I. Build up your vocabulary

a) Learn the words used presenting arguments and commenting on others’ work.

1. If you advocate something, you argue in favour of it: He advocated capital punishment.

2. If you deduce something, you reach a conclusion by thinking carefully about the known facts: Look at these sentences and see if you can deducehow the imperfect tense is used.

3. If you infer something, you reach a conclusion indirectly: From contemporary accounts of his research, we can inferthat results were slower to come than he had anticipated.

4. If someone’s work complements someone else’s, it combines well with it so that each piece of work becomes more effective.

5. If someone’s work overlapswith someone else’s work, it partially covers the same material.

6. You might call someone’s work: empirical [based on what is observed rather than theory] ambiguous [open to different interpretations] coherent[logically structured] comprehensive[covering all that is relevant] authoritative [thorough and expert].

b) Choose the verbs that best fit in each sentence:

1. Although my brother and I are researching in similar areas, our work, fortunately, does not____. It has. However, often been said that what I do____ his work very well.

2. Look at the complete set of graphs and see if you can____ the rules governing the data from them.

3. This article____ a somewhat different approach to the problem than that which has been put forward by others in the field.

4. A great deal can be____ about the artist’s state of mind from the content and style of his later works.

c) Choose the adjectives that best describe each of these things:

1. a textbook written by the most highly regarded expert in the field

2. research based on a survey of the population

3. a poem which can be understood in two quite different ways

4. an argument which is well-expressed and easy to follow

5. a textbook which gives a broad overview of an entire disipline

II. Analysis

Read the following discussion section from a report in the field of management. The study was carried out to determine if management by objectives (MBO) practices would improve the quality and quantity of work and level of satisfaction of employees in a human services agency

The effects of MBO on performance

And satisfaction in a public sector organization

Discussion

¹The results of the satisfaction questionnaire were mixed. ²Satisfaction with supervision significantly increased after implementation of the MBO program, and there was directional (but not significant) support that work satisfaction improved.

³These results are consistent with previous research (Steers,1996; Tasi et al.,1998). ⁴Our findings thus lend support for the hypothesis that MBO leads to a satisfaction improvement, at least over the short term (Ivancevich, 1996).⁵ Reliance on these measures must be tempered, however, because a control group was not available and only two measures were taken (before and after) in assessing changes in satisfaction.

⁶Because a high degree of variability was found in the data, it would be beneficial to replicate this study on larger and different populations.⁷ It would also be interesting to measure satisfaction over several periods of time instead of for one pre- and one post-intervention.⁸The limitations in field experiments not withstanding, this study suggests that MBO may have a favourable impact on performance and satisfaction in public sector agencies.⁹ Reinforcement of the MBO process and continuous reinforcement while using the system should aid in its acceptance and use.

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 940