Writing%20an%20introduction

  1. What is the introduction a chance for you to do?
--> Introduce news, difficult issue, controversy, lack of good evidence, give outline of essay

  1. Why do you think planning is important when you are writing an introduction?
--> I think planning is very important in introduction because you will go straight to your topic or something related to it. You will know what you should write when u have a clear plan. Moreover, you will know which information you should search before writing an introduction.

  1. Look at the example essay question: "Is the present level of immigration in the United Kingdom beneficial to the country?" Read the introduction (below the plan). You should be able to see that the introduction contains all the elements from your answer to question 1 in the Section A. Also, notice the use of verb tenses.
---> We use simple present for real something , present perfect for the trend of that topic, future tense for the purpose of your essay.

  1. I would like you to rewrite this introduction (to the same question) using the language suggestions from the University of Manchester website and post it on your blog by the end of this class. If you do not have a blog, write it on a separate sheet of paper to give to me by the end of class.
Essay question: "Is the present level of immigration in the United Kingdom beneficial to the country?"
Immigration is an emotive subject which is seldom out of the news. The recent rise in immigrants in the United Kingdom from the new European Union countries has refocused debate on this controversial issue. It is a topic which is difficult to explore because of the lack of hard data and the preponderance of anecdotal evidence. As already mentioned, immigration recently has largely consisted of Europeans but there is also a constant flow of migrants from other parts of the world, some of whom arrive seeking refuge from war or famine and some of whom claim asylum. This essay will attempt to explore the benefits to the UK of immigration by firstly examining the economic arguments surrounding the issue, and then by looking at the social issues involved.

This is my
introduction
Immigration is a necessitous issue in each country generally and in the United Kingdom particularly. According to new research, immigration has contributed half of Britain's population growth in 10 years. The problem is how much beneficial the present level of immigration in the United Kingdom to the country as well as how to control it efficiently and limit its disadvantages in minimum. This essay will find out the level of immigration in Britain and which its aspest is beneficial for this country.


What i learnt from the seminar


What i learnt from seminar is understanding what the difference of media such as television viewing habits from other countries is. Today we discussed on 3 topics: Television viewing habits, Television images, Future of television.

Regarding to television viewing habits, I found that in Morroco, women watch television more than men because many house wife just stay at home, look after their children, prepare cooking, go shopping sometimes. In China, it is a little bit different. Zhang said that China people prefer watching on internet to television because most of China channels is free for everyone. One suprised thing is about 100 channels in China as a vast China in the world. He mean there are many provinces in China and some channels in each province. In Iran, most of people like watching comedy and spend much time on watching television at night.


We also agree that government, television company and audience control television images. It could be true or not depending on what gender or age of audience are. However, i think advertisment consultants have a lot of ideas of television images although they don't decide broadcast these images.

The future of television is what we are looking for because television takes a certain role in our lives. We know that television signal will be switch off 100% digital in the UK from 2008 to 2012. It will be extra-channel, better sound and higher quality when we use digital television.

What we discussed in seminar is more interesting than presentataion because we spent more time talking much that topic. Another thing i learnt from seminar is maybe interaction, reflection at the time or after the time someone's speaking.

However, i am not happy with my weakness from seminar. Perhaps my strong points is not enough good to cover my weakness. Here is my feedback of seminar:

-MY CONTRIBUTION TO THE SEMINAR: I think i have enough preparation to share what i searched on internet, but i don't talk too much. I just discussed based on what i searched, and some my ideas. Perhaps due to my characteristic, i don't talk too much in life, just prefer doing what i speak than speaking without doing. Basically, i feel it is fine but i need talk more in second seminar.

-USE OF SEMINAR LANGUAGE: I don't use much seminar language because most of people share the idea or what they found a research in their countries. If the topic is easier to lead to argument, i think i will do better and can learn more interesting thing from other people.

-LISTENING AND BODY LANGUAGE: What i can say is that i am good at listening what everyone says. Although i didn't use body language much, i think i will do better in another intersting topic, such as painting, entertainment, food, animal, flower, music, politic, economic...

-PRONUNCIATION: I think it is getting better than before, but still some problems of stress in a word or stress in one sentence.

-GRAMMATICAL ACCURACY: I feel my grammar is quite good when i speak, but unfortunately, it is not nescessary in seminar particularly or in speaking generally.

-VOCABULARY: Actually i don't know much vocabulary about Media, i wish it connected to business vocabulary. However, i don't find any serious problem on this section.

