Brave New World Essays (628 words) - Social Science Fiction

Brave New World Soma and orgy-porgies, sex hormone chewing gum and erotic play among children-all of these things further the power of the centralized world government in Brave New World. In a civilization that is without disease, old age, and all negative emotions, the people are forced to pay a price without even realizing it. That great price is their freedom. With mass consumption as a diversion, the New World quickly forgets the advantages of true independence. In the futurized novel by Alduos Huxley, conformity rules over individuality and scientific control successfully enslaves a brainwashed and fearful society. Bokanovsky's process is one of the major instruments of social stability. (BNW 7.) First the scientists fertilize one single human egg, by arresting it's normal development, it then proceeds to bud, producing many identical eggs. By making thousands of siblings, they are easily able to create a sense of community among all the children. A major problem that is recognized right away is, won't overpopulation lead to problems with the economy? In response to this question, Huxley states, Overpopulation leads to economic insecurity and social unrest. Unrest and insecurity lead to more control by central governments and an increase of their power. (CN 29.) The world leaders gain even more control when they start regulating society's ability to think on an individual basis. This is done through classical conditioning, and what Utopia calls hypnopaedia. Hypnopaedia is sleep teaching. It is used to drum prejudices into the subconscious of the sleeper. (CN 7.) The Director of Hatcheries explains, Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child's mind. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too- all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides- made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions! (BNW 29.) Another form of control used by the government is chemical persuasion. Soma, it comes in several forms, mainly tablets. It is described to be a pacifier that lulls the passions and understandings of the people, a major instrument in social stability. (CN 8.) In small amounts Soma is euphoric, yet in larger doses it induces blissful disorientation and then sweet, restorative sleep. (CN 34.) Because Soma is so pleasurable to Utopian life, and has no side effects, it is one of the main methods of control in Brave New World. It kept the people uninterruptedly distracted and contented and prevented insurrection. (CN 34.) With all of these powerful forms of control, society is growing more oppressed, and the centralized government is gaining strength. Towards the end of the novel, one of the world controllers, Mustapha Mond, asks, What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled- after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness. One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for. (BNW 228.) This powerful quote spoken straight from the horse's mouth shows the attitude of the people in control of Utopia. Yes, society has sacrificed freedom and independence, but for what cost? Mustapha Mond later points out that although the people are without God, poetry, freedom, independence and goodness, they never have to face disease, old-age, anxiety, stress, and unspeakable pains of every kind. (BNW 240.) The fact remains, because sci ence controls every aspect of life, and the government controls science, the people of Brave New World are slaves trapped in a very powerful system. English Essays

How to Get 800 on SAT Reading 11 Strategies by a Perfect Scorer

How to Get 800 on SAT Reading Strategies by a Perfect Scorer SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Are you scoring in the 600-750 range on SAT Reading + Writing? Do you want to raise that score as high as possible - to a perfect 800? Getting to a perfect SAT Reading test score isn't easy. It'll require perfection. But with hard work and my strategies below, you'll be able to do it. I've consistently scored 800 on Reading on my real SATs, and I know what it takes. Follow my advice, and you'll get a perfect score - or get very close. Brief note: This article is suited for advanced students already scoring a 600 on SAT Reading or above (this equates to a Reading Test Score of 30+ out of 40 on the New SAT). If you're below this range, my "How to Improve your SAT Reading Score to a 600" article is more appropriate for you. Follow the SAT Reading tips in that article, then come back to this one when you've reached a 600. Also, the New 2016 SAT now has a single 800 Reading + Writing score, combining the individual Reading and Writing test scores. Technically, when I mention a perfect Reading test score, I'm referring to a perfect 40/40 test score, which is essential to getting an 800 Reading and Writing score. In this guide, I'll use800 and 40 interchangeably to mean a perfect Reading score. We won't talk about Writing here, but if you want to improve your Writing score too, check out my Perfect SAT Writing score guide. Overview Most guides on the internet on how to score an 800 are pretty low quality. They're often written by people who never scored an 800 themselves. You can tell because their advice is usually vague and not very pragmatic. It's not enough to be reminded of simple Reading tips like "don't forget to guess on every question!" In contrast, I've written what I believe to be the best guide on getting an 800 available anywhere. I have confidence that these strategies work because I used them myself to score 800 on SAT Reading consistently. They've also worked for thousands of my students at PrepScholar. In this article, I'm going to discuss why scoring an 800 is a good idea, what it takes to score an 800, and then go into the key SAT Critical Reading strategies so you know how to get a perfectSAT Reading score. Stick with me - as an advanced student, you probably already know that scoring high is good. But it's important to know why an 800 Reading and Writing score is useful, since this will fuel your motivation to get a high score. This guide has been updated for the New 2016 SAT, so you can be sure my advice works for the test you're about to take. Final note: in this guide, I talk mainly about getting to an 800. But if your goal is a 700, these strategies still equally apply. Understand the Stakes: Why an 800 SAT Reading + Writing? Let's make something clear: a 1550+ on an SAT is equivalent to a perfect 1600. No top college is going to give you more credit for a 1590than a 1550. You've already crossed their score threshold, and whether you get in now depends on the rest of your application. So if you're already scoring a 1550, don't waste your time studying trying to get a 1600.You're already set for the top colleges, and it's time to work on the rest of your application. But if you're scoring a 1540 or below AND you want to go to a top 10 college, it's worth your time to push your score up to a 1550 or above. There's a big difference between a 1450and a 1550, largely because it's easier to get a 1450(and a lot more applicants do) and a lot harder to get a 1550. A 1540places you right around average at Harvard and Princeton, and being average is bad in terms of Ivy League-level admissions, since the admissions rate is typically below 10%. So why get an 800 on SAT Reading+Writing? Because it helps you compensate for weaknesses in other sections. By and large, schools consider your composite score more sothan your individual section scores. If you can get a perfect 40 in SAT Reading, you can get a 39 in SAT Writing (for a total of 790 in Reading + Writing) and a 760 in SAT Math and still be confident about your test scores. This gives you a lot more flexibility. Harvard's 75th percentile Reading score is 800. There's another scenario where an 800 in SAT Reading is really important. If you're planning to apply as a humanities or social science major (like English, political science, communications) to a top school. Here's the reason: college admissions is all about comparisons between applicants. The school wants to admit the best, and you're competing with other people in the same "bucket" as you. By applying as a humanities/social science major, you're competing against other humanities/social science folks: people for whom SAT Reading is easy. Really easy. Here are a few examples from schools. For Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and U Chicago, the 75th percentile SAT Reading score is an 800. That means at least 25% of all students at these schools have an 800 in SAT Reading. But if you can work your way to an 800, you show that you're at an equal level (at least on this metric). Even if it takes you a ton of work, all that matters is the score you achieve at the end. I'll be honest - SAT Reading wasn't my strong suit in high school. When I started studying, I was scoring around the 700 range. I was always stronger in math and science. But I learned the tricks of the test, and I developed the strategies below to raise my score to an 800. Now I'm sharing them with you. Know That You Can Do It This isn't just some fuzzy feel-good message you see on the back of a Starbucks cup. I mean, literally, you and every other reasonably intelligent student can score a perfectSAT Reading score. The reason most people don't is they don't try hard enough or they don't study the right way. Even if language isn't your strongest suit, or you got a B+ in AP English, you're capable of this. Because I know that more than anything else, your SAT score is a reflection ofhow hard you work and how smartly you study. SAT Reading is Designed to Trick You. You Need to Learn How Here's why: the SAT is a weird test. When you take it, don't you get the sense that the questions are nothing like what you've seen in school? I bet you've had this problem: in SAT Reading passages, you often miss questions because of an 'unlucky guess.' You'll try to eliminate a few answer choices, and the remaining answer choices will all sound equally good to you. Well, you throw up your hands and randomly guess. This was one of the major issues for myself when I was studying SAT Reading, and I know it affects thousands of my students at PrepScholar. The SAT is purposely designed this way to confuse you. Literally millions of other students have the exact same problem you do. And the SAT knows this. Normally in your school's English class, the teacher tells you that all interpretations of the text are valid. You can write an essay about anything you want, and English teachers aren't (usually) allowed to tell you that your opinion is wrong. This is because they can get in trouble for telling you what to think, especially for complex issues like slavery or poverty. But the SAT has an entirely different problem. It's a national test, which means it needs a level playing field for all students around the country. It needs a solid test to compare students with each other. Every question needs a single, unambiguously, 100% correct answer. There's only ever one correct answer. Find a way to eliminate three incorrect answers. Imagine if this weren't the case. Imagine that each reading answer had two answer choices that might each be plausibly correct. When the scores came out, every single student who got the question wrong would complain to the College Board about the test being wrong. If this were true, the College Board would then have to invalidate the question, which weakens the power of the test. The College Board wants to avoid this nightmare scenario. Therefore, every single Reading passage question has only one, single correct answer. But the SAT disguises this fact. It asks questions like: The author would most likely agree with which of the following statements? The first paragraph primarily serves to: In line 20, 'dark' most nearly means: Notice a pattern here? The SAT always disguises the fact that there's always one unambiguous answer. It tries to MAKE you waver between two or three answer choices that are most likely. And then you guess randomly. And then you get it wrong. You can bet that students fall for this. Millions of times every year. Students who don't prepare for the SAT in the right way don't appreciate this. BUT if you prepare for the SAT in the right way, you'll learn the tricks the SAT plays on you. And you'll raise your score. The SAT Reading section is full of patterns like these. To improve your score, you just need to: Learn the types of questions that the SAT tests, like the one above Learn strategies to solve these questions, using skills you already know Practice on a lot of questions so you learn from your mistakes The point is that you can learn these skills, even if you don't consider yourself a good reader or a great English student.I'll go into more detail about exactly how to do this. One last point: let's make sure we understand how many questions we can miss to score an 800. What It Takes to Get a Perfect 40 in Reading If we have a target score in mind, it helps to understand what you need to get that score on the actual test. There are 52 questions in the Reading section, and how many questions you miss determines your scaled score out of 40. From the Official SAT Practice Tests, I've taken the raw score to scaled score conversion tables from 4 tests.