Effective Papers: April 2010

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Thesis on English

In Taiwan, the Ministry of Education has conducted the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) in English teaching in junior high schools. However, the teaching pedagogy and material and purpose of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), which comes from Western countries, are not suitable to Taiwan junior high school students and teachers, resulting from the policy of entrance examination, class size, teachers’ quality, and students’ attitude. It is suggested that designing curriculum suitable to the real situation of educational environment, improving the entrance examination, training qualified teachers, and changing students’ attitude will help to promote the efficiency of Communicative Language teaching in junior high schools in Taiwan. It needs further research to design to the curriculum combining the communicative approach and grammar-translation approach, which is appropriate to English learning in junior high schools in Taiwan.

Introduction
English is an essential subject in junior high school in Taiwan. Parents and teachers expect that the students can successfully pass the exam, get higher education, and find a good job with proficient English in the future. However, English learning in junior high school at present either confuses or troubles students, parents, and even teachers, which results in a conflict between Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and grammar-translation teaching. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is strongly recommended and launched by the Ministry of Education of the government and many professional English educators in Taiwan.
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Research has showed that Communicative Language Teaching promotes students’ proficiency in English. James D. Allen and Sun Changshun (1999) demonstrated the successful teaching of a middle school teacher, who used Communicative Language Teaching to motivate students’ interest in learning English. Chi-Kim Cheung (2001) suggested using public culture in the communicative approach to fit students’ psychological and social needs and stimulated students’ interest in learning in the classroom. Yi Yang (1999) stated that the communicative approach provided the four skills of English competence--listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Yi’an Wu (2001) claimed that cultivating a qualified teacher and designing specialized materials helped carry out this new teaching method. Liming Yu (2001) even suggested making laws to effect the new change in English teaching.

However, most of the researches mentioned above claimed to abandon grammar-translation approach, except Yang (1999). In Yang’s (1999) research, grammar knowledge provided the basis of language development, “like building a house, you first have to construct a foundation so that your house is firm and strong”(p.35). In addition, in Defeng Li’s (1998) research, Communicative Language Teaching did not make English learning successful in some Asian countries, like South Korea, Japan, and China.

Although the efficiency of traditional grammar translation has caused a lot of debate because students lack listening and speaking competence, many teachers and parents still want to maintain this old teaching method because many grammatical questions are still focused on in the entrance examination, and those students taught with Communicative Language Teaching do not upgrade their English proficiency. Thus, the efficiency of this new approach is also challenged by some factors, which result from the basic conditions of the educational policy, the exam, the teachers, and the students. The situation is similar to other Asian countries in Li’s (1998) research.

The issues in this paper are ascertained from my experience and observation in the junior high school in Taiwan for seventeen years. In my teaching, I usually explained and translated the grammatical structures sentence by sentence in the textbook within a limited time. Most of my colleagues and my friends who are English teachers in other junior high schools teach in the same way. Our students just listened, took notes, and prepared for the tests in English class. By drawing on the experiences of the research above, it is suggested that reforming the examination, training qualified teachers, evoking students’ interest in English will help to promote the communicative approach in junior high school. In addition, the issues in this paper make English educators in Taiwan contemplate that abandoning the grammar-translation approach is not the best way to promote the quality of English learning in junior high schools in Taiwan. The best way is to keep grammar teaching and to make CLT fit the conditions of English teaching in Taiwan.

How to make Communicative Language Teaching fit the conditions of English teaching in junior high schools leads to further deliberation in the design of curriculum, which should attract the attention of those people who are responsible for educational policy decision, and to those who engage in English learning and teaching.

The difference aspects between Communicative Language Teaching and traditional grammar-translation teaching:

The communicative approach emphasizes to learn of the functional and meaningful language and to use student-centered activities, which focus on creating natural-like learning situations. On the other hand, the grammar translation emphasizes the acquisition of accurate forms and grammar rules. Yang (1999) indicated, “ The no-grammar front is represented by Krashen (1982), who distinguished between language learning and language acquisition. The former refers to conscious learning assisted by explicit rules, the latter to subconscious learning developed from natural communication” (p.31). Patsy M. Lightbown & Nina Spada (1999) pointed out that for Krashen, the process of second language acquisition was similar to the acquisition of the first language, which was through the natural and subconscious order, not the orders of the rules learned in class. Learning the rules can not acquire language.
“Krashen’s assertion has been very influential in supporting communicative language teaching…. ,with its primary focus on using language for meaningful interaction and for accomplishing tasks, rather than on learning rules, has won support form many teachers and learners”(p.40).

The factors affecting the efficiency of English learning:

According to Li’s (1998) research, there are difficulties in carrying out Communicative Language Teaching in some Asian countries, like China, Japan, and South Korea, where English is taught as a foreign language and in a large size of class—40 to 50 students in a class. These difficulties come from the teachers’ English proficiency and burdened work, the students’ attitude, the educational system, and Communicative Language Teaching itself. From my observation, English learning in junior high schools in Taiwan encounters the same conditions. Virginia Logastro (2001) indicates that language learning in a large class has difficulties in pedagogy, management-relationship, and affection, especially, the difficulties in “carrying out speaking, reading, and writing tasks… in monitoring work and giving feedback…in setting up communicative tasks …in attending to all students during class time… assessing students’ interests and moods… pair and group work often cumbersome to execute”(p.494). In Yu’s (2001) research, the resistance of CLT in China is due to the concept of the teachers who doubt the effective of CLT in teaching because their students do not promote their proficiency in English. Wu (2001) claimed that without qualified teachers, specialized materials, and formative assessments, it would be difficult to spread new change in English teaching in China. In my estimation, Taiwan also struggles in the similar situation.

The goal of English learning in junior high schools in Taiwan, formulated by the Ministry of Education, is to cultivate students’ communicative competence, interest of learning second language, and the knowledge of national and foreign culture. The textbook is compiled by National Institute of Compilation and Translation, which changed the materials of grammar translation into the communicative approach in1997.

Students are expected to learn the basic competence of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Initially, many people believed that Communicative Language Teaching promoted by the government could improve the quality of English learning in junior high schools.

However, many teachers and parents begin to complain that the communicative approach neither improves students’ English competence nor contributes to their scores on the entrance examinations. This leads us considering whether Taiwan has the conditions of conducting this approach. The factors below are drawn from my teaching experience and observation in the junior high school for seventeen years.

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Thesis on Water

Comprising over 70% of the Earth's surface, water is undoubtedly the most precious natural resource that exists on our planet. Without the water life Earth would be non-existent, it is essential for everything on our planet to grow and prosper. Although humans recognize this fact, we disregard it by polluting our rivers, lakes and oceans. Water pollution causes a number of problems such as diseases and killing the fishes. It is harmful for human beings and animals. This thesis will argue that the water pollution includes industrial effluent, flooding and thermal pollution. However, there are some solutions to prevent these problems like make a law to control water pollution or make dams to stop the flooding etc.

First of all, one of the main causes of water pollution is industrial effluent, because the factories let the polluted water go into the lakes or rivers, and make the water polluted. The industry water contains various kinds of chemicals like acid, hydroxide which are harmful to the water and to aquatic life. If people drink the water, which is polluted, it can cause cancer, suppress immune systems and disrupt hormones. Also illegal dumping of chemical kill the nature lives in the river like fish, crab, etc (Stauffer 1998 & Connell 1974).

In addition, flooding also causes water pollution. Floodwater is combined by normal water, runoff water, rain, and possible other kinds of water, which are dirty and full of pollution. Also,where the floodwater goes over any places, the water in the area are polluted (Dickson 1999). And floodwater contains various kinds of viruses which could cause bad disease. For example, as a result of serious flooding, the World Health Organization (WHO) has recorded that in 1999 people were killed when an epidemic of leptospirosis spread. As is well known, China floods every year. People died from the diseases which cause by the flood such as infectious diarrhea, hepatitis A, conjunctivitis and malaria (China Daily 2003). Floods affect more cultivated and total land area than other types of nature disease phenomena (Dickson 1999 & State Statistical Bureau of the People's Republic of China 1988).
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Furthermore, thermal pollution causes water pollution, which is unwanted heat accumulation in a lake or river when water is returning to the nature water body. Much aquatics life in the water will be killed if the waterбпs temperature goes higher than normal temperature. The reason for why the waterбпs temperature goes up is that power stations use the water to cool the heat exchanges and let this cooling water go into the lake or river (Mannion & Bowlby 1992). The effects of adding heat to water are very complex, but increases of about 2 degrees are known to seriously affect fish and other aquatic life (Mannion & Bowlby 1992). Increasing water temperature also raises the metabolic rate in organisms and also increases their oxygen requirements, although there is less oxygen available at higher temperature. This causes the aquatic to die (Mannion & Bowlby 1992 & Connell 1974).