Thursday 24 July 2008

Television viewing habits around the world

How much TV people watch?
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/departments/elementary/?article=toomuchtv
A quick summary:
The average U.S. household has at least one TV set turned on for about 7h/ day.
The average school-aged child spends 27 h/week watching TV (some preschoolers watch much more).
Over the course of a year, children spend more time watching TV than they spend in school or participating in any other activity except sleep.
Children's TV shows contain about 20 violent acts per hour.
A high percentage of a child's viewing time is spent watching shows intended for adults: 40 % of a 6-year-old's viewing time, and about 80% of a 12-year-old's viewing time.
The average American child will have watched 100,000 acts of televised violence, including 8,000 murders, by the time he or she finishes the sixth grade.

The kinds of programme people watch?

How Television viewing habits have change in the last 20 years

The positive/ negative effects that these television viewing habits may have on our lives

Television images

How real are the images we see on TV?
http://www.irishhealth.com/?id=10201&level=4
Sample size: 161 children
Aim: Ask chidren about the possibility of interaction between an image on a television screen and the real world
Who do research: researchers at the Nagoya University in Japan and the findings were presented at a recent conference of the British Psychological Society
Results:
Chidren:
5,5 years old: thought the paper doll appearing on screen would fall down if somebody in the real world was to blow on it
Furthermore, if the researchers allowed the children to blow on the screen, they blew hard, as if they believed they could blow the paper doll down.
The same was true for the reversed roll, with most children believing that the paper doll in front of the TV would fall down if blown on by a girl appearing on screen.

>= 6 years old: did not believe this type of interaction was possible.

The children then understand that TV images are different from real objects.

Who controls the images we see on TV?
Media control is the act of taking control of the message that the media puts out by taking direct control over the finances of the people who put out the message.
If a news reporter knows that the financial security of their family is dependent on pushing a certain bias, they will do it. And if you have enough reporters and media consultants who are more comfortable with that bias than questioning what they are reporting in an open and investigating way, the bias becomes part of the psyche of the people
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DEFD81239F937A35752C1A96F948260

Can they influence the way we think and behave, for example making us want to be thin, to buy products or commit violence?
http://www.rense.com/general63/traid.htm
its influence is so great, so pervasive, it has become part of our lives. You lose your sense of what is being done to you, but your mind is being shaped and moulded. Your mind is being shaped and moulded If that doesn't sound like brainwashing

Do you think that television images reinforce or challenge stereotype?
French photographer JR, who goes by his initials only, thought about those images, the stereotypes they reinforced and how he could use photography to bring a different message
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/teachers/pshe_11_14/subject_areas/prejudice/newsid_4134000/4134678.stm

Media Stereotype:
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/index.cfm
It means giving audiences a quick, common understanding of a person or group of people, such as: class, ethnicity or race, gender, sexual orientation, social role or occupation.


List any stereotypes which you think are common on TV?
Common TV stereotypes include a characters:
Age (old people, young people, teenagers)
Sex (women and men, boys and girls)
Job (teacher, model, truck driver, doctor, lawyer)
Culture (Scottish, Irish, Italian)
Race (black, white, Chinese, Hispanic)
Looks (beautiful, ugly, 'nerdy')
Position in a family (mother, father, sister, brother, grandmother, grandfather)

Can stereotype on TV be avoided?
I think it is inevitable because it is very common in advertisement, entertainment in new industries or developed countries. It is just because of a result of developing economics.

Wednesday 23 July 2008

Preparing something for seminar on Friday


what is the main purppose of TV be?
Entertainment, inform, educate, sell, show reality, help people escape rality?
- For entertainment
- A way of getting information across to the public
e.g. news stories ans weather, the news educates us about important decisions happening around the world and the weather tells us a message of how the day is going to be in advance so we are able to make plans if wishing to go out to travel.
- Think more about it: The Commercialism of Television

Future of TV: TV with new technology
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6142998.stm
Digital:
2008 - 2012: the analogue TV signal --> 100% digital in the UK
How to do that? Through an aerial, satellite, cable or phone line
How to watch it? Need a set-top box or a built-in decoder in your TV set.
What is its benefit? Extra channels, better quality, electronic programme guides and interactive features
Comparation:
+ Analogue signals: Transmitting sounds and pictures as continuously varying waves,
These signals use much less space than analogue--> more channels can be squeezed into the same airwaves
+ Digital information: Sent as compressed computerised pulses of information in 1s and 0s.

