Today’s Picture: Isolated beach, Bay of Islands, New Zealand, May 2008

Part 1: Today's word

A category is a separate part of a system, which has its own name. So, in the Oscars, there are a number of different categories for acting: Best actor, Best supporting actor etc. If you divide something into different parts, you categorise (or ‘categorize’) it.

Research is often categorised as ‘qualitative’ or ‘quantitative’ but frequently it uses elements of each approach.

It has been shown that even two-year-old children can categorise faces as either 'happy' or 'sad'.

The categorisation of research as either 'quantitative' or 'qualitative' is a simplification which is being increasingly abandoned.

For more practice, see Unit 2 of: www.academicenglishgenerator.com

Part 2: Test

Here are FOUR sentences with the word of the day. But only THREE are correct. Which is the Odd One Out?

We are pleased to announce the winners of best marketing campaign in the small business category.

These research methods fall into the general category of 'qualitative', but this does not exclude the need for careful measurement.

I have categorised the different components into one single model in order to facilitate analysis.

Her work is really difficult to categorise, as it contains elements of several distinct traditions.

Part 3: Practice Questions:

What are the most common categories used for the population of this country?

How would you categorize students at this university?

Part 4: Kiwi Quiz Question

Which of these is NOT a category of marital status used by Statistics New Zealand?

Married (not separated)
Couple with children
Never married and never joined in a civil union
Separated, divorced, widowed or bereaved civil union partner

Part 5: Today's online reading:

Active Inertia (from The Economist) - an interesting article about a new concept in management
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?source=hptextfeature&story_id=11701430

Vocabulary about the article:

inertia / a guru / stuck in a rut / work at full throttle / volatile / pounce / fuzzy

Questions about the article:

What is ‘active inertia’?
Why are managers unwilling to stop when their approach seems to be failing?
Which kinds of companies did Professor Sull research?
Which strategy does he recommend to replace ‘active inertia’?
Why does he think a clear vision of the future can be unhelpful for managers?

Today’s musical intro and outro: from the USA
‘Anything you can do, I can do better’ by Irving Berlin – performed by Ethel Merman & Ray Middleton. From the CD ‘Ethel Merman: 24 Classic Songs”. 1998: Prism Leisure

This is a fun extract of Ethel Merman singing bits of her hits: http://youtube.com/watch?v=R8lEYO3gB7I