(If you could use a refresher on how the SAT is scored and how raw scores are calculated, read this.) Raw Score Test 1 Test 2 Test 3 Test 4 52 40 40 40 40 51 40 39 40 39 50 39 38 39 39 49 38 37 38 38 48 38 37 38 37 47 37 36 37 36 46 37 35 36 35 45 36 35 36 35 These grading scales are harsh. For tests 2 and 4, if you miss just ONE question, you get dropped down to a 39. This means your maximum Reading + Writing score is a 790. For tests 1 and 3, if you miss one question, you're still at a perfect 40, but miss another and you drop down to a 39. The scoring chart curvedepends on the difficulty of the test. The harder the test, the easier the curve. But you can't predict what kind of test you're going to get on test day. The safest thing to do is to aim for perfection. On every practice test, you need to aim for a perfect raw score for an 800. Whatever you're scoring now, take note of the difference you need to get to a 800. For example, if you're scoring a 35 raw score, you need to answer six to seven more questions right to get to a perfect 40 and an 800. As a final example, here's a screenshot from my exact score report from March 2014, showing that I missed one question and earned an 800. (This was from the previous 2400 version of the SAT, but it had a similar grading scale). OK - so we've covered why scoring a higher Reading score is important, why you specifically are capable of improving your score, and the raw score you need to get to your target. Now we'll get into the meat of the article: actionable strategies and reading tips that you should use in your own studying to maximize your score improvement. Strategies to Get aPerfectSAT Reading Score What's your greatest weakness? Strategy 1: Understand Your High Level Weakness - Time Management or Passage Strategy? Every student has different flaws in SAT Reading. Some people don't have good strategies for tackling the passage questions. Others don't manage their time correctly and run out of time before getting through all the questions. Here's how you can figure out which one applies more to you: Find an official SAT practice test, and take only the Reading section. We have the complete list of free practice tests here. For each section, use a timer and have it count down the 65 minutes for the Reading section. Treat it like a real test. If time runs out for that section and you're 100% ready to move on, then move on. If you're not ready to move on, keep on working for as long as you need. For every new answer or answer that you change, mark it with a special note as "Extra Time." When you're ready, grade your test using the answer key and score chart, but we want two scores: 1) The Realistic score you got under normal timing conditions, 2) The Extra Time score. This is why you marked the questions you answered or changed during Extra Time. Get what we're doing here? By marking which questions you did under Extra Time, we can figure out what score you got if you were given all the time you needed. This will help us figure out where your weaknesses lie. If you didn't take any extra time, then your Extra Time score is the same as your Realistic score. Here's a flowchart to help you figure this out: Was your Extra Time score a 35or above? If NO (Extra Time score 35), then you have strategy and content weaknesses. All the extra time in the world couldn't get you above a 35, so your first angle of attack will be to find your weaknesses and attack them (We'll cover this later). If YES (Extra Time score 35), then: Was your Realistic score a 35 or above? If NO (Extra Time score 35, Realistic 35), then that means you have a difference between your Extra Time score and your Realistic score. If this difference is more than 3points, then you have some big problems with time management. We need to figure out why this is. Are you using the best passage reading strategy for you? Does it take you too much time to get the answer for each question? Generally, doing a lot of practice questions and learning the most efficient passage strategies will help reduce your time. More on this later. If YES (both Extra Time and Realistic scores 35), then you have a really good shot at getting an 800. Compare your Extra Time and Realistic score - if they differed by more than 2 points, then you would benefit from learning how to solve questions more quickly. If not, then you likely can benefit from shoring up on your last content weaknesses and avoiding careless mistakes (more on this strategy later). Hopefully that makes sense. Typically I see that students have both timing and content issues, but you might find that one is much more dominant for you than the other. For example, if you can get a40with extra time, but score a 35 in regular time, you know exactly that you need to work on time management to get a 40. This type of analysis is so important that it's a central part of my prep program, PrepScholar. When a new student joins, he or she gets a diagnostic that figures out specific strengths and weaknesses. The program then automatically customizes your learning so that you're always studying according to where you can make the most improvement. No matter what your weakness is, my following strategies will address all weaknesses comprehensively. Strategy 2:Learn to Eliminate 3 Wrong Answers This strategy was by far the most effective for me in raising my Reading score. It completely changed the way I viewed passage questions. I spent some time talking above about how the SAT always has one unambiguous answer. This has a huge implication for the strategy you should use to find the right SAT Reading answer. Here's the other way to see it: Out of the four answer choices, three of them have something that is totally wrong about them. Only one answer is 100% correct, which means the other three are 100% wrong. You know how you try to eliminate answer choices, and then end up with a few at the end that all seem equally likely to be correct? "Well, this can work...but then again this could work as well..." STOP doing that. You're not doing a good enough job of eliminating answer choices. Remember - every single wrong choice can be crossed out for its own reasons. You need to do a 180 on your approach to Reading questions. Instead, find a reason to eliminate three answer choices. "Can I find a reason to eliminate this answer choice? How about this one?" You have to learn how to eliminate three answer choices for every single question. "Great, Allen. But this doesn't tell me anything about HOW to eliminate answer choices." Thanks for asking. One thing to remember is that even a single word can make an answer choice wrong. Every single word in each answer choice is put there by the SAT for a reason. If a single word in the answer choice isn't supported by the passage text, you need to eliminate it, even if the rest of the answer sounds good. There are a few classic wrong answer choices the SAT loves to use. Here's an example question. For example, let’s imagine you just read a passage talking about how human evolution shaped the environment. It gives a few examples. First, it talks about how the transition from earlier species like Homo habilus to neanderthals led to more tool usage like fire, which caused wildfires and shaped the ecology. It then talks about Homo sapiens 40,000 years ago and their overhunting of species like woolly mammoths to extinction. So then we run into a question asking, "Which of the following best describes the main subject of the passage?" Here are the answer choices: A: The transition between Homo habilus and neanderthals B: The study of evolution C: How the environment shaped human evolution D: The plausibility of evolution E: The influence of human development on ecology (We're using five answers for purposes of illustration - the SAT will only have four choices). As you're reading these answer choices, a few of them probably started sounded really plausible to you. Surprise! Each of the answers from A-D has something seriously wrong about it. Each one is a classic example of a wrong answer type given by the SAT. Wrong Answer 1: Too Specific A: The transition between Homo habilus and neanderthals This type of wrong answer focuses on a smaller detail in the passage. It’s meant to trick you because you might think to yourself, "well, I see this mentioned in the passage, so it’s a plausible answer choice." Wrong! Think to yourself – can this answer choice really describe the entire passage? Can it basically function as the title of this passage? You’ll find that it’s just way too specific to convey the point of the overall passage. Wrong Answer 2: Too Broad B: The study of evolution This type of wrong answer has the opposite problem – it’s way too broad. Yes, theoretically the passage concerns the study of evolution, but only one aspect of it, and especially as it relates to the impact on the environment. To give another ludicrous example, if you talked to your friend about your cell phone, and he said your main point was about the universe. Yes, you were talking about the universe, but only a tiny fraction of it. This is way too broad. Wrong Answer 3: Reversed Relationship C: How the environment shaped human evolution This wrong answer choice can be tricky because it mentions all the right words. But of course the relationship between those words needs to be correct as well. Here, the relationship is flipped. Students who read too quickly make careless mistakes like these! Wrong Answer 4: Unrelated Concept D: The plausibility of evolution Finally, this kind of wrong answer preys on the tendency of students to overthink the question. If you’re passionate about arguing about evolution, this might be a trigger answer since ANY discussion of evolution becomes a chance to argue about the plausibility of evolution. Of course, this concept will appear nowhere in the passage, but some students just won’t be able to resist. Do you see the point? On the surface, each of the answer choices sounds possibly correct. A less prepared student would think that all of these were plausible answers. But plausible isn't good enough. The right answer needs to be 100%, totally right. Wrong answers might be off by even one word - you need to eliminate these. Carry this thought into every SAT Reading passage question you do and I guarantee you will start raising your score. Strategy 3: Predict the Answer Before Reading the Answer Choices As we've discussed already, the SAT is designed to goad you into making mistakes by putting really similar answer choices next to each other. In Strategy 2, we covered the strategy of ruthless, unforgiving elimination of answer choices. Here's another Strategy that works well for me. Before reading the answer choices, come up with your own answer to the question. Gaze into your crystal ball and predict the right answer. This strategy is exactly designed to counteract the trickiness of the answer choices. If you DON'T apply this strategy, your thinking process likely meanderslike this: "OK, I just read the question. Answer A is definitely out. B can kind of work. C...it doesn't exactly fit, but I can see how it mightwork." and so on. By now, you've already fallen into the College Board's trap of muddling the answer choices. Take the opposite approach. While you're reading the question, come up with your own ideal answer to the question before reading the answer choices. This prevents you from getting biased by the SAT's answer choices, especially the incorrect ones. If it's a "Big Picture" type question asking about the main point of the passage, answer for yourself, "What would make a good title for this passage?" If it's an "Inference" question, answer for yourself, "What would the author think about the situation given in the question?" Even if you can't answer the question straight away - for example, if you have to refer back to the line number to remember what the passage was saying - try to solve the question before looking at the answer choices. The key here is that the passage must support your answer choice. Every correct answer on SAT passages needs to be justified by the passage - otherwise the answer would be ambiguous, which would cause problems of cancelling questions I referred to earlier. Warning: this only works if you can read and understand passages well, and if you have prior experience with SAT Reading questions! That's why I don't recommend this strategy yet before you hit a 600 level since you're more likely to come up with the wrong answer choice in your head. Strategy 4: Experiment With Passage Reading Strategies and Find the Best for You In your prep for the SAT, you may have read different strategies for how to read a passage and answer questions. Some students read the questions before reading the passage. Others read the passage in detail first. At your high level, I can't predict which method will work best for you. We're going for perfection, which means that your strategy needs to line up with your strengths and weaknesses perfectly, or else you'll make mistakes or run out of time. What I will do, however, is go through the most effective methods. You'll then have to figure out through your test data which one leads to the highest score for you. Passage Method 1: Skim the Passage, Then Read the Questions This is the most common strategy I recommend to our students, and in my eyes the most effective. I prefer this one myself. Here it is: Skim the passage on the first read through. Don't try to understand every single line, or write notes predicting what the questions will be. Just get a general understanding of the passage. You want to try to finish reading the passage in 3 minutes, if possible. Next, go to the questions. If the question refers to a line number, then go back to that line number and understand the text around it. If you can't answer a question within 30 seconds, skip it. My preferred way to tackle a passage: skimming it on the first read-through. This strategy is a revelation for students who used to close-read a passage and run out of time. This skimming method works because the questions will ask about far fewer lines than the passage actually contains. For example, lines 5-20 of a reading passage might not be relevant to any question that follows. Therefore, if you spend time trying to deeply understand lines 5-20, you’ll be wasting time. By taking