English Recordings

Strategies for thriving in life and business.

We share the desire to see Company S.A. grow and thrive well into the future

A thriving economy.

“[Alcoholism] affects the proper upbringing of the children,” another mother reports."

Upbringing means how you were raised by your parents. It means what your parents taught you, (what) was good, and what was bad.

He had a stern upbringing.

It takes me a long time to get used to people I don't know.
I'm used to getting up early.
He's used to work on Saturdays.

Many of us rebuke our children with the following phrases, perhaps because that’s the way our parents talked to us. Isn’t it time to think of a better way?

You’re just tired.
He may also be genuinely mad. The child who whines and cries may indeed be tired, but that’s no excuse for dismissing his feelings. “You’re tired” is a patronizing remark which usually makes the child even angrier. A better response would be, “You seem very angry (or frustrated or impatient). Let’s talk about it on my lap.” Then you can put him to bed.

Look at this mess! Do you think I have nothing better to do than clean up after you kids?
Alternative: It’s time to clean up your projects. I’ll give you a broom and rags and we’ll tidy up together.

It serves you right to get hurt. Now maybe you’ll listen when I say not to (play where you’re not supposed to, fight with your brother, play with the cat, etc.)
Alternative: “That bump must really hurt; let me hold you until the pain goes away.” Later, after the crying is over: “I will have to put you in your room the next time you disobey. I love you to much to see you get hurt again.”

Stop sulking. Get that angry look off your face.
This is as ineffective as saying, stop being hungry. When you’re angry, you’re angry. It is a normal, healthy emotion. Constantly making your child stuff her anger leads to emotional problems down the road. Leave the child alone with her feelings, or ask if she wants to talk about it.

Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.
This is a cruel choice. It’s an easy solution for the parent, but it serves only to build up resentment in the child. Few parents can tolerate the sound of crying; yet, crying is a natural expression of hurt and frustration. Giving a hug and being patient is hardly a big price to pay for building your child’s self-image, rather than tearing it down.

Just wait until your dad comes home.
Passing responsibility for discipline to the absent parent is easy, but it’s a cop-out. Learn to deal with behavior crises yourself. Your children will respect you for it.

You can’t be hungry yet.
Don’t deny your child’s feelings. Surely your own appetite fluctuates sometimes – so try to respect that fluctuation in a child. A better response: You may have a piece of fruit or carrot sticks until it is time for supper.

How could you be so stupid.
If you call a child stupid, it won’t be long before he will start to believe it. This demeaning remark is destined to crush self-confidence, instead of encourage the change of behavior or extra effort that you want. Try: I’m frustrated at what just happened. I bet you are too. Let’s talk about how you could have done that differently.”

By Ronnene Anderson – Reprinted with permission, Parent Information Network, March-April 1989.
Alberta Family and Social Service

Whose is this money?
Whose is this hat?
He won't tell me whose fault it was.
I don't care whose it is.
Whose turn is it anyway?

Why the rich are meaner than the poor?
To become more authoritarian means to become meaner, to try to be a boss...
She was meaner than before.
Meaner than a junkyard dog.