High definition television - HDTV
What is it? new format for watching programmes, offering sharper, clearer and brighter pictures and better sound.
How to use it? Need:
+ an HD-ready TV
+ an HD set-top box / decoder to receive the programmes by digital signals.
Process?
Televisions are considered HD-ready if the screen has enough pixels to display a high definition picture--> can display with either 720 or 1080 vertical lines.
The programmes: made and transmitted in HD.
How is about current?
The BBC is running free trial HD broadcasts.
Sky, Telewest are offering a commercial HD service.
Two different formats of available HD films: Blu-ray and HD-DVD.

Personal video recorders (PVRs)
What is it? Record digital television straight onto computer-like hard drives.
It combined with TV service (Sky or Freeview)
Benefit?
+ Can pause, rewind and replay action on screen and record a programme at the same time- allow for time-shift viewing of live TV.
+ Easier to choose what to record
+ Can always record your favourite soap / all programmes on a specific subject.

TV meets computer:
what? one big machine connects both TV and computer
Benefit?
+ e library of video from the internet to watch on your TV
+ Can use computer's memory as a PVR.
How is about current?
+ Microsoft's Media Centre has made a start.
+ Apple will bring out its iTV, doing a similar thing
+ A game (Xbox 360) let you download shows to watch on TV.
+ A device (the Slingbox) could really shake things up, beaming your home TV signal to any computer anywhere.
Mobile phones:
Now?Can be used to watch television on the move with high-speed but overload on network.
Improvement recently?
+ Phone manuafactures: triall competing technologies (DAB-IP and DVb-H) to watch the same shows simultaneously.
+ All mobile operators: offer some sort of video service which can receive BBC One and ITV1 live
+ Can watch a wide range of "made-for-mobile" channels or download clips.
+ Can watch shows or video podcasts on iPods and other MP3 players
My thinking?
How is about TV on website with high speed? Youtube still doesn't work well sometimes.
Some TV on website is just in one country, for example bbc.co.uk/iplayer, other people from other countries can't watch it.
Is it possible for a extreme light TV as picture with a big size?

Big Break Programme, Media licteracy




I found it by chance when i tried to watch Big Brother Programme. This programme is so funny whatsoever.



I do some research on Media which i will have to discuss on Friday.


Media literacy
In today’s multi-media society, media competence is increasingly important. A media literate society knows where to find the information it needs and how to identify the economic, political, social, commercial and cultural interests that generated it. This section of the site defines media literacy and its key principles and lists other useful sources of information.


Here is my note-taking what i read about this subject-Media licteracy. There is a link of each section of this topic when you click on the title.



MEDIA LICTERACY



Literacy (n) the ability to read and write, knowledge of a particular subject

Different resources both via broadcasting and written materials

Aim to develop media competence.



Every children develops differently.

Media literacy is a place where chidren know the society outside their houses and reflect what they hear and see.



Most important characteristic of critical viewing: understand the reason why everyone likes or dislikes a programme, distinguish between real life and what one watch on TV.
Should it be taught in school?
Teaching media literacy is teaching critical thinking
It should "start early, with simple activities in preschool, and continue through high school," says Tessa Jolls, president and CEO of the Santa Monica–based Center for Media Literacy
It provides guidance and curricula for school districts interested in taking on this most challenging task.
Think more: we teach our children how to read about, watch, interpret, understand and analyze the day's events, we risk raising a generation of civic illiterates, political ignoramuses and uncritical consumers, vulnerable not only to crackpot ideas, faulty reasoning and putative despots but fraudulent sales pitches and misleading advertising claims
civic (n) the study of the way in which a local government works and of the rights and duties of the people
fraudulent (a) dishonest and illegal

Tuesday 22 July 2008

Grammar: Verb pattern


After receiving my test's result today (34/60), i found that my grammar is a little bit weak, especially in verb pattern and filling the gap in a small paragraph. Some vocabularies i don't know how to use them in particular situation although i know the meaning of those words.


Here is my studying from that test:

Verb pattern:

- encourage someone to do something

- consider doing something

- advoid someone / doing something

- warn someone that

- insist on someone doing something / insist that

- threaten to do something


Expression/ unfimiliar verb/ useful phrase:

- to be over: finish (the party 's over)

to go over: to study or explain something

As i had missed the history lesson, my friend went over the homework with me.

- to hole up=support

The decorated roof of the ancient palace waws held up / supported by4 thin columns.

- their intake of vitamins

- where his best interets lay

- get over the shock of

- As the game drew to a close, disappointed spectators started to leave.