the opposite approach of going back to the passage when you need to refer to it, you guarantee reading efficiency. You're focusing only on the parts of the passage that are important to answering questions. Critical Skill: You must be able to skim effectively. This means being able to quickly digest a text without having to slowly read every word. If you're not quite good at this yet, practice it on newspaper articles and your homework reading. Passage Method 2: Read the Questions First and Mark the Passage This is the second most common strategy and, if used well, as effective as the first method. But it has some pitfalls if you don't do it correctly. Here's how it goes: Before you read the passage, go to the questions and read each one. If the question refers to a series of lines, mark those lines on the passage. Take a brief note about the gist of the question. Go back to the passage and skim it. When you reach one of your notes, slow down and take more notice of the question. Answer the questions. Here's an example passage that I marked up, with questions coming first. Notice that beyond underlining the phrase referenced in the question, I left clues for myself on what's important to get out of this phrase. (questions not relating to specific lines aren't shown above) In the hands of an SAT expert, this is a powerful strategy. Just like Method 1 above, you save time by skipping parts of the passage that aren't asked about. Furthermore, you get a head start on the questions by trying to answer them beforehand. But there are serious potential pitfalls to this method if you're not careful or prepared enough. Here's one: when you first read the questions before the passage, you won't have enough time to digest the actual answer choices (nor will they make sense to you). So you have to make your best guess for what the question is asking when you're writing a note along the passage. In some cases, this can lead you astray. Take this example from above: When I read the question, I saw that it asked me to find how Woolf characterized the questions I marked in lines 53-57. The problem is how broad the question is. How something can be characterized gives a wide range of options. Here are a number of plausible characterizations as I read the text: important, life-changing ("have to ask ourselves") communal ("we") detail-oriented ("on what terms?") urgent ("here and now") ambitious progressive and future-looking ("where is it leading us") There's a lot of flexibility in interpretation here, since the questions really do touch upon all these characterizations. It turns out "important" and "urgent" are the right interpretations, for answer choice C. But when I'm reading the passage and see my note, I can waste a lot of time coming up with potential options that aren't even correct answer choices. In the worst case, it can bias me toward the wrong answer. Critical Skill: You need to have so much experience with the SAT Reading section that you can anticipate what the question is going to ask you for your notes to be helpful. If you're not sure of this, you can easily be led down the wrong track and focus on the wrong aspect of the passage. Passage Method 3: Read the Passage in Detail, Then Answer Questions This method is what beginner students usually use by default, because it's what they've been trained to do in school. Some beginner books like Princeton Review and Kaplan also suggest this as a strategy. It's my least favorite method because there are so many ways for it to go wrong. But for the sake of completeness, I'm listing it here in case it works best for you. Here's how it goes: Read the passage in detail, line by line. Take notes to yourself about the main point of each paragraph. Answer the questions. As you might guess, I don't like this method for the following reasons: By reading the passage closely, you absorb a lot of details that aren't useful for answering questions. The notes you take aren't directed toward helping you answer the questions. By interpreting the passage ahead of time, you risk being led astray. But this might work especially well for you if you're very good at reading for understanding, and if you have so much expertise with the SAT that you can predict what the test is going to ask you about anyway. Choose Which Works Best for You, Based on Test Data Because I can't predict which one will work best for you, you need to figure this out yourself. To do this, you need cold, hard data from your test scores. Try each method on 2 sample test passages each, and tally up your percentage score for each. If one of them is a clear winner for you, then develop that method further. If there isn't a clear winner, choose the one that feels most comfortable for you. As part of our PrepScholar program, we give you advanced statistics on your score performance so that you can experiment with methods that work best for you. Next strategy:Understand your mistakes. Strategy 5: Understand Every Single Mistake You Make On the path to perfection, you need to make sure every single one of your weak points is covered. Even just one mistakewill knock you down from an 800, as we saw in the score charts above. The first step is simply to do a ton of practice. If you're studying from free materials or from books, you have access to a lot of practice questions in bulk. As part of our PrepScholar program, we have over 1,500 SAT questions customized to each skill. The second step - and the more important part - is to be ruthless about understanding your mistakes. Every mistake you make on a test happens for a reason.If you don't understand exactly why you missed that question, you will make that mistake over and over again. I've seen students who did 20 practice tests. They've solved over 3,000 questions, but they're still nowhere near a perfectSAT Reading score. Why? They never understood their mistakes. They just hit their heads against the wall over and over again. Think of yourself as an exterminator, and your mistakes are cockroaches. You need to eliminate every single one - and find the source of each one - or else the restaurant you work for will be shut down. Here'swhat you need to do: On every practice test or question set that you take, mark every question that you're even 20% unsure about. When you grade your test or quiz, review every single question that you marked, and every incorrect question. This way even if you guessed a question correctly, you'll make sure to review it. In a notebook, write down 1) the gist of the question, 2) why you missed it, and 3) what you'll do to avoid that mistake in the future. Have separate sections by question type (vocab questions, big picture questions, inference questions, etc). It's not enough to just think about it and move on. It's not enough to just read the answer explanation. You have to think hard about why you specifically failed on this question. By taking this structured approach to your mistakes,you'll now have a running log of every question you missed, and your reflection on why. No excuses when it comes to your mistakes. Always Go Deeper - WHY Did You Miss a Reading Question? Now, what are some common reasons that you missed a question? Don't just say, "I didn't get this question right." That's a cop out. Always take it one step further - what specifically did you miss, and what do you have to improve in the future? Here are some examples of common reasons you miss a Reading question, and how you take the analysis one step further: Elimination: I couldn't eliminate enough incorrect answer choices, or I eliminated the correct answer. One step further: Why couldn't I eliminate the answer choice during the test? How can I eliminate answer choices like this in the future? Careless Error:I misread what the question was asking for or answered for the wrong thing. One step further:Why did I misread the question? What should I do in the future to avoid this? Vocab: I didn't know what the key word meant. One step further:What word was this? What is the definition? Are there other words in this question I didn't know? Get the idea? You're really digging into understanding why you're missing questions. Yes, this is hard, and it's draining, and it takes work. That's why most students who study ineffectively don't improve. Many people don't know the right way to study. Of the people who do, very few will diligently apply the right methods, day in, and day out, with discipline. But you're different. Just by reading this guide, you're already proving that you care more than other students. And if you apply these principles and analyze your mistakes, you'll improve more than other students too. Reviewing mistakes is so important that in PrepScholar, for every one of our 1,500+ practice questions, we explain in detail how to get the correct answer, and why incorrect answers are wrong. We also point out bait answers so that you can you can learn the tricks that the SAT plays on test takers like you. Bonus Tip: Re-Solve the Question Before Reading the Answer Explanation When you're reviewing practice questions, the first thing you probably do is read the answer explanation and at most reflect on it a little. This is a little too easy. I consider thispassive learning - you're not actively engaging with the mistake you made. Instead, try something different - find the correct answer choice (A-D), but don't look at the explanation. Instead, try to re-solve the question once over again and try to get to the correct answer. This will often be hard. You couldn't solve it the first time, so why could you solve it the second time around? But this time, with less time pressure, you might spot a new reason to eliminate the wrong answer choice, or something else will pop up. Something will just "click" for you. When this happens, what you learned will stick with you for 20 times longer than if you just read an answer explanation. I know this from personal experience. Because you've struggled with it and reached a breakthrough, you retain that information far better than if you just passively absorbed the information. This is perfect for SAT Reading because you'll often miss a question because of an incorrect interpretation of the text. By forcing yourself to get the right answer, you'll practice getting the CORRECT interpretation of the text. Even better, you'll be scrounging the passage for clues as to why the correct answer is correct, which is exactly what you need in your passage strategy to begin with. It's too easy to just read an answer explanation and have it go in one ear and out the other. You won't actually learn from your mistake, and you'll make that mistake over and over again. Treat each wrong question like a puzzle. Struggle with each wrong answer for up to 10 minutes. Only then if you don't get it should you read the answer explanation. Strategy 6:Find Your Reading Skill Weaknesses and Drill Them Reading passage questions might look similar, but they actually test very different skills. At PrepScholar we believe the major passage skills to be: Big Picture/Main Point Little Picture/Detail Inference Words and Phrases inContext Citing Textual Evidence Perspective Analyzing Word Choice Analyzing Text Structure Analyzing Multiple Texts Analyzing Quantitative Info Whew - that's a lot of skills. That's a much more detailed breakdown than what appears at first glance, and what most books and courses offer. Each of these question types uses different skills in how you read and analyze a passage. They each require a different method of prep and focused practice. The SAT requires a lot of skills. Make sure you know which ones are your weaknesses. If you're like most students, you're better at some areas in Reading than others. You might be better at getting the Big Picture of a passage, compared to the Inference. Or you might be really strong in vocabulary, but weak in understanding the function of sentences in a passage. If you're like most students, you also don't have an unlimited amount of time to study. This means for every hour you study for the SAT, it needs to be the most effective hour possible. In concrete terms,you need to find your greatest areas of improvement and work on those. Too many students study the 'dumb' way. They just buy a book and read it cover to cover. When they don't improve, they're SHOCKED. I'm not. Studying effectively for the SAT isn't like painting a house. You're not trying to cover all your bases with a very thin layer of understanding. What these students did wrong was they wasted time on subjects they already knew, and they didn't spend enough time on their weaknesses. Instead, studying effectively for the SAT is like plugging up the holes of a leaky boat. You need to find the biggest hole, and fill it. Then you find the next biggest hole, and you fix that. Soon you'll find that your boat isn't sinking at all. How does this relate to SAT Reading? You need to find the sub-skills that you're weakest in, and then drill those until you're no longer weak in them. Fix up the biggest holes. Within reading, you need to figure out whether you have patterns to your mistakes. Is it that you don't get Inference questions? Or maybe you're really weak at interpreting details? Or from strategy 1: is it that you're running out of time in reading passages? For every question that you miss, you need to identify the type of question it is. When you notice patterns to the questions you miss, you then need to find extra practice for this subskill. Say you miss a lot of inference questions (this is typically the hardest type of question for students to get). You need to find a way to get focused practice questions for this skill so you can drill your mistakes. Bonus: If all of this is making sense to you, you'd love our SAT prep program, PrepScholar. We designed our program around the concepts in this article, because