Social media, the common man’s Press

By Atma Prakash Nayak, Ciliconindia

Everyone knows that the beetle shops, tea stalls and the coffee houses are the hot seats of political discussions. In some way or the other they are truly the best platform for exercising one’s freedom of speech. These are the places where we Indians are convinced or reassured of the existence of democracy. Sometime in a day with every sip of hot tea/coffee, many hot discussions on the fate of the country or on the meanness of our politicians or on the widespread corruption form the matter of discussion. No doubt, sometimes other issues like cricket, anti-rape propaganda, and terrorism also go in making the most animated talks of a day. These talks may be half-backed, rumour-like or biased or ill-informed but they bear the authentic stamp of a human-being’s real-time sentiments and response. They are not like those deliberately and masterfully tailored news pieces that appear in the print or electronic media.

Most news items in the media distort the truth according to the news makers’ convenience. But the news and opinions served at the tea/coffee houses are the waves of human responses unedited. And the same human sensitivity can presently be found nowhere except in the social networking sites. The social networking sites enable the common man to reach the millions. This advantage can be exploited to counteract the biased media. A vigorous involvement of more and more people in such sites can help lay bare the truth. The day is not far when it would be more wholesome to depend upon social networking sites to know the reality behind a scene.

In short social networking can serve as a common man’s press whose laws and news are not dictated by the corporate tycoons nor the corrupt officials or politicians. And truth prevails everywhere.

Before the child drifts into sleep, he hums and his mother lulls him to sleep. The mother pats the child’s back. The humming of the child gets rhythmical with the pat. And then the humming of the child gradually grows fainter and fainter as his eyes feel heavier and heavier with sleep.

Now the child sleeps. He is a small innocent figure who sleeps contentedly. On the table nearby a half filled feeding bottle stood. The mother put the sleeping child on the bed. All day’s work has made her dog-tired. She now throws herself in her husband’s arms and the husband lovingly holds his tired wife. Both of them close their eyes in deep togetherness. By the time the child also opens his eyes. He finds his mom and father now fast asleep. He slowly climbs over them and joyfully holds both of them and once again sleeps most contentedly with a divinely attractive smile that truly lights up the family.

A CHILD IS TRULY A STRONG BINDER WHO CAN HOLD A WHOLE FAMILY TOGETHER WITH HIS SMALL HANDS.

The village temple stands as a sacred abode of HOPES, DREAMS, PROGRAMMES and IDEALS.

A woman comes with a basket full of flowers, agarbati and coconuts and carries back a heart full of divine solace and verdant hopes. She is contented and is assured of the lord’s blessings. The happiness beaming on her face is born of a sense of great security provided by the all-powerful village deity. The village temple is all hopes for her.

A student comes. He bows his head before the idol and dreams of a good result in the recent examination; he dreams of a good job and imagines his Sanskrit teacher’s daughter in bridal dress. The village temple is the abode of his tender sweet dreams.

The local politician comes and declares a programme of 3 day long Sankirtan for world peace. The temple becomes a ground for mass gathering and the venue for chanting of sacred names through Public Address system. An unknown passerby devotedly bows his head while the programme goes on and the politician smilingly introduces himself as the organizer.

That day the temple was silent. The idol was standing in grave silence. And a woman who was mistreated yesterday by a group of local dadas fell before the idol. Her body bore many bruises. But her soul was more brutally bruised when she was told to keep silent. She fell before the idol helplessly but when she rose up she had garnered enough strength to put the anti-socials behind the bars and she was determined to set a new IDEAL.

KIT tips: The need for reading in IELTS

Reading helps you pick up the art of thinking in English.

Reading, as a matter of fact, is the best way to learn any language.

When you read out things in English, you happen to see

how people who know the language express themselves.

Your constant association with the thought process of educated people

helps you pick up the art of thinking in English.

Thinking in English is not an easy thing because we have been thinking

In our mother tongue for ages and, since there is distinct differences between our

language and a foreign language, we may face problems dealing with

complicated constructions and usages. So thinking in English takes time as it is a slow process that gets you equipped with the very language itself. This ability is a must in clearing ielts with flying colours. The fine line is: there is no compromise on reading when it comes to IELTS.

This has manifold benefits. Firstly, you get information, secondly, you pick up vocabulary, grammar and usage, thirdly, you happen to enjoy variety in expressing yourself, and finally, reading makes you approach the reading module much more confidently and matter-of-factly.

So, where do we stand? We stand at the point where it is important to know that good readers good at English. It is your being good at this language that is going to make the real difference in our life. IELTS is going to take you places only if your score is higher enough. So reading is a way out to find new highs in your scores: reading, writing, listening and speaking. Keep, keep, keep on reading whatever you put your hands on. JAYPEES

Some people are of the view that those who are in political offices need to undergo frequent training sessions on public administration while some others opine that public administration is not something that can be taught, rather it is learnt over experience.

·         Why is there need for training sessions for political office holders?

·         Do you support the argument that public administration cannot be taught?

Political offices and public administration stay intertwined in all polities. Naturally, political office bearers are expected to keep themselves updated on public administration. In my opinion, the view that public administration cannot be taught is premature. Let go in detail.  50 words

That which makes lessons on public administration mandatory for politicians is they have to meet the expectations of great population diaspora. For example, a political office bearer hailing from an urban landscape many not know much about the problems and predicament of the rural folks. Here a couple of sessions on rural public administration will be of great help. Besides this, it makes great sense to believe that people’s aspirations and needs change over time, and the same need to be understood by political office bearers. Obviously, there is need for training sessions off an on.