Teachers of writing at the college level are confused as never before about what they should be teaching their writers. Most of the confusion results from the impact of information technology—and, more specifically, the Internet—on the lives of their students. These teachers get little support and guidance from their institutions and mentors on how to identify and respond to the changes of electronic communication; there is little consensus in the field of composition as to exactly what teachers of writing need to understand about emergent technologies in order to do their jobs. Both in popular culture and the media, new forms of electronic writing such as blogs and wikis have recently garnered a lot of attention, yet no one is sure exactly how to respond in the classroom to these new forms of writing. If the teachers quoted are any example, teachers of writing are still wrestling with issues of academic authority initiated by the advent of the World Wide Web more than ten
years ago.
The technical definition of a wiki is, surprisingly, the simplest: A wiki is a webpage users can modify. The earliest known wiki, the WikiWiki- Web project, was envisioned essentially as a software development tool; it started on May 1, 1995, when a software programmer named Ward Cunningham posted a note to a developers’ electronic mailing list (c2.com/cgi/
wiki?InvitationToThePatternsList). Cunningham had developed a database to collect the contributions of the mailing list’s members. He had noticed that the content of the list tended to get buried, and therefore the most recent poster might be ignorant of posts preceding his or hers.
A wiki is a software piece that combines the contemporaneous focus of an electronic mailing list with the data storage capabilities of a database. It is an electronic mailing list with a memory. Knowing these details, however, does not capture the full dynamic of writing in a wiki; even experienced writing teachers will find that contemporary electronic writing environments present challenges to their conceptualization of the writing classroom. There can be little doubt that wikis are already a part of their students’ writing experiences. Writing teachers know they are training students to write in a landscape that, if the last decade serves as any indicator, will probably be radically transformed by as yet unforeseen aspects of electronic literacy.
These teachers do not need another book on hypertext or new media theory. What they do need is an overview of which particular aspects of the ever-evolving information technology field have the greatest potential to impact the lives of their students as writers. And, counter to what might be expected, such an overview need not be immediately obsolete due to the fluid details of technology: if guidance for composition teachers can stay focused on how emergent technology shapes writing practices and environments, rather than on the nuances of the technology itself, a great deal of information can be summarized in some useful ways. Examining the ways in which CBPP affects writing environments and writers’ motivations for composing will lead teachers of writing to the most concise and relevant key for translating rapid technological developments.
But it will take some work to make a useful connection between existing composition pedagogy and the future writing landscape of our students. Teachers of college writing should be confused, for the rhetorical foundation of their training, practices, research, and basic instincts as teachers has fragmented. Aristotle’s touchstone rhetorical triangle— indelibly positioning us into the roles of speaker, speech, and audience— is less and less the monolith it seemed five years ago. Even contemporary appraisals, which accommodate the anxieties of postmodernist thinking, have been further ruptured by the continual evolution of computer applications that would appear to be furthest removed from the teaching of writing in the college classroom.
(Robert E. Cummings.- Teaching Writing in the Age of Wikipedia, 12-13)

If you are only buying your own home to "invest" in property you may find the next couple of years a little disappointing.

Most predictions for house prices for 2011 are that they will be lower by the end of the year than the beginning.

I do not see any sustained house price growth re-emerging until 2013.

If you are buying a home to make money over the short term then do not buy at the moment.

If, on the other hand, you are buying a home to keep you warm and dry, and to give you privacy and self determination, then any time is a good time.

How much to borrow?
In the past this was an easy issue - lenders simply offered a multiple of your income, for instance two and a half times your salary.

Now, because of the level of unsecured debt many of us carry, and the information available from credit agencies, most lenders use credit scoring and affordability techniques that make this calculation more opaque.

If you have little debt then up to four times your salary might be available.

As a first step, look at a lender' s website and search out their affordability calculators and see how you fare.

This simple task might remove all hope of buying at the moment, or confirm that you can make the sums work.

Getting help
If your income does not appear high enough to buy the sort of home you want, you could consider involving a parent.

They may be as keen as you are to help you move out and could become a joint borrower or a guarantor for your mortgage.

Alternatively you could pool resources and buy with a friend or partner, which could help you move or get a property of an appropriate size.

Make sure you have a robust legal agreement in place to cover what happens if you go your separate ways.

This can be difficult to negotiate when you end on less than friendly terms.

How much deposit?
Clearly this will depend on the price of the property you find, but for the most attractive rates you would need to put down 30% of the purchase price.

The higher a loan as a percentage of the purchase price, the higher the interest rates will be.

For instance, today a 70% two-year fixed interest rate loan would carry interest charges ranging from 2.8% to 4.5%.

Whereas, if you could qualify for a 90% loan - which are few and far between - the interest rate would range from 5% to 7%.

So, based on a typical UK mortgage of £150,000, the monthly cost could vary from £700 to £1,070 depending on the deposit you have available.

Other costs
Do not forget that the monthly charge will not be the only expense involved.

Stamp duty is normally charged on purchases above £125,000 at 1% of the purchase price.

This is currently suspended until 24 March 2012.

If you buy for more than £250,000 you will need to fund a 3% stamp duty payment.

You will also need to pay for a valuation, and ideally a survey, for the property you buy as well as paying for legal fees and removal costs.