Water is the most important resource on the earth. So we have to prevent the water pollution. We can prevent the water pollution in two ways. In order to combat water pollution, we must understand the problems and become part of the solution.

Firstly, governments can play an important role in preventing and controlling water pollution. They have to make laws to control the polluted water from factories like fines. Fines can be either an incentive or a penalty. For example, governments can establish fines based on the concentration of pollution in industrial effects. These water effluent charges have been used successfully in Australia, France, and German etc. For instance, Germany is heavily industrialized influent in Ruhr valley. After using the implementation of charge, water quality in Ruhr Valley improved rapidly (Stauffer 1998).

Secondly, to prevent water pollution, we need to prevent floods. We can build dams to prevent flooding in those flooding area. The dams prevent the floodwater going somewhere and polluting the river, lake etc. Also the dams decrease water surface elevations. In addition, the dam will provide erosion control by reducing excessive flow rates of the downstream dam (Erika 2003). Except building dams people need to stop the landslides around the river because landslides will cause floods. In China, the government started to plant a lot of trees along the Yellow River to prevent landslides (Dickson 1999 & Stat Statistical Bureau of the Peopleбпs Republic of China 1988 & Erika 2003).

In conclusion, the water pollution contains industrial effluent, flooding and thermal pollution. However, there are some solutions to avoid these problems like make a law to control water pollution or build dams to stop the flooding etc. People must become familiar with their local water resources and learn about ways for protecting the river and lakes. These are just a few of many ways in which people, as human, have the ability to combat water pollution.

Research Paper on Women

Until recent times the historiography of the Middle East, including that of Egypt, has suffered in several ways because of its concentration on a very narrow focus on political institutions, events and high culture with the result that women and the lower classes have remained virtually invisible. In addition, the "Islamic" definition of history and culture promoted the idea of Middle Eastern history as Сthe embodiment of Islamic spirit, rather than the outcome of the complex interactions of material forces and ideological structures."

According to Judith Tucker, focus on written sources has tended to dictate the manner in which students of history have developed their methods. The result is that historians tended to limit themselves by neglecting archaeological sources, oral traditions and anthropological evidence. But over the past twenty years the lives of the urban and working classes have been studied largely because of these sources. Women, however, received little or no attention in these studies but, running in parallel with this history; a body of work has emerged in which the lives and experiences of women have been revealed. Gradually women's rights emerged as a contentious issue for Muslim societies as the history of women became a debate over their place in Islam.

Anthropological research has been of particular importance in the study of Egyptian women because it has provided the means for historians to explore not just the lives of elite women but also those from the middle and lower classes. What has emerged from the research is not a picture of secluded silent women but women who participated, throughout history, in informal political movements, in protests against deprivation or acts of oppression of a ruling class or state power, and in nationalist movements. Despite this, it is the custom of veiling and seclusion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that has and still continues to attract the most interest and has led to many false generalisations. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, imprecise reading of Arabic texts and travellers' interpretations of the practices and observed customs of Islam, for example, often led to grossly inaccurate assumptions regarding Egyptian women.
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Powerfully evocative words such as harem, the veil and polygamy were frequently used in contexts, which justified widely held Western views that Egypt and indeed the whole of the Middle East was backward. The veil, for example, was never just about women, rather Сits connotations encompassed issues of class and culture - the widening cultural gulf between different classes in society and the interconnected conflict between the culture of the colonisers and that of the colonised. Women's issues, then, were never just about women's rights. Instead, they became inextricably bound up with issues of nationalism, politics and culture. As a result, writers have looked "behind", "beyond" and through the veil in an attempt to understand women's place in society. In other words, "the veil has been the quintessential metaphor for Middle Eastern women, yet, it has also symbolised wealth, backwardness, religiosity, and political protest". Over the past twenty years the discourse regarding veiling, the social conditions of women and the development of feminist thought has been studied in depth. Thus historians have examined the fact that the veil signalled modesty and honour to male traditionalists in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Egyptian society while modernists saw it as a signal of backwardness. Women, at the time, on the other hand tended to balance the argument in a "broader context, balancing abstract arguments with practical considerations". In effect recent debate on women and the veil became the "discourse of the veil" where issues of class, culture, imperialism and nationalism all became linked with the issue of women. This research paper will attempt to examine that debate by looking at the period 1882-1923 when Egypt was colonised by the British whose perceptions of Islam was one of inferiority exemplified in its "unenlightened" cultural practice of veiling women. It will look at the dual struggle many Egyptian women faced between feminist consciousness and nationalism under colonialism. It will also examine how the feminist movement in Egypt between 1882 and 1923 which was essentially an urban movement and moreover a movement of middle and upper class women developed in a gender-segregated system.

Veiling and seclusion developed in the pre-Islamic Near East and usually signified upper and middle class urban women. It is first mentioned in an Assyrian legal text of the thirteenth century BC and was a sign of status. It existed in pre Islamic Iran and the Byzantine Empire; areas conquered by the first Muslims. Islamic traditions state that veiling and seclusion for all Muslim women are written in the Quran, believed to be the word of God. This contention has itself prompted strong debate among modern historians such as Nikki Keddie and Fatima Mernissi who either deny or assert that Mohammed intended all women to veil. Morality, fidelity and modesty were assured when women wore the veil according to Islamic traditionalists. However, the Quran appears to tell women to "cover their bosoms and their ornaments, later to mean all except the hands, feet, and perhaps the face." In 1991 Keddie argued that the Quran would not have specified the bosom if the intention had been to tell women to cover everything. She goes on to point out that the "Quran has been interpreted, against the meaning of its text, as enjoining veiling, whereas Quranic rules on adultery are rarely followed." The debate regarding veiling when focused on Egypt is interesting because it was the first Middle Arab country to experience European commercial expansion and to experiment with social change for women.

Egypt was governed by Mohammed "Ali Pasha, an Ottoman officer who established his own ruling dynasty, for much of the early part of the nineteenth century. He introduced a centralised system of government where the rural middle class, who owned most of the land, became politically and economically powerful dominating political and religious positions outside the urban areas. Most trade was with Europe, going through European merchants in Egypt and new institutions were introduced from Europe: banks, insurance companies and the stock exchange. The legal existence of women was not recognised, and business was conducted through males only. Government was structured in a manner that precluded women from economic involvement, a hierarchy that was imitated in the patriarchal family. Even women who inherited from relatives had little authority as the wealth was automatically turned over to the male in the family. It was not difficult for the image of the woman, limited to the home, raising children, to be applied to Egyptian elite and bourgeois. In other words Egyptian laws were very like the laws on property and inheritance in most European countries in the nineteenth century.

In this period urban women of all classes and women of the rural gentry veiled when they went outside the home while in the wealthy upper classes, eunuchs were used to guard women and children and prevent them from all contact with the outside world. Jews and Christians also practised domestic seclusion and veiling in Egypt at this time. When urban middle and upper class girls reached puberty, which was often as early as nine, they too were compelled to veil and were more closely guarded. Lower class women however, did not face the same restrictions regarding veiling, as it was not always practical because of their work in the fields. Colonialism however, changed the discourse on the veil to one on culture. The British believed that the natives needed civilising and set about imposing their "superior" culture on the colonised area and since women are the bearers of culture, their situation was first targeted and the first step was the veil.

British colonial rule began in 1882 and lasted until 1923. The most notorious British consul of the occupation period was Lord Cromer (1883-1907), an autocrat, whose control over Egypt was absolute. Industry and education were neglected and British officials were brought in to staff the bureaucracy, a policy that controversially prevented Egyptian civil servants from rising to the top of their fields. The economic impact of British reform measures was demonstrated by the acquisition of wealth by European residents of Egypt, the Egyptian upper and middle class, comprising primarily of men educated in Westernised secular schools who were functionaries in the civil service. These new "modern" men displaced the "traditionally and religiously trained "ulama" as administrators and servants of the state, educators, and keepers of the valued knowledges of society". Along with their economic "reforms", the British brought their educational system, which inculcated within the upper class Egyptians the view that their own culture was inferior.

