Citation Classification

In my opinion, the best way to classify the citations theroies is to divived them to two gourps; the citied author and the citing author. For the citied auther, citation will protect his copyrights from plaigrism. It will work as a mutual rwarding system for his contribution (Ravetz 1971). And, the are a way to show respect to other authors.

On the other hand, the writer of the article himself will benefit from citation as well. As per Gilbert, citations are tools of persuasion; writers use citations to give their statement great authority (Gilbert 1977). Citation can proof the author qualifications of his subject, when, he cites great scholars work in his research (Baveals 1978). Moreover, citation can help a lot during introduction structure, it can create research space for the citing author by reflecting other research done in this field (Swales 1990).

Introduction Structure for Academic Paper

A rhetoric for professional writing: Global Writing

Gervasi, Anne. 1992. A rhetoric for professional writing: Global writing. Ph.D. diss., Texas Woman's University, http://search.proquest.com/docview/304016229?accountid=11243 (accessed September 20, 2011). View this document in ProQuest

A contrastive rhetoric study of Arabic and English research article introductions

Al-Qahtani, Abdulkhaleq. 2006. A contrastive rhetoric study of arabic and english research article introductions. Ph.D. diss., Oklahoma State University, http://search.proquest.com/docview/304939944?accountid=11243 (accessed September 20, 2011). View this document in ProQuest

"Why Societies Collapses" by Dr. Jared Diamond

In the presentation titled "Why Societies Collapse" presented by Jared Diamond in TED Talks, Diamond started his speech with few examples of collapsed societies in history such as the Easter Islanders and the classic Maya and the Yucatan. Then, he expressed the last decade scientist belief in climate changes as the causes behind these collapses. However, Diamond had a different view in regards to the factors of collapse where he explained five factors and how we can contribute to minimize the effect of them.

Human impact on environments was the first factor such as deforesting to make iron by the Vikings. The second was climate changes. Third is good relations with neighboring societies who extend their support to weak societies. Fourth, relations with hostile societies. The last factor, some cultural, political and social factors.

Moreover, he stated two generalizations behind these collapses that are not controllable by us. The well-known fact that societies collapse as they reached their peak.  And the uncontrollable climate changes such as earthquakes, hurricanes and volcanoes.

By analyzing all factors and studying the history of these collapsed societies, Diamond discussed two important reasons why the people of these societies could not prevent or at least minimize the consequences of the elements behind the fall of these civilizations. First is the conflict of interest between the short-term interests of the societies’ leaders and the long-term interests for the whole community. Second is the disagreement between the good decisions and some of the societies’ valued beliefs such as religion.

At the end of his presentation, he explored the two possible directions available to resolve the issue. Either by our will to do the necessary actions to rectify the problem or against our will by different means such as war, hunger and disease.

Paraphrasing

Example 1:

As Mr. Hirsch highlighted before, the president has to involve national and international leaders to undertake the problem of oil supply. Consulting those expert is part of his duties to resolve this issue. Later, he simply can shot that " the emperor has no cloths" and this is our plan to rectify the situation. However, broadcasting such terrible news is very difficult especially that people do not like to hear about bad news. But, as we hide the problem further, our economy falls a part more resulting in more recession.

Informatin Flow

Example 1:

The current studies could result in a new political philosophy that can affect our country for years to come.

Example 2:

From economical view, renting textbooks rather than purchasing them for basic courses such as math, statistics and English is much feasible considering that they do not go through yearly changes.

Example 3:

In large Chinese universities, the chances for teachers to work with individual students are limited.

Example 4:

 Teachers giving an assignment of a long final term paper at the end of the semester and grading them without any critical comments is a common complain across colleges' students.

Example 5:

Teacher who gives a long final term paper assignment and only grade them without any critical comments is a common complain across colleges' students.

Example 6:

In my opinion, the greatest threat to American democracy is the executive's tendency to assume the authority to declare war.

Example 7:

During the rule of Queen Elizabeth, The story of King Lear and his daughters was a popular one. By the time Elizabeth died, there were many available books offered the story to anyone wishing to read it. In most of these stories, the characters were underdeveloped, however, the story stated an obvious moral considering the simple narrative of it. At the beginning of Shakespeare work on Lear, one of his greatest tragedies, he have had several versions of the story available to him. Although, the characters were based on typical figures of legend, he turned them into credible human beings with complex motives.

Example 8:

The prediction of oil prices is very hard. For instance, in the first quarter of 1999, the cost of an oil barrel was $11. However, the prices have risen sharply in 2001 and 2002, despite the analysis prediction of a fall. Manly, there are two factors which affects oil prices: demand and supply. Simply, as the supply decreases, the prices increases. As an example, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on US gulf of Mexico and the accident in Bombay caused a huge implications in oil production which resulted in an increased prices of oil barrel. Such implications are so difficult to be predicted which leads to the difficulty in predicting oil prices.

The Time Management Matrix

Post graduate life is totally different than someone’s undergraduate or work life. For undergraduate, time is always sufficient to do homeworks, review lectures and prepare for exams, if the student plan his daily schedule very well. Even in the career life, employees have a cushion of more than four hours of their normal working hours that can help their busy schedule for certain days.

On the other hand, one of the major challenges in post graduate students’ life is time management, where they suffer the most from planning their very short time with their daily duties and action plans. In almost every single day, graduate student has to read tremendous amount of pages about his or her research, work out many exercises and homeworks and meets with his project team to develop their project and submit it before the dead line.

Many recommendations have been presented by professionals and old post students to help out current graduate in managing their time, such as prioritization and well established calendars throughout the year. Besides that, there is a very smart technique created by Stephen R. Covey in his book “The Seven Habits for Highly Effected People” called Time Management Matrix which can help students a lot to manage their time by combining both previous techniques prioritization and academic calendar. Following figure can illustrate the structure of the Time Management Matrix.

Fig: The Time Management Matrix (Stephen R. Covey)

Simply, this matrix divides graduate students' daily activities in to four different quartiles based on urgency and importance (Urgent Important, Important not Urgent, Not Important not Urgent and Urgent not Important). Each one of these four quartiles has its own time frame and action priority. For example, medical emergencies and short notice deadlines shall be in the first quartile. Because, they are important and have to be done now (urgent). In contrast, playing video games and watching movies should be in quartile three as not important not urgent. Other interruptions such as phone calls, emails and meeting can be considered as urgent but not important and placed in the fourth quartile. The best way to handle such interruption is to delegate someone else to do them in your behalf. Finally, the rest of graduate student’s activities such as; reading lecture notes, building relationships and exercising are in the important not urgent quartile, where graduate student has enough time to plan them according to their priority.

Following the Time Management Matrix simple and smart approach can organize the graduate student’s academic life in very effective manner and help him to do many of his several activities in a very short frame window.