- to meet with much success

- The new college caters for the needs of students with a variety learning backgrounds


- economics (n) subject

economic perspective (a): connected to the subject

economical perspective (a): cheap

Lecture 3: Basic for international Business- Ken Wendeln, MBA


http://www.imds.iupui.edu/imds/W200bb.shtml
Segment 1: 2.1 (Clip 4) Basis for International Business (0:12)

Here is my note-taking after searching a suitable topic for a long time:

BUSINESS IN GENERAL:

1.WHAT IS INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS?
Exchange across national boundaries:
- Absolute advantage- ability to produce special goods more effective than any other countries
- Comparative advantage: - ability to produce special goods more effective than other countries
--> Goods and service products : more effective when one country specialise

2. PRINCIPLE OF NATION 'S COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE:
- Lower cost labour markets
- Financial market
- Technology
- Nation resource
- Geographic areas
Why?
- Cheap price products
- Financial market are now global market
- With technology, internet..per add decrease value
- Companies easy bring work to employees
- Easy move to another countries

3. ARTIFICIAL RESTRICTIONS ON INTERNATIONAL TRADE:

Tariff Barriers:

+ Import duty (tariff)

+ Dumping = drive reduce price

Non-tariff Barriers:

+ Embargo-complete halt to trade of product

+ Import quota

+ Foreign exchange control

+ Currency devaluation--> increase cost of foreign exchange rate


Reason for and against trade restriction:

For restriction:

+ Balance of trade

+ Protect industries

+ Protect domestic jobs

+ National security

+ Health of citizens

+ Retaliate for another nation's restriction


Against trade restriction:

+ More prices for customers

+ Restricts of customers' choice

+ Misallocations of international resources

+ Loss of jobs


GATT- General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (established in 1947) - Reductions in Trade Tariff and Barriers --> Big driver

WTO- dedicated or reducing or eliminating tariff or other barriers of trade


I can take note this lecture because i have read on a book before, and because the lecture is shown by slides. I feel better now.

Lecture 2: “A Reason for Hope in a Complex World.” Jane Goodall


http://athome.harvard.edu/janegoodall
“A Reason for Hope in a Complex World.” Jane Goodall

i found it by chance when i tried to search a website of business lecture. I think it is quite interesting at the begining of the lecture and just take about 5 minutes to listen.

Here is my note-taking:

very few speaking but she help to creative
if u r enjoy a wonderful story
the enquiry may to temp to find out by asking the question
don't give up, try again
and pay atention is more important

What did she do? married and another Jane ? (joking)
when i was about 11 , grew up , go to Africa, write books a between dicipline
simality that we find between .....human behavior

female who aware 2 brothers

one of hundred examples: long-term supportive comunity between family member
distintion
breaking down the world, animal kingdom, different culture
so much fear and pain, attraction arround the world today
lot of fearary
learn lesson from the distance part
to make plan, impotant: have a discusing--> promotion
push manage time
video
call uplooking at the eye of the man, and messeage was: anybody help me?


I can't connect the meaning of these words i heard. What is the main idea of her lecture? Difficult to me without transcript. Anyway, i don't give up, try again. No pain, no gain!

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/ChanceLecture/AudioVideo.html
This website doesn't have transcript, but has slide to follow easily, such as Stock Market Valuation, but i don't like this topic and i didn't find any another business topic i like.:-(

http://www.imds.iupui.edu/imds/W200bb.shtml
Clip 4: Basic for International Business
(continue in next post)

Monday 21 July 2008

First lecture:Global Financial Volatility- Robert Engle


http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bigidea/stories/s1360308.htm

I searched the aboved website on google but it is dfficult for me to understand although i listen to it twice. Not nearly i don't understand but i can't connect the meaning of the issues from the lecture. Or perhaps i don't like this subject what limits me to listen. I wonder why i can recognise many words but i can't connect the meaning of whole subject from those words the lecturer speaks. Maybe it is not enough time for me to connect it.

So i change topic but what i found is the website without transcript or without listening like:
http://www.slideshare.net/GregFish/top10-basic-business-principles/
http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/meetthedirector/articlesReviewsAndLectures.htm

It is what i am looking for:
http://www.ft.com/cms/a5dd621a-e39d-11dc-8799-0000779fd2ac.html?_i_referralObject=470090835&fromSearch=n

FT Business school: Global Financial Volatility: Day 1


I am very suprised myself by my very limited understanding after listening. When i read the transcript, my understanding is more than 50% but it is so bad at listening (30%). Absolutely, disappointed myself.