According to Leila Ahmed, who has written extensively on Muslim women, Сissues of culture and attitudes towards Western ways were intertwined with issues of class and access to economic resources, position and status. Native Egyptian women's economic rights based on Islam were diminished as western British influence took over and Victorian standards of women being mere wives or decorative appendages to their husbands took over". Upper and many middle class Egyptian women followed western fashion often buying their clothes from Paris. While wealthy women wore a mixture of western and eastern dress they continued to wear the veil because it was a way of signifying status and wealth and it also demonstrated religious affiliation. Western style department stores began to appear in Cairo and Alexandria carrying imported textiles and ready made clothes and catering for secluded women by providing home showings. Notions of seclusion were challenged as architectural alterations in houses, new designs and use of urban space, carriageways and railroads eroded many restricting practices. As women adjusted to these new conditions and experiences, a new feminist consciousness began to emerge. This new awareness was as much influenced by the manner in which the British used feminism to degrade Islam.

According to Ahmed, the British used feminism as a Western discourse to justify their racism against Muslims while at home they were certainly far from feminists. She points out one aspect of Orientalism where self-contained histories dealing with the Middle East and Mediterranean tended to emphasise their separateness. They attributed Byzantine seclusion to "Oriental influences" distancing oppression of women from European societies and represented it as originating among non-Europeans. The implication was that Western civilisation, unlike that of the Middle East, was untainted by the unequal treatment of women. Not for the first time the British colonisers, who saw themselves as guardians of civilisation, concealed their greed with rhetoric based on saving the inferior and uncivilised masses. Western women too, when observing Muslim women, tended to express their opinions within their own societal context and use their own culture's norms to judge their Muslim counterparts. With few exceptions when travelling or writing about Egyptian women, they rarely took into consideration their own privileged positions when they attempted to try to help Muslim women "liberate" themselves and invariably they were still informed by their own racist assumptions.

However, as Ahmed points out, there was a further dimension to Egyptian women's oppression. Islamic women were pressured to remain silent and loyal and reconcile themselves to the central formulations of their culture, emphasising and re-affirming them to safeguard them against the West. In other words, "Islamic civilisation developed a construct of history that labelled the pre-Islamic period the Age Of Ignorance and projected Islam as the sole source of all that was civilised". While Fatima Mernissi concurs with this view, she stresses the egalitarian and ethical nature of Islam. Mernissi relies upon the interpretation of Islamic tradition that holds that before the establishment of Islam, human civilisation was characterised by social and moral chaos. For example, she concludes that a particularly discriminatory hadith which said that women were foolish and should not acquire wealth was "a throwback to the pre-Islamic customs of the jahiliyya, the era of ignorance when the criteria of good and evil had not yet been revealed. In this period, according to Mernissi, both Western and Islamic society was configured to maintain patriarchy and in the case of Islam, women's rights were denied "not because of the Quran, nor the Prophet, nor Islamic tradition, but simply because those rights conflict with the interests of a male elite." The Bible was frequently used in western culture in a similar manner to maintain patriarchy. Ahmed and Mernissi both agree that Muslim men wished to confine women, veil them and shut them out of the world. However, many Egyptian women, particularly from the upper and middle classes, had different views and, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, the emergence of a feminist consciousness inevitably challenged the maintenance of patriarchy. Most of these women had already had the benefit of education either from their fathers or from European tutors as well as instruction in Arabic and religion. In the middle and lower classes very few girls attended the traditional schools which taught basic reading skills and recitation of the Quran. Under British rule, the thrust of educational expansion begun under the khedival government (1863-79) was not only neglected but measures were introduced to curb it.

In Egypt, as in most Islamic countries, feminism emerged in the mid nineteenth century, from within the urban and middle class world where sex segregation and domestic seclusion based on Islam were still very much in force. This was a period of early social feminism, invisible to men, where women were beginning to expand their lives into public space. Upper class women offered poor women assistance in medical care and education for working class girls. Many also participated in the nationalist movement (1919-22) against British occupation, in street demonstrations, political organising and morale boosting. Upper and middle class women continued to wear the veil, "a symbol and function of sex segregation and female seclusion, signalling continued adherence to inherited conventions although many with a feminist consciousness had come to see it, in whole or in part, as oppressive". The term "feminism" was not used by these women at this stage but, according to Margot Badran, its use is appropriate as an Сanalytical concept which includes within its range a nascent awareness that women have been oppressed because of their sex and activity to remove such restraints.

The debate on veiling became more pronounced during the period of colonial domination. Women's role became linked with nationalism and the need for political and cultural reform. In other words, according to Ahmed, the veil emerged as a "potent signifier, connoting not merely the social meaning of gender but also matters of far broader political and cultural import." Nationalists such as TalТat Harb (1867-1941) who established the first national bank in Egypt in 1920, was strongly against unveiling arguing that it was emulating the West which was corrupt and decadent. Talat Harb was responding to a controversial book, "Tahrir El-Mar" (The Liberation of Women 1899), written by Muslim judge, Qassim Amin. This was often regarded as marking the beginning of feminism in Arab culture as a result of the way in which it challenged existing notions of the veil. Amin insisted on womenТs right to move outside the home and demanded adaptation of veiling where face and hands would be left uncovered. In the religious section of his book, Amin stated that the Sharia had never decreed veiling. He stressed how impractical and inconvenient it was for women whose faces were covered to carry out business or testify in court and argued that a groom should be able to see the face of the woman whom he planned to marry. Amin condemned veiling arguing that it was the main barrier to womenТs development and education and the main source of their ignorance. He maintained that an ignorant peasant would be more capable of coping with the difficulties of life than an elite urban lady who spoke French and played the piano. Harb, on the other hand, saw unveiling as a Western imperialist conspiracy.

Describing "liberated" women in the West as immoral who engaged in casual relationships, Harb argued that the current veil was inadequate and that women were doing their best to show their beauty from behind the veil. He stressed the importance of morality, fidelity and modesty and used the Quran as a source for convincing his reader of the validity of his arguments.

While it may not be an exaggeration to say that Amin's "Tahrir El-Mara" was one of the most controversial books in this period, he was not the sole pioneer of feminist ideas. Women themselves were by no means silent. On the contrary, they were using magazines, advice books, and domestic manuals to articulate their views and aims. They were meeting formally and informally to discuss their problems and grievances and solutions. They wrote essays for literary journals. Some even started journals and magazines, initiating a vibrant women's press. Journals such as Al-СA was started in 1892 and by 1919 more than thirty periodicals were being published in Egypt by women. Some women, however, rejected the trend of unveiling. Writers such as Fatima Rashid and Sarah al-Mihiyya urged women to follow the traditions of modesty and piety. Fatima Rashid wrote that the veil was "not a disease that holds us back, rather is our cause for happiness." She called on men to make their women veil when in 1910 urban women began to discard it. She and other Islamists linked unveiling to the encroachment of western ways arguing that Westernization eroded women's position by feeding materialism and undermining morality. Some believed that if "the hopes of Quasim Amin are realised, modesty will disappear, the loss of which will destroy religion." These women, in their own, way contributed to the emergence of women onto the public stage by forming associations, starting journals, writing in the national press and becoming politically aware. Amin's views, however, echoed those of many women who were publishing books of poetry and prose in the 1870s and 1880s. "Тishah al-Talmuriyah (1840-1902) became a writer and poet, was fluent in Arabic, Turkish and Persian and was described by future writers such as Lebanese Mayy Ziyadah and Egyptian Malak Hifni Nasif as the founding mother of feminism. Zaynab Fawwaz (1860-1914) playwright and poet, wrote essays and articles and in 1892 stated that "woman is a human being as man is, with complete mental faculties and acumen, and equivalent parts, capable of performing according to her own abilities.Т Later, feminist activists claimed many of these women as foremothers in the early twentieth century. Middle class women wrote in journals and no longer believed that they had transgressed any moral code. In this manner, women began to acquire a public space and a voice. This early "unveiling" of women's voices took different forms. The Lebanese-Palestinian essayist and poet, Mayy Ziyada, used biographical works to reveal the lives of women who were part of the women's emerging public voice and activism. Ziyada used this method too as a "filter through which her feminist views could emerge discreetly". She was greatly concerned about women' issues and supported reform in social services, education and the legal system. She wrote about famous women who had been significant in the "rise of women's awareness in the Arab world". Her work was published in 1919-20 when women of all classes were actively involved in boycotting the British and taking part in public demonstrations. Many including Ziyada also gave feminist speeches in the offices of the progressive newspaper al-Jarida. Women were beginning to recognise that they had a voice. Controversial issues such as unveiling in public and the social mixing of the sexes were discussed, particularly by women. They debated in the harem, attended lectures and even their philanthropic work was generally outside the sight of men. Women from the middle and upper classes attended lectures given at the new Egyptian University between 1909 and 1912, which had been heavily endowed by Princess Fatma.