they actually work.When you start with PrepScholar, you’ll take a diagnostic that will determine your weaknesses in over forty SAT skills. PrepScholar then creates a study program specifically customized for you. To improve each skill, you’ll take focused lessons dedicated to each skill, with over 20 practice questions per skill. This will train you for your specific area weaknesses, so your time is always spent most effectively to raise your score. We also force you to focus on understanding your mistakes and learning from them. If you make the same mistake over and over again, we'll call you out on it. There’s no other prep system out there that does it this way, which is why we get better score results than any other program on the market. Check it out today with a 5-day free trial: SAT Free Signup // Strategy 7:Read the Italicized Passage Introduction This is a quick tip that many students ignore. Each passage comes with an italicized introduction, like this for the passage shown above: This is a freebie. It gives you context for the entire passage. By knowing that the passage is about "the situation of women in English society," you hit the ground running when you read the very first sentence. This helps a lot. Sometimes, the introduction alone can giveyou the answer for the "Big Picture" question about what the main point of the passage is. Always always make sure that you read this introduction, no matter what passage method you use from Strategy 4. Strategy 8: Be Interested in the Passage Subject Matter The SAT has passages about a lot of weird topics. Victorian novels, underwater basket-weaving, and the evolution of gerbils are all fair game. It's unlikely that you're naturally thrilled about all the subjects you'll read about. This makes it easy to tune out when you're reading the passage. This makes it harder to answer the questions, which will make you more frustrated. Instead, adopt this mindset: For the next 10 minutes, I am the world's most passionate person about whatever subject this passage is about. This passage is the most frickin' exciting thing I could be reading right now. For every single passage, be as excited as she is. Force yourself to care about what the passage is telling you. Pretend that your LIFE depends on understanding this passage. Maybe you're about to give a lecture on this subject. Or someone's holding a puppy hostage if you don't answer enough questions correctly. Or your crush turns out to be a huge mid-18th century English literature fan, so you pay rapt attention to every single word. When I was preparing for the SAT in high school, I took this so far to the extremethat I ended up genuinely fascinated bywhatever the passage was telling me about. I remember reading a passage about volcanic activity and thinking, "Wow, I'm really glad I just learned this." (I know this sounds crazy.) If you stay engaged while reading, you'll understand the passage so much better, and you'll answer questions with way more accuracy. Strategy 9: DON'T Spend Time on Vocab Vocab typically gets way too much attention from students. It feels good to study vocab flashcards, because it seems like you're making progress. "I studied 1,000 vocab words - this must mean I improved my score!" This is why other test prep programs love teaching you vocab - it feels like they're teaching you something useful worth your money, but it's not obvious that vocab actually isn't helping your score. Fortunately, vocab doesn't play a big role in your SAT Reading score anymore. This is especially true in the redesigned 2016 SAT. They've completely taken out Sentence Completion questions, and the words that you have to analyze in context are usually pretty common. Here are examples of words that you need to understand in context in the current SAT: ambivalent clashes convey plastic postulate These are somewhat advanced words, but they're nowhere near the level of the words you used to have to know, like "baroque," "diatribes," "platitudes," and "progenitor." College Board lowered the emphasis on vocab because of complaints that memorizing esoteric vocab was useless in college success and career success. Instead, it's now asking you to figure out the meaning of more common words the way the author intended. For example, "plastic" can mean "malleable," "artificial," or "sculptural." Only one of these is right in the context of the passage. This doesn't mean that vocab is totally useless. For one, SAT Writing still has a few vocab questions (read more about this in my Perfect SAT Writing guide). Furthermore, sometimes knowing the definition of the words in context is helpful. Here are a few tips on what to learn, and how to learn vocab effectively. First, I've written a super detailed guide on the best way to study SAT vocabulary. This method makes your studying much more efficient so you retain words longer and engage with the most difficult vocab most often. Second, you need to take notes on vocab words that you don't know that you see in your practice questions. Don't just focus on the right answers- understand the definition of wrong answers as well. Only take notes from official SAT tests. It's hard to predict what words the SAT will use, and the SAT doesn't often repeat words from previous tests. But the official free practice tests from the Official Study Guide that we integrate in our PrepScholar program are the best sources. Strategy 9B: Don't Spend Time Reading Books or Magazines Over the many years I've studied for tests or run a test prep company, I've heard this advice for SAT Reading: "Read great novels and well-written magazines, like in the New York Times or the Atlantic. This will help with reading comprehension." I hate this advice. A test like SAT Reading is very specific. It tests reading comprehension in very specific and formulaic ways, as I showed with all the question types in Strategy 3. Reading for general leisure does NOT train you effectively for the test. You're not exercising the same skills you need on the test, nor is it goal-driven enough to help you make progress. This terrible advice is like saying you can train for a swim meet by standing in the shower for longer. Yes, by being in the shower, you'll be in water, just like you will in the swimming pool. But you're not using the same skills. Yes, if you have a lifetime of strong reading, with thousands of hours of leisure reading experience, you will do better on SAT Reading. But right now, reading general material won't help you efficiently. Take your extra time and do SAT Reading practice questions instead. Strategy 10: Finish With Extra Time and Double Check Your goal at the end of all this work is to get so good at SAT Reading that you solve every question and have extra time left over at the end of the section to recheck your work. In high school, I was able to finish a Reading section in about 60% of the time allotted. For SAT Reading, this means finishing all 5 passages and 52 questions in 40 minutes. This means I have a whopping 25minutes left over to recheck my answers two times over. How did I get so fast? 1) I have an efficient reading strategy that works best for me. Namely, I skim the passage and work through the questions afterward. 2) Through a lot of hard work, I have a strong instinct for the test. I understand the test so well that when I read a question, I can predict the answer within a few seconds. I can rule out wrong answers instantly because they just feel wrong. I've surveyed thousands of questions and understood every single SAT skill deeply to design PrepScholar, so I can typically understand exactly what the College Board is asking. Kind of like Neo seeing code in The Matrix. Here are some time benchmarks that might help: You should finish skimming a long passage within three minutes. Each passage question should take you no more than 30 seconds. If you can do this well, you'll finish the entire section in 40 minutes, leaving a lot of time to double check. What's the best way to double checkyour work? I have a reliable method that I follow: Double check any questions you marked that you're unsure of. Try hard to eliminate answer choices. If it's a reading passage question, make sure that the passage supports your answer. If I'm 100% sure I'm right on a question, I mark it as such and never look at it again. If I'm not sure, I'll come back to it on the third pass. At least two minutes before time's up, I rapidly double checkthat I bubbled the answers correctly. I try to do this all at once so as not to waste time looking back and forth between the test book and the answer sheet. Go five at a time ("A D B C B") for more speed. If you notice yourself spending more than 30 seconds on a problem and aren't clear how you'll get to the answer, skip and go to the next question. Even though you need a near perfect raw score for an 800, don't be afraid to skip. You can come back to it later, and for now it's more important to get as many points as possible. Quick Tip: Bubbling Answers Here's a bubbling tip that will save you two minutes per section. When I first started test taking in high school, I did what many students do: after I finished one question, I went to the bubble sheet and filled it in. Then I solved the next question. Finish question 1, bubble in answer 1. Finish question 2, bubble in answer 2. And so forth. This actually wastes a lot of time. You're distracting yourself between two distinct tasks - solving questions, and bubbling in answers. This costs you time in both mental switching costs and in physically moving your hand and eyes to different areas of the test. Here's a better method: solve all your questions first in the book, then bubble all of them in at once. This has several huge advantages: you focus on each task one at a time, rather than switching between two different tasks. You also eliminate careless entry errors, like if you skip question 7 and bubble in question 8's answer into question 7's slot. By saving just ten seconds per question, you get back 200 seconds on a section that has 20 questions. This is huge. Note: If you use this strategy, you should already be finishing the section with ample extra time to spare. Otherwise, you might run out of time before you have the chance to bubble in the answer choices all at once. Strategy : Be Ready for Turbulence in Scores Now you know what it takes to achieve perfection in SAT Reading. You know the best strategies to use for tackling the passage. You know how to identify your weaknesses and learn from them. You know how to save time, and you know to stay engaged while reading a passage. Even despite all this, sometimes a passage just won't click with you. Of all SAT sections, I find that Reading has the most volatile score. How you vibe with a passage has a big impact on your score. You might get a string of questions wrong just because you couldn't really understand what the passage was really about. This doesn't happen on Math or Writing. No matter what happens, you need to keep calm and keep working. You might swing from an 800 on one practice test to a 710 on another. Don't let that faze you. Don't start doubting all the hard work you've put in. Keep a calm head, and, like always, work hard on reviewing your mistakes. This might even happen on the real SAT. You might get below your target score and be crestfallen. Pick yourself up. This happens. If you've consistently been getting 800's on practice tests, you should take the test again and try to score higher. Very likely, you will. And because most schools nowadays Superscore the SAT, you can combine that new 800 with your other sections for an awesome SAT score. In Overview Those are the main strategies I have for you to improve your SAT Reading score to an 800. If you're scoring above a 600 right now, with hard work and smart studying, you can raise it to a perfect SAT Reading score. Even though we covered a lot of strategies, the main point is still this: you need to understand where you're falling short, and drill those weaknesses continuously. You need to be thoughtful about your mistakes and leave no mistake ignored. Here's a recap of all the strategies, in case you want to go back and review any: Strategy 1: Understand Your High Level Weakness: Time Management or Passage Strategy Strategy 2:Learn to Eliminate 3 Wrong Answers Strategy 3: Predict the Answer Before Reading the Answer Choices Strategy 4: Experiment with Passage Reading Strategies and Find the Best for You Strategy 5: Understand Every Single Mistake You Make Strategy 6:Find Your Reading Skill Weaknesses and Drill Them Strategy 7:Read the Italicized Passage Introduction Strategy 8: Be Interested in the Passage Subject Matter Strategy 9: DON'T Spend Time on Vocab Strategy 10: Finish With Extra Time and Double Check Strategy : Be Ready for Turbulence in Scores Keep reading for more resources on how to boost your SAT score. What's Next? We have a lot more useful guides to raise your SAT score. Read our complete guide to a perfect 1600, written by me, a perfect scorer. Read our accompanying guide to a 800 on SAT Math. Learn how to write a perfect-scoring 12 SAT essay, step by step. Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points?We have the industry's leading SAT prep program. Built by Harvard grads and SAT full scorers, the program learns your strengths and weaknesses through advanced statistics, then customizes your prep program to you so you get the most effective prep possible. I built the PrepScholar program based on the principles in this article - the principles that worked for me and thousands of our students. I'm confident they'll also work with you. Check out our 5-day free trial today:

Cyberterrorism, Cyber terrorists and their methods to launch an attack Research Paper

Cyberterrorism, Cyber terrorists and their methods to launch an attack - Research Paper Example Or to intimidate any person in furtherance of such objectives (Verton, 2003). With ever changing technology, there are ways upon ways to hack or use the internet in a criminal manner such as cyber espionage or information warfare. Cyber terrorism is a combination of cyberspace and terrorism. Often this type of warfare is used to persuade a group or government to follow certain political beliefs. Cyber terrorism can be used to help plan other terrorist activities, soften a target prior to a physical attack and generate more fear and confusion concurrent with other terrorist acts. Cyber terrorism has no boundaries as it is not limited by physical space and can be carried out by anyone and anywhere in the world. This paper aims to provide an explanation of what cyber terrorism is and how it is propagated in information technology world and the impacts it has on the businesses and organisation s that use the internet and networking to carry out their activities. It is important that we i dentify and protect the critical infrastructures which include government operations, gas/oil storage and delivery, water supply systems, banking and finance, transportation, electrical energy, telecommunications and emergency. According to the former secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld in 2002 The nation is vulnerable to new forms of terrorism ranging from cyber-attacks to attacks on military bases abroad to ballistic missile attacks on U.S. cities. Wars in the 21st century will increasingly require all elements of national power – not just the military. They will require that economic, diplomatic, financial, law enforcement and intelligence capabilities work together. Cyber terrorist use different methods to launch a cyber-terror attack. One method is hacking, which is the unauthorized access to a computer or network. An alternative technique is the Trojan horse program designed to pretend to do one thing while actually doing another, with the purpose of damaging the compu ter’s software or system operations. Computer viruses can be spread extremely fast and cause major damage. Computer worms are self-contained programs that are able to spread functional copies of itself or its segments to other computer systems. Then there’s email relates crimes that involve e-mail spoofing, spreading Trojans, viruses and worms. Denial of Service (DoS) attacks that can be accomplished by using a single computer or millions of computers throughout the world. To perpetrate such an activity, the ‘attacker’ installs a Trojan in many computers, gain control over them, and then send a lot of requests to the target computer. And last, but not least, cryptography literally meaning covered writing, involves the hiding of data in another object; it can also be used to hide messages within image and audio file. Although there is no definite way of stopping cyber terrorism there are several measures to prevent such acts. For example, using an up-to-dat e computer security software systems and firewalls, personal vigilance. security levels in private sector critical infrastructure fields. Using a high level virus-scanning program like Kaspersky or Norton devices will be safe from majority of the little viruses that you may come in contact with. In order to understand the cyber terrorism four major elements have to be considered and examined these elements are the perpetrator of the crime , the place where the crime takes place, the tools that are used to aid the perpetration of the crime, the action what actions take

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Marketing project - Essay Example For this very reason the government and the customers are encouraging the investment of public and private sector into the sector; they are encouraging more of private investment because it is believed that they would provide with better quality of services. The system of nursing home started in 1980s and with time and has progressed over the years; more investment during 1990s and it is believed that by 2011 the government would have invested $123 Billion into the sector. The quality of the services is under question; there are few areas that do not provide the expected level of facilities and much important needs to be given on them. The customers need the facility but at the same time they would prefer such nursing homes that would give them the standard they are looking for at a reasonable cost. Because there is high demand for the services that is why any new investment would find itself good customers and at an stage of investment; Guardian Care will be a good investment for the people of China as well as for the company if they focus on the existing lack of facilities and services and provide the same and bridge the

Managing Diversity in the work place Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Managing Diversity in the work place - Article Example there are no observable issues relating to diversity owing to the harsh disciplinary actions taken against any employee who discriminates or harasses a colleague on the basis of their diversity. Conversely, my organization instills a culture of acceptance and positivity through creation of teams exemplified by involvement of both older and younger generations in order to introduce a diversity of expertise (Wesotzkey, 2011). For instance, the younger generation is considered more computer savvy while the older generation is cited by Collins-McNeil, Sharpe and Benbow (2012) as having a wealth of experience that can benefit a team. Harton et al (2012) notes that a culture of fairness and impartiality in scheduling individual duties is imperative in managing a diverse workforce. In my organization, individual employees are given the autonomy to make their own schedules aligned to their needs. In terms of commonalities, all employees in my organization have a common vision. Our core vision is to become a leader in healthcare delivery through a patient-centered approach to care. In this regard, each employee regardless of gender, race, religion, experience, morals and principles bring their divergent opinions towards the achievement of this common vision. The second commonality in my organization relates to partnership. All employees comprehend the fact that delivery of quality and safe health care is highly dependent on collaboration. An interdisciplinary collaboration approach to care delivery evident in my organization is proof that working in partnership with other disciplines is a collective agenda. To increase appreciation of both differences and similarities, I would introduce weekly or monthly meetings whereby all employees discuss their beliefs, traditions, principles and moral standings. In doing so, employees would understand how their colleagues view specific issues or subject matters and consequently understand how to approach or handle them in an effort

Is Religion In Decline As A Major Institution Religion Essay

Is Religion In Decline As A Major Institution Religion Essay This paper will critically analyse and debate the question is religion in decline as a major social institution? I will be focusing my paper primarily on the United Kingdom (UK) but will touch on other Western countries. To begin, this paper will look at the definitions of religion as this in its self is surrounded by debate, and then it will go on to look at what is meant by secularisation. The main body of the paper will look at various perspectives, both for and against the idea that religion is in decline within the UK using not only the well documented thoughts of Sociologists but also using data that has been collated through various methods, such as the Census and British Social Attitudes Survey (BSA). Religion could also be thought of in various other situations, such as in football for example, a group of people come together in a belief of something. They perform rituals and sing the praises of what could be described as their common god their football team. However, for the purpose of this paper we will assume religion to be of the most commonly perceived form ie the belief and praying to god -regardless of the gods title ie God Allah etc. When we speak of the decline of religion in society we often hear the word secularisation being mentioned, Bryan Wilson (Religion in Secular Society, 1966), describes secularisation as the process whereby religious thinking, practices and institutions is becoming less prominent in society and its institutions less important and influential in the lives of individuals. Whilst Peter Berger in The Social Reality of Religion, 1969 puts an argument forward that it is The process by which sectors of society and culture are removed from the domination of religious institutions and symbols Wilson also stated that those who defined religion in substantive terms are more likely to be in agreement of the secularisation thesis, this is due to the fact that they can show that religious beliefs has declined as people accept other more rational explanations of the world due to factors such as post-modernity, the Industrial Revolution bringing about a greater understanding of the sciences and techn ology has also brought about a decline in the beliefs of a god within the minds of UK citizens, especially Christian UK citizens. Many Sociologists are in agreement that changes in society will directly impact on changes in religion. Going a step further, some sociologists have claimed that the continuing advancement of science will eventually mean a further weakening, or even complete disappearance of religion within our society. Berger (1967) states that with the rapid growth of technologies, media and sciences comes a decline of religion and a questioning of its place in society. He goes on to state that religion, in the past, has held the answers to our unanswerable questions and gave meaning to lives. Now that our questions are now answered by science and technology then the church and religion is no longer needed. This process is also referred to as the Rational Choice Theory (RTC) of Religion . Another supporter of the secularisation theory is Bruce (1995) whom argues that by measuring the size of the clergy is a direct indicator of the popularity of religion. At the start of the 1900s, there were over 45,000 clerics in Britain, this had declined to just over 34,000 100 years later in 2000. The clergy had decreased by almost twenty five percent, despite the fact that the population had all but doubled in size (Bruce 1995). Bruce also states that another pointer to secularisation is the rising divorce rate, coupled with fewer religious marriage ceremonies. In 1995 Bruce stated that 30 years ago church weddings used to make up 75% of all marriage ceremonies, but now this figure has fallen to less than half . When you add this statistic with the facts that there is an ever increasing divorce rate, cohabitation is becoming commonplace and the percentage of children being born outside of a marriage is at am all time high; it has to be seen that religion and its moral value sys tem exert little influence today (Bruce 1995). Durkheim stated A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practicesà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them (Durkheim 1915: 62). He emphasised that religion brought people together, they shared a common belief and commitment to the same sacred symbol. It must be pointed out that Durkheim states that it is the coming together and bonding that is important not the reason of their togetherness. Durkheim argues that religion holds an essential social function There can be no society which does not feel the need of upholding and reaffirming at regular intervals the collective sentiments and collective ideas which make its unity and its personality (1915, 474-475) Although Durkheim was speaking here regarding religion we can see this happening in other ways in society, going back to the football match you could relate this statement back to the Emirates stadium, Anfield, Old Trafford and indeed any of the 100s of football grounds around the UK on any given Saturday between August and May! Webers The Protestant Ethic The Spirit of Capitalism shows us how Calvinists in the 16th and 17th century looked upon a persons success within business and savings was an indication that they were destined for salvation. We can relate this to the early beginnings of capitalism and a persons responsibility and prospects, with time the emphasis of religious beliefs was eroded as capitalism prospered. With this new society came increasing rationalisation, this lead to disenchantment and inevitably along with that came a decrease in religious belief systems and church attendance Anthon y Giddens (1997) wrote The three classical sociological theorists, Marx, Durkheim and Weber [all] thought that the significance of religion would decrease in modern times. Each believed that religion is in a fundamental sense an illusion. The advocates of different faiths may be wholly persuaded of the validity of the beliefs they hold and the rituals in which they participate, yet the very diversity of religions and their obvious connections to different types of society, the three thinkers held, make these claims inherently implausible. If we are to examine secularisation it is common sense to evaluate church attendance. According to the 1851 British Census just over 40% of the population attended church. By 1950 this had dipped to 20% and in 2000 we saw just 7.5 % of people stating that they attended church. Looking towards the future we could look at Sunday school attendance. Attendance had also dropped to an all time low in 1900 55% of children attended Sunday School in the year 2000 this figure plummeted below 4% this surely shows that religion is in decline, and at a very swift rate. The UK Census Data (2001) shows that 71.6% claim to be Christian, 2.7% Muslim, 1.0% Hindu, 0.6% Sikh, 0.5% Jewish, 0.3% Buddhist and 23.2% either have no religion or did not state one. However, if we compare the Census 2001 data with data available from Social Trends 30 (2000) cited in Moore (2001) suggest that while Christianity seems to be in decline other religions are not. Within the UK Islam had increased 380% from 130,000 people stating it as their religion in 1970 to 495,000. The UK has also seen a massive increase in Sikhism by 250% from 1970 to 1990. It must be pointed out that although undoubtedly these religions are on the increase by 100s of percent that the total number of individuals that say they are practising these religions is still quite a small percentage of the UK population. It also should be pointed out that although the Census data is usually accurate it is now almost 10 years old, and could be seen as outdated information. . An opposing view of secularisation argues that religious practices and participation have, in the past, been greatly overestimated and exaggerated. Martin (1967), has questioned the validity and reliability of past religious statistics. He argues that the demographic content is not valid and questions methods used for the collation of this data. Martin states that peoples religious belief systems and belonging to religious groups cannot be measured from statistics regarding religious practice. He goes on to state that although people may be religious they are choosing to express their belief in alternative ways. Martin also argued that some people attended Church for what the church can do for them in a non-religious capacity, for social motive, as opposed to holding strong religious beliefs. This mindset resulted in attendance of church numbers being inflated , Martin questions whether or not to interpret declining attendance to places of worship as evidence that points towards a lo ss of religious faith within society. Demaroth and Hammond (1969), also agree with this viewpoint and state that We should avoid the quick assumption that Church members are always highly religious in their personal beliefs and activities, or that Church non-members are otherwise non-religious.. Robert Bellah puts forward the argument that it is wrong to perceive that just because people do no longer attend church is vast numbers that region itself is in decline. Bellah states that people do not need to be a part of a large religious organisation in order to be religious, they can simply practice their beliefs in their own homes and lives and it is this that makes them religious, not the fact that they attend a church building. Luckmann (1967) calls this practice the Invisible Religion Luckmann states that when society goes through periods of vast change and development it is also expected that religious practices and systems will also evolve, and new forms shall emerge. It is fair to say that both Bellah and Luckmann agree that religion is simply transforming rather than declining. They argue that whilst group and public meetings of religion are in decline that personal practice is as strong as ever, but cannot be scientifically measured. A similar argument is put forward by Grace Davie (1995) she is in agreement with Bellah in that secularisation needs to be separated from belief and belonging. She argues the theory that in the UK religion is belief without belonging people believe, but feel they do not belong to the church, so they practice their religion in the privacy of their own homes. To conclude, it must be said that religion is in decline as a major social institution within the UK when referring to the Christian religions specifically Roman Catholics, Protestants and Methodists. These religious institutions have seen a rapid fall in church attendance- regardless of if people are practicing in their own homes or not. Within the UK religion, specifically Christianity, has seen a decrease, or disengagement, of power issues such as abortion and divorce used to be influenced greatly by the church today people do not look to the church for guidance on such issues but look more towards personal circumstance in order to reach decisions. With this in mind it can only be concluded that the major institution that we know as the church now holds less power, less cohesion and less importance within the UK today with traditions of religion and prayer being replaced by new technologies and a wish for an individual to succeed in personal issues such as employment, status and w ealth. The opposite could be argued for other religions such as Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism, although it could also be argued that these religions are only on the increase due to immigration into the UK in the past 10 years. I found very little factual data that could show a large number of UK born citizens joining such religions so it is my belief that the growth of these religions is primarily due to the fact that the beliefs and practices of these religions have been brought into the UK rather than developed within the UK. Ref Journal: Tony Fahey Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, Vol. 83, No. 332 (Winter, 1994), pp. 367-375 (article consists of 9 pages) Published by: Irish Province of the Society of Jesus Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/30091534 Growth and Decline of Churchly Religion Ref Journal ; Malaise in the Sociology of Religion: A Prescription Richard K. Fenn Sociological Analysis, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Winter, 1985), pp. 401-414 (article consists of 14 pages) Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3711156 Davie, G (1994) Religion in Britain since 1945. England,Blackwell Publishing Giddens,.A (2001) Sociology Introductory Readings , revised edition.: England, polity Hamilton, M (2001): The Sociology of Religion : England: Routlegde Luckmann, T (1963) The Invisible Religion: The Problem With Religion in Modern Society : England, Macmillan. British Social Attitudes Survey (BSA), viewed 08 April 2010, BOOK Bruce, S 1995, Religion in Modern Britain, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Census. Religion in Britain: Office for National Statistics, viewed 16 April 2010, www.curriculum-press.co.uk sociology fact sheet one viewed 28 March 2010.

Film Versus Theatre Presentations of William Shakespeares Much Ado Abo

Film Versus Theatre Presentations of William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing Shakespeare's comedy Much Ado About Nothing is a witty play that is interpreted in many different ways for many different audiences. Branaugh's movie rendition, compared to the Shenandoah Shakespeare Company's play, have many separately emphasized points. If we look at elements such as use of space, costuming, and love relationships we find that Kenneth Branaugh emphasizes the separation of the military from the domestic which eventually heads down to the separation of men and women, while in the stage production, the director emphasizes the relationship and friendship between Claudio, Benedict, and Don Pedro. In Branaugh's movie version of Much Ado About Nothing there is much emphasis placed visually upon the military and the domestic atmosphere. From the beginning of Branaugh's interpretation the clear distinction between the two groups is visually portrayed. The movie begins with Emma Thompson, Beatrice, reading aloud to her friends and family in a relaxed laid back setting. The first domestic scenes lay out the tranquility of Leonato's home compared to the rough and public military scenes. The first military scene shows Don Pedro and his comrades riding up to Leonato's house. The scene is visually pleasing with the soldiers striding up to the house on horses with their arms raised in the air in slow motion. A strong sense of military valor is established through the soldier's actions, and the movie has already established a sense of military and domestic space, which the play did not capture. The Shenandoah Shakespeare Company's version of the play began very differently. There was no domestic or military atmosphere at all and the ... ...oin the domestic group, but Don Pedro and Don John are not as faded out. Don Pedro is present in the end, however, he is not a main part of the action. All of the characters were present most of the time either sitting on stage or standing which made the two groups seem not as separate as in Branaugh's movie. Branaugh and the company director both made many choices, which influenced their performances. I enjoyed the movie more the play because it was not only full of funny lines and puns, but the actors and the setting were amazing. They movie seemed to flow more for me and I enjoyed being able to see the characters in a serene setting without having to visualize it all. Shakespeare's play Much Ado About Nothing can be interpreted, acted, read, and visualized in different ways, but I thought that Kenneth Branaugh brought together an amazing cast and performance.

Sweet Basil Marketing Plan

In order to Increase market share and sales, Sweet Basil will target dine-in, take-out, and take-n-bake pizza lovers In the cities of Treated, Rewind, USA, and Monrovia. The strategies for increasing sales are to first penetrate new markets, then increase usage and size of customer orders. This will be conducted through unbeatable value and the finest ingredients that cannot be received anywhere else in the area. The marketing mix for Sweet Basil will consist of mobile marketing, flyer distribution, a website, social media outlets, television advertising and email newsletters.The objectives for many of these avenues are to provide coupons and discounts as well as gain consumer loyalty. The business does a great Job already with returning patrons so it is time to focus energy on effectively penetrating new markets. Sweet Basil will look to Increase sales by 40% or $110,400 and achieve a market share of 30% In Treated and 20% In the surrounding clues. This will ensure success and will provide a break even before the first 6 months. 2. 0 Situation Analysis Currently, the economic market condition in the united States and California is primarily recession.Overall, the pizza business is doing k. Tit flat sales of about $38 billion for the past 3 years (Kara 2011). Consumers are becoming much more particular when it comes to value and where they spend their hard earned money. Sweet Basil pizzeria is doing quite well during the recession but it is having trouble inquiring new consumers. Prices of flour, produce, and cheese are on the rise so It Is important to Increase business and revenue to cover these associated costs. These forces are uncontrollable In the macro environment along with the rising unemployment from the recession.It is important to instill value and personalized maintain/increase repeat customers. There are many successful dine-in and take- out pizza companies that fail to provide the opportunity for consumers to purchase take-n-bake pizzas. Consumer s are going to ultimately purchase from the establishment that provides the best value and quality mixture. Sweet Basil offers dine-in, take-out, and take-n-bake pizzas, leaving the delivery market to competitors. With this in mind, Sweet Basil is very capable of increasing sales with the development of take-n-bake pizzas and a solid marketing strategy. 2. Market Summary Sweet Basil Pizzeria is an extremely reputable pizzeria in the city of Treated, California. Besides being well known, Sweet Basil also maintains a strong competitive advantage with its owner, James Decrease, being a hotel restaurant management graduate from Purdue University and restaurant industry veteran for well over 25 years. James has been able to carefully select his target market due to his extensive industry experience. As mentioned before, the current pizza market is motionless at around $38 billion per year, which isn't so bad considering worldwide market conditions.Many loyal customers have been moving du e to rising foreclosure rates and this hurts return business. An astonishing 93% of Americans eat pizza at least once a month and approximately 3 billion pizzas are sold every year (Hinkle 2009). This leaves plenty of room for competition and growth for Sweet Basil take-n-bake pizzas in the current market. Even though Sweet Basil's target market demographics is tailored to consumers in the San Gabriel Valley and surrounding areas in southern California, we reserve the right to increase the area if growth is substantial.The average salary of southern California Jobs is $55,000 a year (Simply Hired 2011), which leaves plenty disposable income for the on-the-go working class individual. Many consumers in southern California lead extremely busy lifestyles, which makes it hard to cook for a family. There are currently seven pizza restaurants/parlors in Treated, California. None of these pizza establishments offer take-n-bake pizzas for sale, so the only real competition is frozen pizzas at the super market. Our consumers enjoy high quality pizza with fresh ingredients at an affordable price.This provides incredible value to the customer and a much better alternative to people having to bake store bought frozen pizzas. Sweet Basil provides its customers with an extensive value for their hard earned none. Consumers choose Sweet Basil pizza because we serve their needs through our unique ingredients and fresh homemade sauce and dough. People want more than Just a bland, regular tasting pizza and we tailor our unique blend of basil, garlic, and oregano to pizza lovers throughout the Los Angels area.Sweet Basil serves over 10 different types of specialty pizzas creating enjoyment for all types of palettes. Our pizza can be picked up with no wait and is never sold unless it has been made within 7 days to increase the quality that you'll find in the frozen section of the super markets. Since no other pizza establishments in Treated offer take-n-bake style pizzas, we will be able to control the market for consumers that are looking for a fresh alternative. Nearly every single frozen pizza brand from Disgorging to Stouffer increased it's sales in the 52 weeks between summer 2009-2010 (BIB International 2010).Disgorging made the most out of the entire top 10 frozen pizzas in 2010 Digestion's sales throughout the world, it's important to notice that they increased sales from 2009 to 2010 and that the market doesn't show any signs of decreasing. Pizza is an American tradition that most people love to eat and Sweet Basil's quality ND delicious ingredients create the competitive advantage. 