Coming to the idea that public administration cannot be taught, I believe it can very well be. For example, politicians with strong academic track-record on public administration do much better than others without it. Second thing is that public administration tools relevant in one demographic landscape may not be fit for another. Naturally, depending on the nature of the polity, lessons on public administration are to be framed accordingly. For example, a highly educated polity may expect its politicians to be more proactive, and the latter need to know how to make informed decisions. It forces them to be learning all the time.

Winding it up, I find it right to add that public administration is a discipline of high order, and all the politicians need to know that it can be taught, and they need to get themselves trained of their businesses periodically.

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Ajaypeesdoc. 12.06.2013. 5.05 am

Look at it from an examiner’s angle:

·         Range of vocabulary

·         Cohesion and coherence

·         General grammar and structure

·         Task achievement.

List out those word, phrases, structures and features that go into the making of a score, say 7 plus.

IELTS and newspapers

This lesson is about using newspapers to improve your English for IELTS. What you will find are some online resources and basic tips on using newspapers, an explanation of how reading newspapers can help you in IELTS and then suggest a few exercises to help you read better.

Why read newspapers?  You need the same reading skills as the test

Many newspaper articles are very similar to IELTS texts. Generally, they are around the same length, they cover the same general interest topics and they are written for non-specialist readers. You normally read a newspaper article quickly to see if it is interesting or not? That’s the way they work. This is very much the same skill as you need in the exam when you skim the text first for general meaning.

Very frequently, you already know something about what you are reading, so you look to see if there is anything in the article about that. This is also very similar to the exam when you scan the text to find certain information.

Unless you are a native speaker, newspaper articles will contain plenty of unknown words. The idea is that you keep reading just as you would in the exam and try and understand meaning from context. If you look up every word in your dictionary, then you stop reading.

Why read newspapers? It’s the efficient way to learn vocabulary

A key idea is that we learn words by using them and that reading a word is a way of using it. This means that every time you see a word when you read, you are learning a bit about it. Very often you are learning the really tough things such as which other words it is used with. This can often be much more efficient than just keeping a vocabulary notebook or trying to learn lists of words. Where do we see most words? When we read.

Why read newspapers? It gives you a break from IELTS

Too much IELTS is not good for the soul – and may not be the best thing for your English. If you want to improve your English, it does help to do things that you find interesting and IELTS is not always that interesting. The more you are interested, the better your brain works and the better your brain works, the better you will learn. Newspapers can work here because they contain something for everyone from business, to arts and sport. One idea is just to read the things that interest you.

The difficulty with newspapers – and how to deal with it

They are written for native speakers. This means that they are hard. Here is what I suggest:

• find topics that genuinely interest you – that way you will be motivated to keep reading
• read for general meaning – every time you finish an article and understand what it was about, feel good about yourself. You have just completed a native speaker language task
• read regularly and for shortish periods of time – an exam reading takes 20 minutes

The best exercise of all – just read

Below I suggest some specific “learning” exercises. They all work I believe. But the very best thing you can do is just read – read as much as you can, as often as you can. Why? The people who read best, read most. I’d also add that this type of  reading is good training for IELTS – long texts with unknown words won’t scare you.

Exercise one – what was it about?

This is the world’s simplest exercise. I also happen to think that it is a good one. The idea is that when you finish reading the article, you say what it is about. If you can’t do that, then you haven’t read well enough – it may have been time wasted. This is the one exercise I suggest you do every time.

Exercise two – make notes and write a summary

This is a similar exercise, but one you will probably do less often. The idea this time is that you make notes of the main points as you read. Then at the end you write a short summary. Here is why it can be a good idea:

• making notes helps you focus on words – that’s good for learning vocabulary
• writing the summary tests how well you understand how to use the words – can you put it into a sentence? If not, you haven’t really learned the word yet
• if you look at this reading lesson, you will see that I very strongly suggest that it helps to make notes as you read an IELTS passage. This is the same skill.
• IELTS writing task one is really just a summary writing exercise. People get confused by the pictures and numbers. The skills you use here in writing a summary  - picking out the main points and summarising them – are exactly the same skills as task one.

 Exercise three – find another similar article

This I think is a great exercise. Entirely natural, interesting and good for language learning. The idea is that once you have read one article, you try and find another similar article. As you probably do in life. This is normally just a case of Googling the headline: most newspapers carry very similar stories. What I suggest you do next is look for what is similar and what is different . This is really going to be an IELTS scanning activity. you are not necessarily looking for the same words, but the same meaning. To see how this can work, try looking at these articles:

I found these by looking for “The best place to live in Britain”. They all contain similar language and ideas, but are slightly different.

Exercise four – find 5 words

This is the least natural exercise here. The idea is to work on your vocabulary – and think about how dictionaries can help you. You read a text and choose 5 words from it that you want to learn. Here are some ideas about how you can make this work:

• don’t choose too many words – you’ll get them confused
• aim for common words or words you already half recognise. These are most important words as they are the ones you will wan to use. To find out how common they are, look in the Macmillan Online Dictionary – the red words are the ones you want most
• look for the words they are used with. Is there a preposition (by, with, to etc) following it? If it’s a noun is there an adjective with it?
• look in the dictionary again to see what other phrases are used with that word
• now try and re-tell the story you have just read, using those words. At some stage, you do want to try and use that word yourself

Newspaper sites

Which newspapers should you read? The ones you enjoy reading. This may mean that the best newspaper is an English language newspaper based in your country. It can be hard to read English/Australian/Canadian newspapers because they are about foreign cultures. Here are a few suggestions of where to start: