Article response paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 3

Response paper - Article Example The problems of the ESL students are mainly at the sentence level. Their writing problems are different as compared to the students of native speakers. It begins at the word and sentence levels. They face difficulties in every component of the sentence, and with spelling, grammar and word usage. The essential difference between the native speakers and ESL students is that the former can speak English correctly, as such they can also write correctly. The latter have skills in their native language. They have ideas but their issues relate to the use of appropriate words and grammatical errors confront them. Personal observations/comments On close examination of the article, I realized the importance of the rater and the challenges the ESL students have to face in reading or writing in English. They have problems in several segments of life, and racial segregation overrides all other considerations. Low self-efficacy, financial difficulties, separation from immediate family members and friends, highly different cultural environment, all these contribute to the problems related to assimilation in the mainstream society. Student behavior in classroom in America differs much and the discipline is loose. They can come late to the class, question teachers, cut jokes and this type of behavior is not accepted in the Chines classrooms. Their main difficulties are in the areas of form, morphology, terminology and syntax which vary from their native language. They may have ideas but lack expression; as such the audience may not be able to follow the contents. The difficulties for acquisition of skills in writing differ for various cultural groups of ESL students. Before reading the article I used to consider the problem of the ESL student’s writing in isolation. On the strength of the various issues mentioned in the article, I now realize that it is but one of the multifarious problems faced by the student and the improved ability of the student in writing may addres s to partial solution of some of those issues. ESL students are a heterogeneous lot. Much difference exists even when the students are from the same country as they belong to different States/Regions, where slang, tradition and culture differ. With such varied cultural and linguistic backgrounds the assessment of their English writing is beset with problems. Some sort of reconciliation will have to be worked out to arrive at an authentic solution, as it concerns the career of the combustible younger generation. In a competitive job market, each mark, each recommendation counts. So, the rater may build or break the career of an ESL student, unintentionally though, with the deficient system of rating. The author is aware of this complexity and has mentioned twenty reviews and given details of those empirical studies as for the factors affecting rating of ESL writing in North American school contexts, segregating them as rater-related and task-related and has highlighted their importan t components. These factors are not exclusive and research on the subject is a continual process and the author has informed that in the light of the experience gained, gaps and proposed directions for future research have been identified. The author emphasizes a number of times in the article that assessment of writing is the problematic area for which no cut and dry formula cannot be submitted as the final word on the subject. He quotes Speck and Jones (1998), â€Å"there are more problems than solutions -problems of inter-grader

Manage IT Security for the London Olympic 2012 games Essay

Manage IT Security for the London Olympic 2012 games - Essay Example A safety and security strategy and security measures have been set up to respond to these. According to BBC News (2011), 13,500 armed forces personnel and 10,000 police officers will be deployed during the Olympics to enforce security. This will be backed by 50 marine officers in fast response boats who will be joined by 100 military personnel (Seida 2012). The structure of the safety and security strategy has been built around strategic objectives and each of these be will be delivered though a special programme headed by a programme manager. The Protect Programme will ensure the safety and security of games sites, infrastructure and venues, and people involved in the Games. The Programme will also consider protecting people travelling to the Games. The Prepare Programme will provide specialist response by ensuring that the necessary contingencies and workforce are in place to manage events that could significantly compromise or disrupt the security of the Games. The Identify and Di srupt Programme will provide the required capacity and capability to identify and disrupt all forms of threats to the Games. Command, Control, Plan and Resource (C2PR) programmes will ensure that required resources are available and can be deployed to the necessary sites to provide safety and security (Home Office 2012). One of the assumptions for this strategy is that the greatest security threat will be terrorism. Despite the above security, the potential IT security vulnerabilities of the event are still high and the major threat is identity theft. Vacca (2003) defines this as a type of crime where someone steals the identity of someone else and poses as that person. This is basically an identify fraud. In true-name ID fraud, the person’s identify information is not modified. Terrorists are also likely to stealing key pieces information from people like driver’s license numbers and social security numbers and combine them with fake information to create new identiti es which they will use to gain entry into the games venues. This is called synthetic ID fraud as noted by McFadden (2010). Criminals could pose as fans, players, visitors and even London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG) officials. Once they gain entry into the venues, they commit terrorist attacks. They can also use these IDs to obtain goods and services. ID theft is a form of cyber crime. Giles (2010) explains that hackers access personal information of other people online. To get this information, the terrorists could send messages posing as the official website for LOCOG, trying to sell tickets. As people respond, they get their personal details and use them to make fake IDs. ID theft could also result from phishing attacks like man-in-the-middle phishing. This is where a criminal positions themselves between the legitimate site and the user (Emigh and Labs 2005). In this way, they will save valuable information from different sources and send false messages bet ween LOCOG and its users. To detect this, LOCOG will have to setup a spoof-reporting email address that users will send mails to. This will provide