2. 2 SOOT Analysis * Strengths: Sweet Basil's strengths consist of a number of things currently going into the take-n-bake market.For one, Sweet Basil is the only pizzeria that currently offers take-n-bake pizzas; the competition is very minimal other than store bought frozen pizzas. Second, Sweet Basil has a stellar reputation amongst the surrounding community, catering to schools and businesses reaching new customers daily. Sweet Basil only uses the freshest ingredients and everything is homemade including the bread and delicious sauce. The pizzeria is located in a prime location, right next too Seven-Eleven, getting optimal exposure from the public. Weaknesses: Currently there are a couple of solid weaknesses that can cause some undesired hurdles for Sweet Basil's take-n-bake pizzas. First off, Sweet Basil has not done any marketing yet for the new take-n-bake concept and all of the marketing in the past has been through word of mouth solely. Another weakness is that consumers are already familiar with the competition and that could make it very difficult to market to consumers that haven't tried Sweet Basil pizza before. Finally, Sweet Basil pizzeria doesn't have any distribution outlets other than the restaurant located in the city of Treated and delivery is not offered.These issues certainly need to be addressed and solved so that they don't affect Sweet Basil pizzeria negatively. * Opportunities: While pizza continues to be popular in America, it is evolving. Fierce discounting and coupling by top players has squeezed other pizza Sellers (Kara 2011). This leaves a great opportunity for Sweet Basil to offer coupons and discounts through a variety of medias and advertising. Another opportunity is that the market appears to be very teddy for take-n-bake/frozen pizza purchases. This can certainly provide Sweet Basil with a chance to reap some of the market share with its high quality, affordable pizzas.Second, Sweet Basil's take-n-bake pizzas don't use up any additional resources or time than their freshly made take-out or dine-in pizzas, making start up costs insignificant. One possibility in the future could be to contract with grocery store chains to offer frozen pizzas more conveniently to consumers. Sweet Basil can increase revenue by attracting customers that don't live close to the pizzeria or prefer o make pizzas a t their own home. * Threats: Potential threats for Sweet Basil include possible competition from neighboring pizzerias in the area should they decide to start a take-n-bake operation.Another possible threat could be an increase in direct and indirect costs such as electricity for freezing the take-n-bake pizzas. An increase in gas prices could also be a possible threat for sales of pizza because consumers may not be willing to drive to the pizzeria. An increase in labor costs due to the slightly complex routine behind making take-n-bake pizzas ready for customers. 2. Competition As briefly stated earlier, there are currently 5 other pizza restaurants in Treated and we compete for pizza loving customers on a regular basis.These competitors great sum of customers that can be earned with the proper marketing campaign. The seven places to get pizza in Treated are Pizza Hut, Domino's, Hungry Hosier's Pizza, Treated Pizza Co. , Little Caesar, Flying Pizza, and Cost (which is Sweet Basil's only real take-n-bake competition other than grocery store brands). People can purchase freshly made pizza to order at all of these establishments, but these competitors eave not developed a take-n-bake concept yet. This leaves the market wide open for Sweet Basil to compete with better-known chains such as Cost and grocery store brands.The seven pizza establishments in Treated do not pose as much threat to Sweet Basil's Take-n-Bake pizzas as the store bought brands and Cost pizza. When considering true competition it is important to observe the characteristics of the take- n-bake pizza that Sweet Basil will offer. The pizzas are going to be 16†³ in length, which is fairly large for take-n-bake pizza. This means that single-serve frozen pizza sonnets really pose a significant threat because we are marketing to larger parties and families who are constantly on the go. Sweet Basil's large 14†³ pizzas will come with a variety of toppings.With this in mind the only store boug ht competitors that are offered at nearly all super markets are Disgorging, Tombstone, Red Baron, California Pizza Kitchen, Freshest, and Tony's (BIB International 2011) in order of popularity/sales. The other main competitor that Sweet Basil has to beware of that is gaining popularity is Cost's take-n-bake frozen pizzas because they offer more rationalized service and quality than the other brands. Cost pizzas are also larger in size (16†³) and cost a little more than the other brands (Cost 2011). 2. Product Offering The new product offering of Sweet Basil Pizzeria is very concise and direct. The take-n-bake pizzas will only be offered in the 14†³ size and will consist of only five different varieties such as pepperoni pizza, cheese pizza, vegetarian pizza, Sweet Basil Favorite (all combo toppings), and BBC pizza. All of these pizzas are made with the finest local produce from Mike's Foods and ingredients provided from JACM DOD service distribution. Sweet Basil Pizza will be extremely fresh, having been made within a week from the date of purchase.Customers can feel assured they are getting a high-quality pizza with greater freshness than any other brand currently in the target market. Valued consumers will also be able to call in orders if they require special toppings or especially large orders. Consumers will also be able to purchase packets of our most popular ingredient â€Å"Sweet Basil†, which is a combination of secret spices containing garlic and basil. This mixture is absolutely delicious and makes any pizza caste even better than it normally would. 2. Keys to Success The major factors that will make Sweet Basil a huge success among the competition in the Los Angels area is our stellar personalized service, finest ingredients, competitive price, and homemade sauce/dough recipe. Personalized service and quality/recipes are the main advantages that Sweet Basil Pizzeria is aiming to use as their competitive advantage. Sweet Basil alrea dy has a considerable customer dimension from its fourteen years of success and this must keeping up to date with ingredient costs, researching local stores and purveyors to ampere value/price mixtures.According to the National Restaurant Association, the top trend right now is locally grown produce (Stevenson 2010). Sweet Basil only purchases the finest, locally grown produce from Mike's Foods in Treated. The new take-n-bake product that sweet basil offers is no more expensive than providing it's everyday to-go pizzas to valued customers. This makes the overall product cost extremely low and creates a major factor in the success of this new idea for Sweet Basil Pizza. The pizza and restaurant business is a difficult industry to tackle; product/industry knowledge is a necessity to succeed.Sweet Basil is always staying familiar and up to date with current practices in order to remain competitive. This factor is something that Sweet Basil will surely continue to practice and exploit. Continued customer satisfaction is a concept that Sweet Basil will continue to present to its valued patrons. 2. 6. Critical Issues As a pre-established company, Sweet Basil maintains an exceptional product, gaining return customers and recognition daily. The major critical issues for Sweet Basil is to: * Gain market exposure- Sweet Basil doesn't currently spend any money on marketing to Treated or its surrounding cities.Word of mouth from satisfied customers is a great type of free marketing but it doesn't increase quickly enough. Sweet Basil will now be able to offer a product to customers that live further away; therefore, it should target more customers using different avenues of marketing. Train additional staff- training is a 2-3 month period depending on the speed of the employee and this could slow the business down if not forecasted properly. Since Sweet Basil doesn't deliver, it is currently run with no more than 2 employees at a time.If customers and sales increase signif icantly, sustainability will rely on the ark force. New hiring measure may be needed. * Monitoring quality assurance and customer service- the pizzeria must maintain a reputable amount of quality and service in order to ensure that the growth strategy doesn't Jeopardize the current benchmark. Quality will be monitored by gaining feedback from customers and allowing them to offer suggestions through questionnaires. * Expansion- expanding through the creation of additional parlors in Dearth's surrounding cities may be a necessity if it proves both profitable and sustainable.This is more off long-term critical issue but must be recognized nonetheless. . 0 Marketing Strategy The primary target for Sweet Basil's marketing strategy will be towards households and businesses in the cities of Treated, Monrovia, USA, and Rewind. Americans love pizza and it is clear that everyone in these cities should be marketed because of pizza's popularity and sustained growth throughout past years. For no w, Sweet Basil only offers take-out, dine-in, and take-n-bake services to its patrons, which leaves delivery open to competition.Sweet Basil realizes that they can serve 65-70% of Pizza Power Report). Undoubtedly there is a substantial amount of market share that an be earned with the proper market-challenger attack strategies. Sweet Basil anticipates being able to sell more pizza to current customers, sell to market segments that have not previously been targeted, and gain a higher market penetration. Word of mouth advertising has been Sweet Basil's sole source of advertising for the past fourteen years and now the time has come to try a new initiative to increase growth and profits.Although word of mouth advertising is extremely effective and well trusted from consumers, Sweet Basil finds that most loyal clients did not hear about the pizzeria until the first couple years of residing in Treated. With this in mind, the pizzeria will kick off some new marketing strategies to increas e its overall exposure to the businesses and households in its target market. Sweet Basil will look to gain new customers through new-market segment strategies.More consumers need to be aware of Sweet Basil's unparalleled service and great tasting pizza; word of mouth advertising will not penetrate as many consumers as supplementary advertising. Sweet Basil also looks to engage in encirclement attacks throughout the before-mentioned cities in order to gain exposure into some of the competition's territory. Finally, Joint partnership advertising will be conducted to decrease overall advertising costs. Paper flyers will be attached to every take-out box, promoting take-n-bake pizza to current patrons, which well result in increased usage.Flyers that include coupons will be served to residential and commercial properties in order to increase new customers. This will help Sweet Basil primarily increase sales over time but will also help in gaining exposure to the target market. A recent study shows that 46% of pizza consumers report that coupons or promotions influence where they decide to purchase their pizza (Barrett, 2010 Pizza Power Report). If these statistics prove to be true, Sweet Basil will surely be able to earn new business amongst the community.Sweet Basil will also exploit other forms of integrated marketing communications through website development, mass SMS marketing to loyal patrons, and usage of social media platforms. The website will allow consumers to view the menu and leave comments, questions, and concerns, which will be viewable for everyone to see. Catering is a huge source of Sweet Basil's success and consumers will be able to navigate through catering options and information. People will also be able to add themselves onto the weekly email that will be sent out to include coupons and special promotions.This will help Sweet Basil in obtaining more market exposure to current and new clientele. â€Å"With so many people now using the Inter net to search for products and services it is now acknowledged that having a business website is Just about as essential as having a telephone† (Touched, 2001). Sweet Basil will also utilize mass text message marketing in order to promote specials and promos that are offered each week. This will be initiated using Decontrolling. Mom to ensure that these messages can be sent every other week to market different promos and special items to consumers.Each customer will be asked if they would like to receive promotion emails and text messages from Sweet Basil. The success rate for permission based mobile marketing campaigns is around 25% Oarfish, 2006). This will ensure seamless impersonal communication to Sweet Basil's loyal patrons. Lastly, Sweet Basil's marketing include the development of a Faceable, Namespace, and Twitter account so loyal patrons can feel more united with Sweet Basil's service and undeniable quality food. The Namespace and Faceable pages will allow customers to view the menu and catering options that Sweet Basil offers.This type of marketing is virtually free although it is time consuming to continuously update. Sweet Basil will also utilize cable television marketing in order to market to new customers. Advertising will only be targeted to Time Warner Cable's Foothills and West Covina coverage areas in the San Gabriel Valley (Coverage Area 2011). Mostly sports programs on ESP. and popular shows on Bravo will be targeted to enhance Sweet Basil's exposure to their target market. This will be exercised during the first 90 days of marketing plan.All of these integrated marketing communications will allow Sweet Basil to reach a large market of new consumers as well as continue to gain increased business with existing patrons. These marketing strategies were also selected due to their low cost and minimal time consumption required. 