In fact, the views and methods of Malak Hifni Nasif (1886-1918) and Huda ShaТrawi (1879-1947) offer an interesting insight into two very different interpretations of the issue of the veil by contemporary feminist activists. Malak Hifni Nasif wrote articles for publication in newspapers advocating womenТs rights but was firmly opposed to unveiling. She did not base her argument on text interpretation as had Harb and Amin but claimed in 1910 that women should remain veiled because of the immorality of some men who were capable of subjecting women to "foul language and adulterous glances".

Women who unveiled, she argued, were more interested in fashion rather than in education. She sent articles to local newspapers advocating women's rights specifically against polygamy, reflecting her own experience. Nasif, however, took the debate into the public domain when she presented, by proxy, a list of demands for women at the Egyptian (male) Congress in Heliopolis in 1911. Her petition included ten recommendations asking for more education and medicine for women, access to mosques, full involvement in public life and legal protection for women in marriage and divorce.

While all recommendations were rejected at least a feminist voice had been heard in the people's assembly even if it was through a mediator. While she did not advocate removal of the veil, she was the first woman to call for improved health, education and professional opportunities for women. Although she was unable to present her demands personally in public, it was still a considerable achievement. Nasif thus was in favour of promoting the cause of women within the system of sex segregation but not all Egyptian female activists were to subscribe to this method.

Huda ShaТrawi, one of the founders of the Egyptian Feminist Union in 1914, was a feminist nationalist activist and a central figure in early twentieth century Egyptian feminist. She was from the upper class and was part of the women's salon in the 1890s where women's issues were discussed. Through enlightened discussion conducted by Eugenie le Brun Rushdi, a French woman who became Muslim, Muslim upper class Egyptian women realised that many of the constraints imposed on them were not in the name of Islam. Rather, veiling and seclusion was a male imposed tradition. However, unlike the women mentioned earlier who had to confine their writing and discussions within the harem, Huda ShaТrawi and others began to take the debate outside the harem, albeit in public segregated places such as schools and the University of Egypt.

The Egyptian Feminist Union focused on women's suffrage and increased education for women together with changes in the Personal Status laws. ShaТrawi was very involved in the Egyptian nationalist struggle, and was one of the organisers of a march of upper and middle class women against the British in 1919. She was also very committed to projects such as the Mabarrat Muhammad Ali (1909) which was founded by upper class women and brought medical assistance and healthcare advice to lower class women in their own neighbourhoods. ShaТrawi saw this work as a first step towards female liberation. It gave poor women greater independence and at the same time enabled upper class women to have a role outside the harem. This was the first visible act of independence by upper class women prior to their public support of the nationalist protest in 1919. Upon her return from the ninth Congress of the Internationals Women's Suffrage Alliance in Rome in 1923, ShaТrawi declared her denunciation of the veil and took it off in a dramatic act in public at a Cairo train station. The significance of this act, however, must not be exaggerated as ShaТrawi herself argued for a gradual approach to removal of the veil. In fact, unveiling was never part of the formal agenda of the EFU but, more importantly, women for the first time were rejecting segregation and invisibility and publicly launching themselves on the scene as feminists. During the 1919 Revolution women held their own marches and struggled for not just independence but also a nation that had a place for them. Women from the lower classes demonstrated in the streets and carried out act of militancy such as cutting rail lines. Women, however, were never full partners. Male Egyptians supported anti-British protests such as these and during the arrest and repeated exiles of nationalist leaders the wife of nationalist leader often acted in his place and became a symbol of nationalist commitment in her own right. When the nation was being defended criticism about women's public role was muted, the formation of the Wafdist Women's Committee, for example, was the first women's political organisation. With ShaТrawi as president, it was very active and influential in the revolution as the Wafdist men were arrested. During long periods when the men were interned Wafdist women leaders ensured that protests were planned and maintained communication with the absent leaders. Women engaged in anti British economic boycotts. Male leaders acknowledged the active participation of women in the Wafd and some even agreed that women should become part of the movement as a whole and would work for this after independence. However this attitude changed in 1922 when Egypt gained formal independence when much to the dismay of ShaТrawi and other women activists the new government denied women suffrage. The government barred women from the opening of the Egyptian Parliament. ShaТrawi led a delegation of women to picket the opening issuing a list of thirty-two feminist, social and nationalist demands. Egyptian women were now demonstrating against the indigenous patriarchal system rather than the British. The women even criticised the terms of independence, which left British troops in Egypt. Clearly the male Wafd no longer needed the support of the women and resented their insistence on political rights as citizens. Eventually, in 1924, ShaТrawi split from the Wafidist Central Committee, and began to devote her time to the EFU.

The generally restrictive attitude of men in this period is clear in the gender segregation of society and veiling of women. This attitude was invariably couched in a language of morality, which it clearly was not. Veiling and seclusion were used to restrict women within the territory of their men in what was little more than an assertion of property rights. Part of the problem with the debate on the veil in late the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is that it was never likely that the men, whether traditionalists or modernists, would come together to argue the issues. Those who opposed it wrote and lectured in contexts completely alienated from those advocating it. Those opposing the veil were considered imperialists to some and pioneering emancipators to others. This debate, of course, did not include women's discourse. Yet women met, formed organisations, wrote and published extensively in literary journals. The women's press was an important forum in the debate on women in a society segregated by gender for women who felt comfortable in their own space. It was also important for women to have the platform to express their views on social and domestic issues. Egyptian women had some substantial early independence of thought and action and while feminism was used as an earlier tool by Western colonisers to advance their perceptions that Islam was a barbaric and uncivilised religion, it is an extreme injustice to early Egyptian feminists to dismiss their work as dictated to them by the west, or indeed to assert that their activism was not motivated by specifically Egyptian problems. Western discourse has generally linked issues of culture and women with the West as liberator and Islam as the oppressor. Consequently women's issues were always trapped within issues of culture when it is neither Islam nor Arabic culture that is the target of criticism. Rather Egyptian feminists were challenging the laws and customs that expressed indifference to women, or misogyny. Of course it is important to note that the subservient or secondary role of women in society is no Islamic invention, such a role has been common to virtually all societies throughout the ages and women have been trying to change the hierarchical relationships that have existed throughout those ages.

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Research Paper on School

Dropout rates are increasing because of the increase in population. On an up to date research accomplished by Thomas DeLeire and Ariel Kalil related to dropout rates in America, they used enrollment and graduation data from school records to obtain the following results. "The ratio of high school graduates to grade nine enrollment three years earlier in California has consistently hovered around 0.69-0.74 throughout the last half of the 1990s, suggesting a four-year dropout rate of about 25-30 percent (DeLeire and Kalil 403).

Population in California is increasing, and so are the numbers of academic achievements as well as the academic failures. On recent studies by Phillip Kaufman, et al, they performed a statistical analysis that shows the percentage of students who drop-out before completing a high school program. They used data from The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which obtains its information of education in the United States by collecting records from all the school districts. Dropout rates in this report shows that, "In October 2000, 5 out of every 100 young adults who were enrolled in high school in October 1999 were no longer in school and had not successfully completed a high school program"(Kaufman, et al 3). 488,000 students didn't complete high school, which accounts to an extremely large number of students. The results of this study show the percentage of students dropping out is decreasing, however, the actual number of students dropping out has increased. This is due to the increase in students attending school, which explains the fact that there are more students graduating, but also more students dropping out from school.
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The dropout rate for K-12 students also varies depending on their race and location of the school. There are four major races attending K-12 schools in America: Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White. Nevertheless, not all have the same percentage of dropouts. A study completed by Bryan W. Griffin concerning dropouts, used data provided by The Florida Department of Education in order to accomplish his research. The data was obtained by a random sample of 132,903 high school students from fourteen school districts in Florida, and obtained the following: "The dropout rate was highest for Blacks, closely followed by Hispanics, then Whites, and then Asians, who showed the lowest rate" (Griffin 76). The high rate of blacks dropping out, as well as Hispanics, is because they both account for a large portion of the population in Florida. In states like Kansas, the dropout rate is higher for whites, because the population is mostly white. Another example is North Carolina, where the population is mostly Whites and Blacks, only one out of every other high school student is expected to graduate, and logically, the percentage of dropouts there is higher with Blacks and Whites. Another section of the research by Kaufman et al, he obtains these results: "Close to one-third of the 16- through 24-year-old Hispanics [Latinos] in the United States were reported as out of school and lacking a high school credential" (Kaufman, et al 11). Hispanics have the highest overall dropout rate in the US. About 1,456,000 Latinos have not graduated, which means that they had to have found a low paying job and settle for whatever they could get.