Here is my poor taking-note:

- What is volatility? volatility of financial market, global market perspective
+the number is high--> high volatility
+the number is low--> low volatility
+ volatility: essential aspect, key feature in financial market

- Example of USA financial market
How much change evaryday?
market increase very high--> very high volatility--> turn down--> stuck on= called volatility

- Patterns in different asset class:
+IBM: 40%
+S&P: 20%...
--> Question: Why are volatilities different across asset class?
Answer: Yes, depends on the profit of the company and how long have to wait to get them

Transcript:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/aa135dd4-36ba-11dc-9f6d-0000779fd2ac,dwp_uuid=27e7df5c-2e44-11dc-821c-0000779fd2ac.html

Robert Engle: Hello, I’m Robert Engle. I’m a professor of finance at the Stern School of Business of New York University. We are here in the heart of Manhattan and we’re going to talk about volatility.
Volatility’s a subject that’s very close to my heart because I won the Nobel Prize for my volatility research in 2003, but this is a topic that’s of interest to everybody. It’s of interest to traders in Wall Street, it’s of interest to CEOs of major corporations and it’s of interest to individual investors.
We’ll spend five days talking about various aspects of the measurement, the explanation and the consequences of volatility in our complicated, modern world. So why don’t you come on up to my office and let’s begin.
Welcome to my office. We’re going to talk about volatility. We’re going to talk about volatility of financial markets and take a global perspective. When I say volatility, I want you to think about the newscaster who comes on the news every day and says the market is up or the market is down. If those are big numbers, then we say the volatility is high; if they’re small numbers, volatility is low.
It’s this kind of a bumpy ride that makes investors uneasy about investing in the stock market, or in fact in any other financial asset. But in fact, the volatility is an essential part of financial markets because otherwise they wouldn’t be able to do their job. They wouldn’t be able to allocate resources to the highest and best companies because if prices never changed then there would be no chance for small companies to become large companies or large companies to decline.
So volatility is a key feature of financial markets. And I’d like to take you on a little tour of the US financial markets from a volatility point of view.
If we look at the first slide, you can see what’s happened to the Standard and Poor’s 500 asset price for the last 40 years. In the blue curve you see on the left has started at a low value and has basically risen dramatically over this 40 year period with a fairly sharp decline at the end of the sample. From a volatility point of view we’re going to be interested in the rate of change of that index, and that’s shown on the top. For every day we look at how much it changed from the previous day. The top curve is a volatility picture, and when we say that the volatility is high, what we mean is the amplitude of that curve is high, and when volatility is low, the amplitude is low.
So let’s take a look at a couple of episodes. Turn to the next slide. We see that the periods when volatility is high are exactly the same as the periods when the market is in decline. So, you look below an episode of high volatility, you can see in the blue curve, the market is declining.
If you look on the next slide we see the period in the middle 90s when volatility was very low. In fact it was a record low for the time. That’s when I first started consulting for Wall Street, and when I went to Wall Street they asked me, why is volatility so low and is it likely to stay low? One of the things I had learned about volatility was that it tends to mean revert so that when it’s low, ultimately it comes back up again, and when it’s high, ultimately it declines.
Well, it turns out that was the right answer. As you can see by looking further to the right on that graph, when we came to the market increase around 2000, which we now call the internet bubble, we see very high volatility corresponding to high levels of risk for stock investing at that point in time.
And on the next slide you see what happened afterwards. The market turned down. We had a substantial decline in the level of the S&P 500 but we also had high volatility as this market declined. So this is all a discussion about stock market volatility, but what about other financial assets? In fact all financial assets have some degree of volatility and we can take a look at what it is.
If we look at the next graph we have a chance to look at the volatility by asset class, and what we’re calculating is the standard deviation of the returns calculated on an annualised basis for a period from 1997 to 2003. And the first bar on this chart is for IBM stock. The volatility for IBM is about 40 per cent, and that means that if you invested in a portfolio which was just IBM stock, this portfolio would have a volatility of 40 per cent. If you look at other large-cap stocks like General Electric and Citigroup and McDonalds and Wal-Mart, you see those are all between 30 and 40 per cent. This is a lot higher than the S&P itself, which has a volatility of about 20 per cent over this period, as you can see in the next bar on the chart. And that illustrates immediately the advantage of diversification because the broad index has a lower volatility than its components.
Looking further on this chart you can see some small-cap companies that have volatilities that range from 30 per cent to 70 per cent, and some small-caps have much higher volatility even than this. Fixed income assets also have volatility because interest rates change, and if you look at the next segment of the graph you can see a small green square which illustrates the volatility of the one month treasury bill. That is very low, which means it’s a very safe, un-volatile asset. The five-year bond is a little more volatile. The 20-year bond has a volatility of about 10 per cent.
So the question that you probably are wondering is, why are these volatilities different across asset classes? Is there anything that we can say from economics that would help us understand those differences? Well, I think the answer is yes, but the first thing we have to do is we have to say, why are asset prices what they are anyway?
The price that you’re willing to pay as an investor for a share of a company stock depends on what you think the future profits of this company’s stock are and how long you’re going to have to wait to get them. The more profitable the company, the more you’re willing to pay for its stock. Some assets are more volatile than others. We have to talk about how important the news is.
For small-cap stocks the news is very important. We really wonder whether a small -cap stock is the next Microsoft or whether it’s going to go bankrupt. Every piece of information that tells us whether this is an up-and-coming company or one that’s not going to make it, is tremendously important, so the volatility of small-cap stocks is very high.
So this news theory of volatility is pretty successful in explaining the qualitative features across asset classes. What about across countries? Could we use this news theory to explain the difference in volatility across countries?
Well, on the next graph we’ve got the median volatility of the equity markets of each of about 50 countries over the same sample period, 1997 to 2003. And what you’ll see is that these median volatilities range from about 10 per cent to about 50 per cent. So that is, they range from the volatility of the bond market to the volatility of a small-cap stock. What do we see when we look at the countries? Well, the low volatility countries are Chile, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Canada and a few others. The high volatility countries are Turkey, Korea, Brazil, Finland, Russia and many others, and there’s a whole range in between. Can we talk about the news in a way that enables us to explain why these countries are different from each other?
Well, you’ll have to wait because we’re going to have to develop some more tools before we can do that, but that’s going to be one of the goals of our research this week.
Come back tomorrow and we’ll talk about measuring volatility when it’s changing over time.