All this can add up to thousands, or even tens of thousands, of pounds.

So you must have access to funds beyond the deposit itself.

Shared ownership
What if you simply do not have access to that kind of deposit?

You have a choice - wait to build up a larger one or considered a "shared ownership" purchase.

Typically under such schemes, housing associations allow you to buy 25% of a property and rent the balance until you can afford to buy the rest of it in stages.

The level of deposit required will come down and be closer to 5% of a full purchase price.

Repayment or interest only mortgage?
Assuming you can afford it, the safest way ahead would be to take a repayment mortgage in which you steadily pay off both the interest and a small chunk of the loan each month.

Most lenders of high percentage loans will insist that you take such a route.

For lower percentage borrowers, lenders might offer you the choice of an interest-only loan.

This will be easier on your cash flow and has been favoured by many buyers in the past but is also a riskier choice.

It is also one that is generally frowned upon by the Financial Services Authority (FSA) so it is becoming more difficult to obtain.

Overall, buying a home for the first time will be a fraught and stressful process, as will future moves.

So do not lose sight of your original motivation and do not expect to make a profit on buying in the short term.

(Sep 13th 2011 ) Hi, everyone, How are you all?It`s been a long time. Yes, long time no see. I didn`t write English entries for a while / several days. By the way, the entry below is my Chinese entry from yesterday. I`ve been busy for a while, but today I could (finally) come here and write today`s entry. So I reread last year's entries, and rewrote them. But I feel that writing (such an) entry in English is not easy yet, so I`ll just simply talk about some videos which I took yesterday.
All of those videos were that I took were with my smart phone on Korean thanksgiving day, ChuSek. The first video is one that I took in "the West Seoul lake park". When airplane fly over, those fountains start spouting, because those fountains are started by airplane noise. When airplne fly those fountains are spo ting, becasue those fountains are acted by airplane noise. It` s so fun and nice idea!
And the other videos are also taken in Seoul. I hope it will help your understanding Seoul even a little
=I hope it will help your understanding of what Seoul is really like. Good night!

I am rewriting my entry from last year.But I`m not sure if I have/made/ the other any mistakes.
If you find my mistakes, please correct them.♠ THANK YOU FOR YOUR READING.----(2010.9.8)Yesterday late night (Late last night) my husband returned from Beijing.He said he will take an(the) airport-bus to come home,so I didn`t need go out to the airport,I just needed to drive to the bus stop to pick him up.(=I just went to meet him at the bus stop in my car.)So when I prepared to go out, I found Betty lying still with her eyes closed in her house.
=So when I prepared went out, I found Betty lied still as closed her eyes in her house.
=So when I was preparing to go out, I found Betty lying still with her eyes closed in her house.
=As I was preparing to go out, I found Betty lying still with her eyes closed in her house. =As I was going out, I found Betty in her house lying still with her eyes closed.

Suddenly I felt something strange, and she looked ill.
=Suddenly I felt it was something strange, she looked like she was ill.
=I immediately felt it was something strange. She looked ill.

I called her, but she didn`t move a muscle. I touched her head but she didn`t open her eyes.
This was her first time not opening her eyes after I touched her.(=This is the the first time she didn`t open eyes when I touched her.)She didn`t open her eyes?
It`s the first time while live with her 10 years and 7monthes.
=It was the first time after 10 years and 7 months of living with her.
=It's the first time in the 10 years and 7 months I lived with her .
After meeting my husband, we stopped at an animal hospital.Betty was bore "Zzang-A" at that hospital 7 years and 7 months ago.Betty had/ gave birth to Zzang-A at that hospital 7 years and 7 months ago."What can I do? Betty`s eyes ~~?
Why?Really strange???This morning when I went out I didn`t find any sort of problem with her.Emmmm.....
The doctor said her crystalline lens has shrunk, it`s a very rare situation.
=The doctor said her crystalline lens had shrunk, and that it`s a very rare situation.
=The doctor gave Betty an injection in/ with grain tailings,
I pray she will soon get better,,,,She is old now, so I hope her old age passes easily!
I have to go to the hospital now with Betty.