Students drop out from schools K-12 because of premature sex. On current research by Kathleen Mullan Harris, Greg J. Duncan, and Johanne Boisjoly relating students' risk taking behavior, and why they engage in those activities. They obtained their data by giving out surveys to the students in which they were asked what kind of family structure they belonged to, and if they were sexually active; they obtained the following results. "Risks of first sex are 77% higher for boys living in step families and 62% higher for boys in single-parent or non-parent family structures" (Harris 1023). Today's society accounts for fifty percent of marriages resulting in a divorce, and a tremendously small percentage of students who don't have either biological parent. However, these two types of family structures make up the majority of families in U.S., thus making the percentage results from the research account for a great number of the population. The children see their parent as role models, and believe that having premature sex is ok, because if it doesn't workout they can always get a divorce. Also, they believe that their parents or grandparents can take care of their child if they are to become pregnant and eventually dropout. In a study about sexual behavior and its causes by Lisa D. Lieberman et al., they handed surveys, made one-on-one interviews, and mailed surveys to 527 participants, and checked back a year after for a follow-up. In the surveys and interviews, the authors asked the participants many questions concerning their thoughts about sex, if they were sexually active, and their relationship with parents. "Poor self-concept is associated with earlier onset of sexual activity for both male and female adolescents" (Lieberman et al 2). Early sexual activity for both genders causes many problems, especially for the female. Eighty percent of the time teenagers have sex for the first time it is unprotected, which in many cases the female becomes pregnant. A female pregnant is very likely to drop out from high school, because she will have morning sickness often, appointments with the doctor, embarrassed to go to school, etc", and eventually dropout because it was too much for her. In addition, the younger they begin having sex the more partners they will have in the future, and in case of a disease, the more people that will catch the infection.

Students' dropout rate is also caused by the income status of the family. James W. Ainsworth completed an important research on dropouts in 1999, which shows the relation between high school dropouts and the economic status of the neighborhood location. He used data from the National Center of Educational Statistics, which consisted of one thousand middle schools and twenty-five random students' surveys from each school. "Rates in severely distressed neighborhoods are more than three times as higher as those in non-poverty neighborhoods and that the jobless rates for young high school dropouts in distressed urban neighborhoods are often over 80%" (Ainsworth 118). Low income neighborhoods are not the best place to live; they hold many unhealthy behaviors in its atmosphere. Families in poverty live in low income neighborhoods, that is a fact. Students growing up in this environment pick up behaviors that will affect their lives, like drugs, gangs, bad influences, etc.... At this point, they loose track of school and in the process lose interest in it too; eventually they drop out of high school and look for a job to pay for their drugs and alcohol. On a more recent research made in 2000 by the National Center for Education Statistics, Phillip Kaufman, et al, obtained data that reports the high school dropouts and graduation rates. They attained this data by collecting information from all the school districts. "In 2000, young adults living in families with incomes in the lowest 20 percent of all family incomes were six times as likely as their peers from families in the top 20 percent of the income distribution to drop out of high school" (Kaufman et al 7). Students from low income families are usually more stressed about money, and their family's status. In many cases, the sons and daughters need to help the family to obtain money, and find a job themselves. They work for long hours and tend to be sleepy or distracted during school hours. This jeopardizes the student's interest in school, because now they are obtaining money so they feel that they don't need the education, and eventually dropout. The money they are obtaining maybe enough to support them now; however, it will not be enough once they become a parent.

The type of neighborhood in which the school is located also causes an effect on the dropout rate. Many studies about exclusionary behavior have been completed. On a recent study made by Theresa A. Thorkildsen and Deborah Reese concerning exclusionary behavior and its effects on high school students, they concluded that exclusion does in fact affect students. They used a scale to obtain a canonical correlation result. The result had to be .30 or higher in order for it to be valid. "Safety-focused ecology, emerged with a canonical correlation of .32... this ecology involves adolescents' willingness to attend college and their feelings that their school attendance and social and academic success were affected by exclusionary behavior... types of exclusion that raise safety issues because they can promote bodily harm" (Thorkildsen 36). This type of environment is mostly seen in lower economic developed neighborhoods, because they have less money for their education system. Having less money in school, means they don't have enough money to hire qualified teachers, security, after school programs, etc.... Students that feel threaten in school or in their homes, tend to worry about it and focus on protecting themselves instead of focusing in school. Unfortunately, in many cases the students focus on protecting themselves so much, which causes them to dropout from school either because of fear or lack of interest. In the results from "Why Does it Take a Village?" Ainsworth quotes: "The number of high-status residents in a student's neighborhood was the second-strongest predictor of educational achievement (b = .076), superseding the importance of attending a private school (b = .026), low teacher quality (b = .044), number of siblings (b = .046), and sex (i.e., being female) (b = .044)" (Ainsworth 131). Neighborhoods which contain positive environments will encourage students living there to achieve their goals. Having prominent residents in the neighborhood, serves as role models for the students, because they will look up to them and will want to be in their status position. Students in return will work harder in school, in order to achieve a higher status and be in the same level as those residents.

One solution to reduce dropouts from K-12 grades is involving the parents in their child's school activities. In the article "Cornell and Bronk Schools Join With Parents to Reduce Dropouts" by Rosaleen Mazur and Lisa Thureau, the authors suggests a solution that may help reduce the dropout rate. The solution is called The Stay In School Partnership Project, where the key for students' success is the parents. The approach of this project is to get parents involved in their children's school activities by making the parents responsible for children's attendance, meaning that if their child is not at school, it is the parents fault. Further more, parents are also responsible for helping them with their school work, and answering any questions that they might have. This project provides parents with in-home activities and workbooks, in which parent and child must work together in order to understand the material as well as answer the question. Parents are responsible of making school interesting for their children; otherwise, the child will be at a high risk of dropping out.

Though Mazur and Thureau proposed excellent solutions in his article, The Stay In School Partnership Project will still help some students, but it will help the amount of students as expected. This solution, which makes parents responsible for their childrenЃfs attendance in school and their performance will not work, because parents are too busy working or engaged in other activities in which they must participate to help the family. In an article by James A. Shymansky called "Empowering Families In Hands-on Science Programs", the author researched working parents and its relation to students academic achievements. Shymansky came to the conclusion that "Barriers to effective parental involvement are time, lack of understanding of the academic decision-making process, perceived lack of interest by parents, feeling of disconnection, lack of training, inability to speak the dominant language, and lack of success" (Shymansky 3). Parents are just too busy with their own activities to help the family's status, that in many cases they forget, or are too tired to get involved in their children's school activities. Parents most of the time only have time to take them to school, and trust their children will go in and stay there, but the reality is that many skip school. When the school's office calls to inform the parents of their child's absence, usually nobody is home, and find them selves leaving a message on the answer machine, a message the child will erase to hide his secret. Parents cannot be reliable for their children's actions outside of the school during school hours, because if they are responsible enough to skip school they should be responsible enough to accept the consequences it might bring.

Though many proposals to reduce dropouts have been implemented, and many of them have not worked, there are some that will help. In the article "Helping Dreams Survive: Dropout Interventions" by Fred C. Lunenburg, the author summarizes studies completed by researchers concerning dropouts and its preventions. Lunenburg, based on the research he collected and his own findings, suggests four solutions that may help decrease the percentage of dropouts from K-12 schools. One is Community-Based Organization (CBO), in which the schools and its communities come together as a group and create events for the students to enjoy themselves. Second is Case Management Intervention (CMI), where students with a higher risk of dropping out receive more attention from teachers, so they can communicate their problems. The next solution is School-Within-A-School. Here, teachers come together and discuss subjects that can improve student's academic achievement, like better spending of the budget, curriculum plans, in-house discipline, and enrichment activities. Lastly, Lunenburg proposes a solution that he calls Negative-Sanction Policies. What this solutions does, it punishes students under the age but taking something away that is valuable to them if they are to dropout. He uses a particular example where in West Virginia, minor students' driving license is taken away if they dropout. The author comes to the conclusion that if the solutions suggested are to be implemented, not only will dropout rates decline, but unemployment and welfare rates will decrease significantly as well.

The solution proposed is effective and will help reduce dropouts. This method has been used before in different situation, and the results prove it works. James Laverett completed a research paper on SingaporeЃfs environment. He researched, among other topics, their laws, pollution, and their measures taken to obtain a clean environment. Leverett found that negative sanctions are common in Singapore. "Huge fines for littering, smoking indoors, not flushing the toilet, and chewing imported gum" (Leverett 71). There are many different negative sanctions, like yelling at someone that is annoying, hitting someone if they don't obey the rules, or in this case paying a fine for not obeying the law. Not too many people in Singapore have extra money they can spear on littering fines, so they must behave. These laws push them to keep their country clean and be more cautious about their trash. On a recent study on a two high school in Australia, which account for an approximate of 1,750 students, the schools used a negative sanction to eliminate littering in the school. They placed many visual prompts all over the school. They also verbally mentioned to the students, that if they are to be cough littering, instead of receiving a fine, they will receive detention. "What was successful in their experiments, was issuing verbal instructions to place litter in litter bags" (Houghton 1). The majority of the students don't want to stay after school when they can be outside with their friends. This sanction disciplines student by teaching them that punishment will be given if they break the law. In relation to dropout, it teaches them if they are to dropout they will receive some type of punishment, thus pushing them to stay in school.

A more common use of negative sanction is the parent and child rules and punishment. Restricting activities or objects from people tend to have an impact in their lives. In most cases, these objects or activities are restricted to teach discipline to the person. In a recent study by Sandra D. Simpkins and Ross D. Parke concerning children's behavior when restrictions are implemented, the authors surveyed eighty eight children from different schools and their parents as well. Parents had to answer questions about changes in their children's attitude and behavior after restrictions were applied. The children had to answer questions of how they feel when their parents set rules, and punish them if they are to break any of the rules. When the surveys were collected and studied, researchers discovered the following. "The numbers of restriction rules and supervision rules were significantly correlated for the entire sample (r = .27, p < .01)" (Simpkins and Parke 363). In order for the results to be valid, they had to exceed a correlation score of .20. The overall result evidently surpasses the score expected. With this result, they were able to obtain a statistical result that show evident changes in the behaviors of children when rules are set, and punishment given if they are to break any of those rules. The authors observed and interviewed the children and their parents a year after the surveys were collected and results were obtained. The interviews consisted of the same questions from the surveys. After both the interviews and observation was completed, they were able to compare both the previous statistics and the interviews, obtained the same results. "Findings revealed that a higher number of restrictions was [sic] linked to fewer problem behaviors and higher social involvement with peers" (Simpkins and Parke 369). When children are told they will be punished if they are to break any of the rules enforced, they fear and follow what they are told. This is a very common way to discipline children, because it teaches them to respect what they are told as well as the law.

In a more serious matter, restrictions also have been proposed in the government level. Henry A. Giroux conducted a research, in which data from crime rates and previous president's efforts to lower crime was used to obtain an actual result. "Following the mandatory sentencing legislation and get-tough policies associated with the "war on drugs' declared by the Reagan and Bush administrations, this bill calls for a "three strikes and you're out of policy, which puts repeat offenders, including nonviolent offenders, in jail for life, regardless of the seriousness of the crime" (Giroux 75). The government is responsible for keeping peace inside the country, thus making them responsible of creating laws that will help. They must also enforce these types of laws in order to help reduce crime. By having these laws for delinquents, they will think twice about making a crime, because they know that if they commit such crime, they'll go to jail for a long time. "Yet, even as the crime rate plummets dramatically, more colored people are being arrested, harassed, punished, and put in jail" (75). Crime is decreasing all over the country due to the many legislations that have been passed by presidents and head chiefs of state. Crime will continue to drop as long as these types of laws keep being accepted by the public.

Dissertation on Marketing

Ross Product division traces its beginnings to 1903, when Harry C. Moores and Stanely M. Ross founded the Moores and Ross Milk Company in Columbus, Ohio. Establishing what would become a company tradition of customer services, the entrepreneurs wanted to do more than process milk. In seeking unique ways to fulfill customer needs and distinguish themselves from the competition, they began using the first stand-and drive milk truck and the first glass bottle for home delivery. Over the next 20 years, their business prospered. In 1924, the partners took the daring step of producing and marketing a then-new concept - milk based infant formula. As the product grew in popularity, Moore and Ross sold its dairy, ice cream and milk processing operation to another prominent Columbus firm, the Borden Company, and focused solely on producing the infant formula.

In 1928, the company was renamed M&R Dietetics Laboratories. Free to concentrate fully on the merging field of pediatric nutrition, M&R Dietetic Laboratories became known for one of the most respected and successful infant formulas - Similac. Similac was first available in powder form. After extensive research, similac concentrated liquid was introduced in 1951, as the first infant formula available in a form other than powder. Concentrated liquid was easier to prepare than powder and soon became the most popular product in the U.S. infant-formula market.

In 1959, the company introduced Similac with Iron to help prevent iron deficiency in infants. Today, iron-fortified infant formula is considered to be preferred source of nutrition during the first year of life if breastfeeding is not chosen. In 1963, the company launched an innovative system, the first pre-bottled, pre-sterilized formulas for feeding infants in hospital.
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In 1964, the company was renamed Ross Laboratories after merging with one of the world's largest healthcare corporation, North Chicago-based Abbott Laboratories. Today, as one of Abbott's six operating units, the Ross Product Division - with division headquarters and a manufacturing facility in Columbus Ohio, and other U.S. manufacturing facilities in Arizona, Michigan and Virginia - is a leading worldwide producer of scientifically formulated nutrition to meet normal and special dietary needs from infancy through adulthood. Ross's philosophy strongly believe in the idea that good nutrition can improve and even saves lives while helping to reduce overall medical costs. The attached marketing study was initiated at the request of Ross's top management to evaluate the companyТs marketing practices and strategies to support the company's philosophy - to improve the quality of life through good nutrition.

Philosophy of Marketing Management
Today marketing can be defined as the "process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, services, organization, and events to create and maintain relationships that satisfy individual and organizational objectives." In order to compete, companies must continually search for the most efficient manufacturing sites and most lucrative markets for products. The global economy is continuing to expand as standards of living rises, especially in Europe and Asia, customers demand for the latest goods and services increases.

There are five alternative concepts under which organizations conduct their marketing activities: the production, product, and selling, marketing and societal marketing concept. Ross uses the marketing management philosophy known as marketing concept.

Marketing concept states that achieving organizational goals depends on determining the needs and wants of target markets and delivering the desire satisfactions more effectively and efficiently than competition do. One best way Ross practices the marketing concept is through their web site, which is designed to help acquaint a consumer with Ensure. The site also gives the toll free number for customer service and offers programs such as nutrition recipes (made with Ensure), Ensure home delivery system and Ensure health connection - unique e-mail health news letter informing about latest health prevention tips and new products development.

Strategic Business Units/Mission Statement
Management's first step is to identify the key businesses making up the company. These are called the strategic business units. A strategic business (SBU) is a unit of the company that has a separate mission and objective and that can be planned independently from other company business. An SBU can be a company division, a product line within a company or sometimes a single product or brand.

Ross offers a number of pediatric and adult nutritional products, pharmaceuticals, entral feeding devices and other products. One can get more information of any of these products by clinking on the links on their web page.

Their mission statement states "TO IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF LIFE THROUGH GOOD NUTRITION."
They also have a vision statement - УOUR VISION IS TO BE THE WORLD WIDE LEADER IN PROVIDING SUPERIOR NUTRITIONAL PRODUCTS THAT ADVANCES THE QUALITY OF LIFE FOR PEOPLE OF ALL AGES."

Mission statement/vision statement are very important for any organization because they provide direction and purpose for existing and most importantly these statements help guide people throughout the organization to work toward common goals, even though they may work independently from one another.

The Boston Consulting Group Approach
Using the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) approach, a company classifies all of its SBUs according to the growth-share matrix. On the vertical axis, market growth rate, provides a measure of market attractiveness. On the horizontal axis, relative market share serves as a measure of company strength in the market. By dividing the growth-share matrix in the market, four types of SBUs can be distinguished - stars, cash cows, questions and dogs.

Ensure supplements are located in the cash cow division. Cash cows are low-growth, high-share business or products. These established and successful SBUs need less investing to hold their market share. Thus they produce a lot of cash that the company uses to pay its bills and support other SBUs that need investment.