3. 1 Mission Statement â€Å"We exist to provide the best quality dine-in, take-out, and take-n-bake pizza to the Route 66 communities of the San Gabriel Valley. This will be accomplished through unmatched customer service, value, and great tasting pizza; creating a memorable experience for all to enjoy'. 3. Marketing Objectives Sweet Basil will achieve a few concrete objectives through its current and future marketing actions. The first and most crucial goal for the pizzeria is to conduct new- market segment strategies in order to earn new customers throughout Treated, Monrovia, USA, and Rewind. This strategy will be initiated immediately at the start of Quarter 2 this year now that Sweet Basil's take-n-bake pizzas are now in production. The target market objective is to increase overall market share, earn new customers, and amplify purchases to increase sales by 40% from now throughApril 2012. Collectively, Sweet Basil seeks to increase overall market share to 25% of all dine-in, take-out, and take-n-bake purchases in Treated and 13% of market share from Monrovia, Rewind, and USA. This al so includes 15% market share transactions from employees of local businesses in Treated and Rewind as well as 25% market share to households in Treated, Rewind, Monrovia, and USA. In order to accomplish these goals, Sweet Basil will have to gain at least 30 new customers every week on average and the goal is to be able to retain 90% of them.This strategy ill allow the pizzeria to maintain strong, positive growth each quarter through it's increasing customers. Another objective is increasing consumer usage to where customers are purchasing Sweet Basil products at least one more time per week. This will include increasing the purchase volume of each consumer as well. New consumers will be able to be measured by asking them how they heard about Sweet Basil to begin with and afterwards asking them if they would like to receive coupons and promotions by email and text in the future. Sweet Basil's target is to achieve the before mentioned market share by the end of 2012.Sweet Basil will a lso set promotional objectives in order to reach new customers through brand and company awareness as well as implementing strategic sales promotions. Millennial will information through word of mouth (Mr.. Youth, 2011). A major objective will be to grow the pizzeria's followers on Faceable and Namespace to 750 people by the end of 2011 to engage in more promotional initiatives. Seasonal and promotional entrees will be posted on these social media sites every other week to maintain consumer usage. The address, phone number, menu, and catering options will all be included n these sites as well.Sweet Basil will be hiring an individual to hand out door flyers to residential households and businesses in the cities of Treated, USA, Rewind, and Monrovia (starting in the city of Treated). This marketing effort will be conducted every Wednesday and Thursday from am to pm for the residential areas and every Monday for local businesses. Similar flyers will be on every take-out pizza box as we ll to notify customers of the option to purchase take-n-bake pizzas. No additional employees would have to be hired for the business as long as business doesn't increase more than 50%.The flyers will include specials and combos that can be purchased in exchange for the coupon on the flyer. Each flyer will have a coupon to receive 1 free slice with a purchase of any take-n-bake pizza. The flyers will also contain a coupon to purchase a take-n-bake pizza for 25% off. Additional specials will be included on the flyer and sponsors will be able to advertise on the other half of the flyer. The sponsors will incur all costs for the production of the flyers and will also include Sweet Basil's website, Faceable, Namespace, and Twitter information for nonusers..These flyers will be very similar to the email and text messaging blasts that Sweet Basil will be conducting every other month. Sweet Basil will look to enhance partnership efforts with local businesses, schools, cities, and clubs in o rder to increase exposure and maintain growth. Catering services and pizza specials will be offered for discount prices depending on the size and occasion of the order. Sweet Basil looks to increase its catering by 5% to businesses and residential areas. This will also help Sweet Basil gain more exposure and market share from satisfied customers. 3.Financial Objectives Sweet Basil will be targeting a number of sound financial objectives in order to increase profits and sustainability. As stated in the marketing objectives, increasing sales by 40% during the first 365 days is the target for Sweet Basil. Overall, Sweet Basil aspires to collectively reach 30% market share for Dearth's dine-in, take out, and take n bake pizza sales by the end of 2012. The goal for Rewind, USA, and Monrovia will be 20% overall market share. Currently, Sweet Basil obtains 30% of it's business from take out orders, 50% from dine in business, and 20% from catering.With the current market conditions, Sweet B asil's overall gross income amounts to $23,000 on average per month. The gross income should amount to at least $32,200 per month on average by April 2012 in order to realize a successful marketing plan. This would amount to an extra $110,400 in gross income a year, which would only be substantial if costs remained low. Sweet Basil doesn't require hiring an extra employee for the additional expected business so long as it doesn't exceed a 50% sales increase. Social media sites such as Faceable, Namespace, and Twitter are free which makes it a valuable marketing source financially.Sweet Basil will be using decontrolling. Com to send out SMS blasts including specials and deals for and allows for 5,000 customers to be included. The annual cost for this service then amounts to $960/year while emails are virtually free to send to loyal subscribed customers. Sweet Basil's website will be created for $1000 through a current part- time employee that is also going to school for web design. T his will be built during slow business hours at the restaurant to decrease hourly costs for the web development. The web domain will cost around $100 dollars a year to maintain.One f the expensive strategies for Sweet Basil Pizza is the cost of hiring on an employee to work Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday for 24 hours a week handing out flyers. The employee will be paid $8/her, so the annual cost will come out to about $12,000 if gas costs are associated. The flyers will be free to Sweet Basil because the sponsors will incur that cost. The most expensive marketing source will be advertising on Time Warner Cable during the first 90 days of marketing plan initiation. As mentioned earlier, only ESP. and Bravo will be targeted and we will run 4 commercials per day on both networks.With a cost of $40 per spot, Sweet Basil will incur a total cost of $28,800 Just in television advertising costs. An increase in sales will not result in a significant increase in utilities since the restauran t hours will remain the same and because the pizza oven is always left on. The cost of running the oven 2417 isn't much different from the cost of turning it off at night and the oven takes an hour to warm up to 600 degrees when opening in the morning. After all the costs are subtracted, Sweet Basil can make a return of $67,540 but the increase of ingredients, labor, and materials have not been subtracted from this mount.All of the before mentioned other than pizza ingredients and material will remain the same regardless off 40% increase in sales. 3. 4 Target Markets As stated earlier, Sweet Basil's target market will consist of all pizza lovers in the Route 66 cities of the San Gabriel Valley. In recent studies, 93% of Americans eat pizza at least 1 time a month, (Pizza Plan, 2011) which means there is a sizeable target market for Sweet Basil to penetrate. There are 21,782 residents in Treated, 46,672 in USA, 37,523 in Monrovia, and 1,433 in Rewind, which brings a total consumer ma rket of close to 110,000 people (city-data, 2009).Rewind consists of businesses for the most part, which gives Sweet Basil an opportunity to increase dine-in sales to workers during the day and catering services for luncheons and special events. Consumers report that 45% of restaurant pizza orders are for take- out and 20% of orders are for dine in (Barrett, 2010). The general strategy for Sweet Basil will be â€Å"differentiation† as described in Porter's generic strategies (Marketing Management, 2009). Sweet Basil offers an incomparable product compared to the rest because they use the best and highest quality ingredients while having the nines recipes.The key source of this distinction is the â€Å"sweet basil powder† that patrons can top on their pizza after it is made. Take-n-bake pizza is not offered in any other restaurants in the area other than Sweet Basil, which gives them an advantage for consumers that want a more unique taste. Consumers have a need for gre at tasting quality pizza that can be purchased right when they want it with little wait time and low cost. Sweet Basil certainly meets this need with the before mentioned points of difference and being able to dine-in and take-out as well. ND be out quicker than if they purchased fast food.Many consumers like driving by on their way home from work to get a late night special $6 one topping pizza that is hot and ready between 6-pm to feed their family after a busy workday. Others choose to stock up on take-n-bake frozen pizzas to serve at their convenience. Catering services are offered to businesses and patrons that have the need to feed a large event or party and a much more extensive menu is offered in order to add variety. Sweet Basil patrons range from all ages and nationalities, which is the advantage of offering a product that 93% of people engage in at least once a month.Pizza is also a relatively inexpensive way to feed a family and large parties of people in residential are as. This makes pizza ideal for people that are currently affected by the downfall of the economy and increases in unemployment. High school kids and local workers are a major part of the afternoon dine-in business that Sweet Basil receives during the week. Nearly 95% of Sweet Basil's business comes from returning customers, which proves that there is room for new customers. This also roves that the product tastes great and has an eminent price-quality comparison. . 5 Positioning Nearly all Americans enjoy eating pizza because it is a delicious and quick meal, which gives Sweet Basil an advantage over selling other products. In a recent survey initiated by Technetium, results show that 68% of those that have children 18 and under living in their household say that pizza occasions usually involve children (Barrett, 2010). This shows that pizza is a very popular amongst families but Sweet Basil does well with single person households and local workers since pizza is sold by he slice un til pm.This also helps in closing the gap for Sweet Basil's consumers and leaves only those that prefer ordering their pizza and having it delivered. Sweet Basil is not trying to offer delivery service any time soon, but many patrons prefer Just coming in to take-out their pizza rather than ordering delivered pizza from a competitor. This is exactly how Sweet Basil positions itself to consumers; the prices are low and affordable, the quality of food and flavor is unrivaled, and the experience is optimal. As mentioned earlier, â€Å"Sweet Basil† powder adds for a uniqueness that ant be tasted anywhere else which positions the business very well.All pizzas are created from scratch, using a large mixer for dough and fresh store bought produce, meats, and ingredients from local purveyors. Pricing strategies are used as well to effectively position Sweet Basil's food offerings. Sweet Basil sells pizza by the slice for only $1 where other companies may charge up to $3/slice. Sweet Basil also sells its large one topping take-out, dine-in, and take-n-bake pizzas for $8, which is a phenomenal value considering all of the top grade ingredients used.This creates a rice-quality comparison that isn't reciprocated from any competitors in the target market. Sweet Basil is able to position itself to a completely new market with the recent creation of its take-n-bake pizza. Minute reports that frozen pizza can be found in 66% of all households (Barrett, 2010), which gives Sweet Basil a nice competitive advantage over other pizza businesses in the San Gabriel Valley. Sweet Basil notices possible opportunities if they were to contract and create partnerships with local grocery stores and markets. Another possible opportunity in the future would be to