We’re sorry we made a mistake in the exam organisation on Monday. The total time to be scheduled for the exam (including the listening part) was 90 minutes, as set out in your curriculum. Due to a misunderstanding, the UM students were given 90 minutes after the listening part, which was too much time. So no one got less time than was planned for the exam. However, if we gave UM an advantage they didn’t deserve, we feel that we should compensate the other students. We are therefore thinking about a solution to make things more equal. Be assured that nobody will lose any points.
Monthly Archives: January 2016
Knowledge is power
Found on The Poke:
When I was young my father said to me: “Knowledge is Power….Francis Bacon.”
I understood it as “Knowledge is power, France is Bacon”.
For more than a decade I wondered over the meaning of the second part and what was the surreal linkage between the two?
If I said the quote to someone, “Knowledge is power, France is Bacon” they nodded knowingly.
Or someone might say, “Knowledge is power” and I’d finish the quote “France is Bacon” and they wouldn’t look at me like I’d said something very odd but thoughtfully agree.
I did ask a teacher what did “Knowledge is power, France is bacon” mean and got a full 10 minute explanation of the Knowledge is power bit but nothing on “France is bacon”.
When I prompted further explanation by saying “France is Bacon?” in a questioning tone I just got a “yes”.
At 12 I didn’t have the confidence to press it further.
I just accepted it as something I’d never understand.
It wasn’t until years later I saw it written down that the penny dropped.
Good luck for your exams! Luck is power. No, wait…
Leonardo DiCaprio on climate change
This is a reading exercise for your exam. Download the task and solve it, then check the answer key.
In case you’re interested, there is also a short video of Leonardo DiCaprio’s speech on The Guardian’s website.
Writing a report
A cab before the age of the motorcar. Source
On Monday I gave you a task which involved writing a report about an investment decision for one out of three taxi companies. Here’s the task again plus a sample text of 150 words in length.
Dialogue practice
One of your exam tasks will be to listen to a dialogue and answer a couple of written questions related to what you hear. Your answers can be very short, we will be asking for hard facts only.
Here are three sample dialogues for you to practice, plus the questions.
A) A trip to New York
B) Buying a car
C) The gas bill
You may use the answer key to verify your solutions.
Exam outline
Here is an outline of your written exam. We will practice all of the tasks at least once in the remaining classes.
What Money Can’t Buy
Michael Sandel
What Money Can’t Buy, or, The Moral Limits of Markets, is a book by the American economist Michael J. Sandel. Actually, the book is about things that money can buy in the US and elsewhere today but shouldn’t.
Some questions the book deals with:
- Is it ethical to pay $150,000 to shoot an endangered black rhino?
- Should people rent out their bodies for advertising?
- Should investors be allowed to buy people’s life insurances so they will profit from their deaths?
Needless to say that all these things are already happening. But is it what business and money were created for?