Marketing Environment
As we enter the new millennium, both consumers and market wonders what the future will bring. The business environment continues to change at a rapid pace. A company's marketing environment consists of the actors and forces outside marketing that affect marketing management ability to develop and maintain a successful relationship with its target customers. The marketing environment offers both opportunities and threats. Successful companies know the vital importance of constantly watching and adapting to the changing environment.

Microenvironment
Microenvironment consist of forces close to the company that affect its ability to serve its customers - the companies suppliers, marketing channel firms, customers markets, competition and publics.

Below is a list of some of key players that make up Ross's microenvironment:

Macro environment
The macro environment consists of the larger societal forces that affect the microenvironment - demographics, economic, natural, technological, political and cultural forces. Some examples of the forces that Ross faces in the macroenvironment are:

Marketing Information System
In order to produce superior value and satisfaction for customers, companies need information at almost very turn. Good products and marketing program begin with a thorough understanding of consumer needs and wants. Companies also need an abundance of information on competitors, resellers, and other actors and forces in the market place.
Marketers are viewing information not just as an input for making better decisions but also as an important strategic asset and marketing tool. Note that today's marketing company information may prove to be its chief competitive advantage.

A marketing info system (MIS) consist of people, equipment, and procedure to gather, sort, analyze, evaluate and distribute needed, timely and accurate information to marketing decision makers. Furthermore in today's business environment many businesses are striving to increase the use of electronic commerce (EC) to streamline business processes and improve efficiencies. Today electronic commerce plays an important role in business strategies, enabling computers to exchange data electronically which is much cheaper, faster and more accurate than the paper based system.

Ross uses EASYEC, a valuable software tool which provides a quick, efficient, paperless interface for processing purchase orders, receiving invoices, making payments and conducting other business tasks (Financials statements, etc.) electronically.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
A.H. Maslow developed a theory that characterized needs and arranged them in a hierarchy to reflect their importance. Maslow identified five labels of needs, beginning with physiological needs and progressing to the need for self-actualization. A person must at least partially satisfy lower-level needs, according to his theory, before higher needs can affect behavior.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
Ensure supplements can primarily fall into physiological need category due to the fact that ensure can satisfy a basic physiological; need - hunger. But it can also be classified under safety needs protection/prevention from malnutrition. Furthermore drinking Ensure can also boost self-esteem, one can easily perceive that drinking Ensure is a complete balanced nutrition to help stay healthy, active and energetic.

Types of Buying Decision Behavior:
Involvement in Purchase
High Low
High
Perceived
Difference
Between
Brands
Low

Ensure supplements can be classified into complex buying behavior and variety seeking behavior. Consumers undertake complex buying behavior when they are highly involved in a purchase and perceive significant difference among brands. Consumers may be highly involved when the product is expensive, risky, purchased infrequently and highly self-expressive. Typically, the consumer has much to learn about the product. Thus, the buyer will pass through a learning process, first developing beliefs about Ensure, then attitude and then making a thoughtful purchase choice. Consumer will buy Ensure supplements when they are convinced that they need this added nutrition to boost their nutritional status and self-image.

When the consumer is fully trained and convinced then they will seek variety. They might want to explore new flavors and different formulation (e.g. Ensure Plus HN). Ross marketers make sure that they provide the retail shelves with a wide range of flavors to satisfy the consumer taste craving. Regular advertisement is also done to keep consumer's demand high.

Adoption Process
The mental process that an individual passes through, from first learning of a product to using a product on a regular basis, is known as the adoption process. Ensure has been around for years, so many consumers in the target market have already moved through the stages of awareness, interest, Evaluation, Trial, and ended up at adoption level, which is where Ross wants them.

Market Coverage
Firms that promote numerous products with different marketing mixes designed to satisfy smaller segments are said to practice differentiated marketing. By providing increased satisfaction for each of many target markets, a company can produce more sales by following a differentiated marketing strategy than undifferentiated marketing would generate. Ross uses a differentiated marketing, meaning that Ross does not just make one type of Ensure but offers different types of Ensure, "we make a whole family of Ensure products to meet your individual nutritional needs." (www.ross.com) For an example individuals who do not consume enough fiber in their diet can take Ensure with Fiber, and individuals with increased protein needs can drink Ensure Plus, etc. They also have a wide variety range of flavors to choose from, vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, cherry, etc. While this coverage strategy bring in more sales than making just vanilla Ensure. The advertising, product and marketing cost are usually high but must be kept under good control.

Product Positioning
Having chosen a strategy for reaching their firm's target market, marketers must decide how best to position the product. The concept of positioning seeks to place a product in a certain "position" in the minds of prospective buyers. Marketers use a positioning strategy to distinguish their firms good or service from those of competitors and to create promotion that communicates the desired position. Following is an illustration of their product positioning in the market taken from their web site. "Ensure: complete, Balanced Nutrition, for a convenient way to add protein, vitamins, minerals and calories to your diet, try Ensure! Ensure provides complete, balanced nutrition to help stay healthy, active or energetic. Uses as a snack or with meals, an 8-fl-oz serving of regular Ensure is a source of good nutrition that's available in a variety of delicious flavors. We make a whole family of Ensure products to meet your individual nutritional needs, so talk with your doctor to decide which Ensure is right for you."

One can easily see that Ross uses a positive approach to advertise their products emphasizing in quality rather than making negative remarks about their competitors.

The Three Levels of Products
Product planner needs to think about products and service on three levels. The most basic level is the core product, which states the question what is the consumer really buying? In this case, the consumer is taking Ensure supplements. The next level is the actual product, actual Ensure supplement packaging. The last level augmented gives consumer addition services, benefits, etc. Ross has a 1-800 customer service line, money-back guarantee if not satisfied. In addition; they also have a web site to explore the family of supplements and can also determine consumer their nutritional status.

Product Classification
Ensure supplements can be classified as a non-durable good, since the supplements are used in a relatively short time, and are not considered a major purchase. It can also be a consumer product, since that they are intended for sale and consumption. Ensure family products are further broken down into goods known as shopping goods, meaning that Ensure supplements are usually less frequently purchased, the consumer may compare nutritional value with their individual nutritional needs for suitability. Ensure supplements are usually expensive when compared with other comparable supplements for an example, daily vitamin/mineral supplements, soymilk, instant breakfast mixes, and several generic equivalent brands.

Product Life Cycle
Products, like people pass through stages as they age. Humans progress from infancy to childhood to retirement to death. Successful products progress through four basic stages: introduction, growth, maturity and decline. It is important to point out that the product life cycle concept applies to products or product categories within an industry not to individual brands.

Ensure supplements are in the maturity stage because profits have leveled; heavy advertisement is done to differentiate Ensure from competitors brands such as Sustcal, Resource, etc. Brand competition also intensifies, Ross differentiate their Ensure supplements by focusing on its attributes, such as quality taste and service.

Price Elasticity
Elasticity measures the responsiveness of purchasers and suppliers to price change. Elasticity of demanded is the percentage change in the quantity of a good or service demanded divided by the percentage change in its price. Ross has a price-demand relationship that is inelastic in nature for Ensure supplements. People really donТt need Ensure supplements; they can easily find other food substitute to get proper nutrition. Nonetheless, the demand for Ensure remains very inelastic because people spend so little time on them that they hardly notice a price change.

Market Type
Ross market leadership position is characterized by monopolistic competition. There are many buyers and sellers in the nutritional supplement market because the competitive price can vary as sellers differentiate their products.

Distribution Channel
Ross use intermediaries to bring their products to the market. They try to forge a distribution channel - a set of interdependent organizations involved in the process of making a product or service available for use or consumption by the consumer or business user. Ross has a three-channeled levels involved in getting their products to the consumer: A manufacture ring plant, a wholesaler and a retailer. Ross sells to wholesaler, who maintains a close working relationship with retailers. Ross basically has their Ensure supplements in nearly every retailer business that carries food or convenience items. Therefore, they are practicing - intensive distribution. This is a good choice, since consumer will not travel to a certain retailer to just to buy Ensure.

Ross Channel type also can be categorized under Vertical Marketing System (VMS) - a distribution channel structure in which producers, wholesaler and retailer act as an unfired system. One channel member owns the others and has a contract with them, or has so much power that they all cooperate. Since Ross is the market leader in the nutritional supplement industry, they command a high level of cooperation from the wholesaler and retailers without contracts or ownership from those channels. Ross also controls promotions, shelf space and other retailing functions that smaller manufacturer would never control.