New word/ phrase:
volatile (adjective) likely to change suddenly and unexpectedly
volatility (noun) tell something unstable
degree of volatility
median volatilities range
un-volatile asset
consequences of volatility (n)
complicated (a) involving a lot of different parts, in a way that is difficult to understand
global perspective (n) a particular way of considering something (vien canh, phoi canh)
Her attitude lends a fresh perspective to the subject.
newscaster (n) someone who reads out the reports on a television or radio news programme
bumpy ride (n) (informal) to have a difficult time
bumpy (a) not smooth
allocate resources
blue curve (n) a line without straight parts
fairly sharp decline
amplitude (a) a large amount, wide range (bie^n do^.)
couple of episodes (n) a single event or group of related events
episodic (a) (formal) happening only sometimes and not regularly
The war between these two countries has been long-drawn-out and episodic.
revert to doing something/revert to somebody (v) to return to doing, using, being or referring to something, usually something bad or less satisfactory
- Why does the conversation have to revert to money every five minutes?
- A woman's maiden name is the family name she has before she gets married.
- When they divorced, she reverted to using her maiden name.
- A woman's maiden name is the family name she has before she gets married.
ultimately it declines (adv) finally, after a series of things have happened ( more emphasize the most important fact in a situation)
bubble (n) a ball of air in a liquid
afterwards (adv) after the time mentioned; later
And on the next slide you see what happened afterwards.
substantial decline (a) large in size, value or importance
We had a substantial decline in the level of the S&P 500.
asset class
deviation (n) something which is different from the usual or common way of behaving (di chech huong)
what we’re calculating is the standard deviation of the returns calculated on an annualised basis for a period from 1997 to 2003.
annualised (a) specialise
diversification (n) <-- deversify The more profitable the company, the more you’re willing to pay for its stock
For small-cap stocks the news is very important.
go bankrupt (n) legal unable to pay what you owe
up-and-coming company
Can we talk about the news in a way that enables us to explain why these countries are different from each other?
--> enable someone to do something

My goals in TANGERINE class



I found that getting A score at university is extremely difficult so that i want to change my plan. My aim is A although it seems to be impossible. Just aim to follow.Here is my goals in this month:





Everyday:


- Listen 1 lecture related to my subject


- Study at least 10 new words (business, academic)


- Finish homework


- Read newspaper/ 1 artical on internet





Long-term goals within 2 last month before entering Master Course:


- Finish main contents on some books: Business Economic, Academic Vocabulary, Business Vocabulary,


- Improve pronunciation, stress in the sentence to make speaking more natural. So i have to find some resourses regarding to these subjects.

- Undestand the lecture more than 60%