Retail Outlets
Different products require different amounts of service and customer service preferences vary. Retailers may offer one of these levels of service, self-service, limited service and full-service. Self-service retailer serves customers who are willing to perform their own "locate-compare-select" process to save money. Note: self-service is the bases of all discount operations and is typically used by sellers of convenience goods and nationally branded fast moving shopping goods. Ross basically uses self-service to sell Ensure.

Promotion Mix
Ross's marketing communication strategy, or promotion max can be comprised of advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations or any combination there of. Ross gives high percentage (approximately 50%) to broadcast and print advertising. The heavily advertise in medical journals and health related magazines by giving scientific rationale for taking Ensure supplements.

They are also heavily involved with scientific community. Therefore they promote ensure supplements via public relation (approximately 30-40%). For an example, Ross center gives professional continuing education by offering on-site and self-study continuing education (CE programs). To make CE hours more convenient for health care professional, one can easy go online and access "continuing education" link.

Ross uses an objective and task method to determine the amount of promotional spending for each of its product lines. This is the method most commonly used to set the total promotion budget. Objective and task stresses the definition of specific promotional objectives, the task required to meet those objectives and the costs of performing these tasks.

Competitor Marketing Strategy
To plan effective competitive marketing strategies, the company needs to find out all it can about its competitors. It must constantly compare its products, prices, channel and promotion with those of close competitors. In this way the company can find areas of potential competitive advantage and disadvantage. Ross is a member within a strategic group in the nutritional supplement industry. Competitor such as Mead-Johnson, Clintec, and Sherwood-Medical are all trying to position themselves as superior nutritional supplement companies. Ross must learn its competitor's customer service, pricing, nutritional formulation and advertising strategies to try to find their weaknesses and strength. At this point Ross does not have a system to identify and take advantage of these strengths and weakness of its competitors. However they do have one of the most efficient Quality Assurance System in place to be more superior to their competitors. Following is example from their Web Site:

"At Ross product Division of Abbott Laboratories, We use state-of-the-art technologies and quality system to create nutritional products and services that meet the nutritional needs of our customers. Quality - to meet or exceed customer needs-is a key goal throughout the product development process of our nutritional formulas. Its is our pledge to our customers that the products they purchase will consistently meet or exceeds their expectations.

Ross has always adopted a proactive approach toward quality and the development of nutritional formulas. Quality is not feature simply added on during the course of development of a product. Instead, quality is the result of a series of sophisticated activities that have been built into the product development process, which include product planning, product manufacturing and product improvement"

One can see Ross's empasize on quality; this can be viewed as their competitive marketing strategies.

Attack Strategies
Ross's can be viewed as "well-behaved" competitor in the world of nutrition supplements. "Well-behaved" competitors play by the rules of the industry and shape an industry that consists of only "well-behaved" competitors. Ross believes in quality and innovation in nutrition and health for adults, this can be viewed as "well-behaved" attack strategy. Following can be viewed as their attack strategy, taken from their web site:

"Antioxidants may help reduce the level of free radicals in our body that scientists believe may involved in the development of heart disease, arthritis, cataracts and other disorders. Some medical nutritional products have been reformulated to include added levels of antioxidants. Prebiotic are nondigestable food ingredients that selectively promote growth and/or activity of good bacteria already present in the colon. Fructooligosaccharides (FOS) are an example of prebiotics that are now being added to foods to help maintain digestive tract health. FOS has been shown to promote the growth of beneficial bacteria in the digestive tract. FOS does not support the in vitro growth of certain pathogenic bacteria. Ensure Fiber with FOS are Ross Medical nutritional product that contain FOS"

Competitive Position and Strengths
Ross concentrates on the word QUALITY to differentiate their Ensure product line and marketing program to distinguish itself as the market leader in the nutritional industry. Following is an example of one of their strengths for product manufacturing/Quality testing taken from their Quality Assurance web site:

"To assure the quality of nutritional formulas - such as Ensure - careful monitoring of product quality characteristic and key manufacturing process occurs at various stages of production. For example, before manufacturing each batch of nutritional formula, the quality of the raw materials is confirmed by laboratory testing. After manufacturing of each batch is complete, the formula is thoroughly tested to assure that quality parameters, such as nutrient levels are within stringent specifications."

"Our employees are a key part of the production of our nutritional formulas. Quality through people is our motto. To manufacture each product. Ross employees accept personal responsibilities for quality and take personal pride in the meticulous execution of manufacturing procedure and manufacturing monitoring plans to produce nutritional products".

Conclusion
Some of the main marketing topics covered in this dissertation included: Marketing management philosophies, strategic business units, business portfolio analysis, marketing environment, marketing information systems, consumer behavior, buying discoing behavior, market coverage strategies, product positioning, product life cycles, distribution channeled, promotion mixes, competitor analysis and competitive position strategies. By carefully analyzing each concepts listed above I gained wealth of knowledge and understanding and a renewed respect in the field of marketing.

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Essay on Population

A population can be defined as "a group of individuals of the same species inhabiting an area" (Enger & Smith, 2002). Populations generally have certain defining characteristics that distinguish them from other populations. Theses include “natality (birthrate), mortality (death rate), sex ratio, age distribution, growth rates, density, and spatial distribution” (Enger & Smith, 2002). The population of Newfoundland is, in this way, no different from any other. It has experienced many trends in population over the years, each trend having major societal impacts on the province.

In 1992 and 1993, the population of Newfoundland reached a record 580,200 people (Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, 2002). Since then, the population has continually declined. On March 12, 2002 Statistics Canada released the 2001 Census Counts which indicated that since 1996 the population of the province has declined by 7.0% (Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, 2002). Nevertheless, population losses have become much smaller over the last three years corresponding to a stronger growth period in the provincial economy. The amount of out-migration, a major component of population change, has gone down in pervious years. This decrease is due to strong employment gains, wage growth and a general increase in consumer and business confidence. While these factors have caused out-migration to diminish, net losses are expected to continue in the near future (Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, 2002).

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Another major trend that is seen here in Newfoundland is a loss of natural population increase. Natural increase, the excess of births over deaths, was only around 150 persons in 2001, the lowest natural population increase since Confederation. If this trend continues, it is believed that the province will soon see natural population losses. With low fertility rates, the number of children born per woman per lifetime, the number of births in the future will drop leaving the province with an aging population that will have increased death rates (Collins, 2002).

If these two trends are combined (decreased number of births and more deaths) it is easy to see that the average age of the population will continue to rise. As stated in the text book, if the majority of the population is post reproductive, the population will decline (Enger & Smith, 2002). This increase in age will be more apparent in the rural communities than in the urban communities of the province due to the smaller populations. As a result, the province’s population is expected to become more urban.

If the province’s population becomes more urban it is easy to see that there will also be a shift in the need for both private and public services. An example of this sort of shift in need would be that the demand for recreational or educational services would decrease while the demand for health services would increase in the rural areas (Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, 2002). With an increased trend in the province’s population age towards a post reproductive category, a reduction in the labour supply could come about in the future.

In 2001 the population of people ages 15 – 44 (Enger & Smith, 2002), as know as the persons that have the potential to enter the labour force, out-numbered the potential retirees.

But when looking at the current population trends for the province of Newfoundland, it is predicted that the potential retirees will out-number those that can enter the work force. This is good in some aspects because it will lower the unemployment rates, increase incomes and possibly decrease the out-migration and boost in-migration as the chances of gaining employment in this province are amplified.

In recent years employers have noticed and are paying more attention to these trends. Many are making plans now and executing human resources strategies in preparation for future changes. Some companies such as the Iron Ore Company of Canada (IOCC) at Labrador City and industry associations such as the Alliance of Manufacturers and Exporters recognize the cumulative impacts of these factors and are implementing successor planning, mentorship programs and other recruitment actions (Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, 2002). For example, up to 50% of the Iron Ore Company of Canada’s workforce is eligible for retirement by 2004. In addressing this issue, IOCC is recruiting and training new workers to fill these vacant positions. In partnership with the College of the North Atlantic and its member unions, the company began a new apprentice training program in 1999 which combines in-class training with on the job experience. This program, named Mining and Mineral Processing Technology, is seen as an innovative and meaningful way to prepare for demographic change and to train the mining employee of the future (Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, 2002).

In conclusion, Newfoundland is facing a decline in population. The population is also becoming more centered in urban areas than in the past and is becoming an increasingly aging population. These factors have serious effects on the future work force and also place more burden on the health care system. By becoming aware of these trends now, measures can be taken to ensure the well-being of our population in the years to come as well as in future populations of this province.

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