Life Skills

Anoop Verma

If you are always hiding in the crowd, your ideas will never get noticed. It is time you stopped playing with your smartphone and noticed the people around you. Start making eye contact. Start talking about your ideas. Be your own PR agent. Of course, you must not be too brash in trying to sell yourself, or you will come across as being conceited. You have to be subtle while promoting the ideas that you strongly believe in and being your own advocate.

Of course, it is a good idea to let the results speak for themselves. But if you don’t make the extra effort chances are that many people might fail to notice the fact that it is your effort that led to the better results. What problem have you solved? What movement have you started? How have you led others to achieve something great? Once you have accomplished something, you have every right to let others know what you have done and what you can do in future.

It is important that you show commitment for whatever you are doing. More than anything else, what every organisation needs is people who are willing to put in the extra effort rather than deal with individuals who are looking to do the minimum needed to get by. That does not necessarily mean working the longest hours in the office but what it does mean is the ability to go that extra mile when necessary. The tasks that are your responsibility should get completed in time and to the standards expected and wherever possible beyond.

Enthusiasm is easily noticed and so is its absence. So be enthusiastic. Having the right attitude towards work can go a long way towards getting yourself noticed. Having the right attitude and a genuine enthusiasm for your work is not only good on an individual basis — it can also create a positive atmosphere in the office.

Promoting other people who have done outstanding work can also be a good strategy for promoting yourself. The more you talk about other people and their successes, and follow their ideas the more confident you become. In fact, it can become quite boring for others if you are constantly praising yourself and talking about your own accomplishments. If you talk about others, it will be a good way of engaging the people who matter so that you get noticed.

Tech View

Turn Wikipedia page into audio file

Anoop Verma

These days it is quite common for people to use Wikipedia for quickly accessing information on a variety of topics; many of us even use Wikipedia to post information on subjects that are of interest for us. But what if you could listen to the text that is there in the Wikipedia pages, instead of just reading it! Now it is possible for you to convert any Wikipedia page into an MP3 file at the click of a mouse.

Just point your browser to http://www.pediaphon.org/~bischoff/radiopedia/index_en.html. The home page that will open on your screen is quite self descriptive. There is a text box in the centre, where you can input the name of the article that you want to convert into MP3.

However, it is important that you enter the exact name of the article whose text you want to convert, or you will simply get an MP3 file of a page of links to possible matches for your search term. So you should first go to Wikipedia, find your article, and then enter the exact article name in the edit box.

You can select the type of voice from the voice drop-down list and the speed at which you want the voice to speak from the speaking speed drop-down list. Select MP3 download/Podcast/old iPhone/Shoutcast from the last drop-down list (other formats are also available). Click start. A message will appear on your screen saying that the process of converting into MP3 is going on.

Once the file has been created, you can listen to it by clicking on the screen. You can also download it to your computer by right clicking on the link and using the Save As option.  You can also save the file to your mobile device for playing while you are on the go.

Language Skills

Globalisation as Impressive Influencer–III

Be wise language wise

B Tejesh

In the last part we said that English has to gratify the changing needs of various services, say, from the waiters to webmasters in the era of Globalisation by providing certain workplace skills. The jobs that existed in the industrial era are rapidly disappearing and are being replaced by new types of jobs and work requirements that did not exist before. In this part we will discuss the new language skill of reading in order to face the challenge of globalisation, in the light of Information and Communications Technology (ICT).

It is obvious that the spread of ICT affects the entire context and ecology of language. E-mail begins to pass face-to-face and telephone communication becomes a frequent means of business communication. You will find many students now have to use the web to conduct research, search for jobs, and stay in touch with friends. Social applications in particular and the omniscient Internet in general is employed as a tool for teaching and learning English. ICT is impacting the way people interact, access information, and share information.

In this context, you might have observed, that Reading practices are shifting from the page to the screen, especially among young people who grow up with computers. The traditional slate is now replaced by the modern tab. This shift will necessitate different psycholinguistic processes related to decode information from a screen instead of a page, especially when the screen will decode words for the reader at the click of a mouse (e.g. hyper – linking).

It is felt that, the reading from the screen is less a passive act of decoding a message and more a self-conscious act of creating knowledge from a variety of sources. Warschauer, M. has precisely discussed the new skills of reading. According to the author essential to the ability to read from the screen includes skills such as:

p    Finding the information to read in the first place – through Internet searches.

p    Rapidly evaluating the source, credibility, and timeliness of information once located.

p    Rapidly making navigational decisions as to whether to read the current page of information, pursue links internal or external to the page, or revert back to further searching.

p    Making on-the-spot decisions about ways to save or catalogue part of the information on the page or the complete page.

p    Organising and keeping track of electronic information saved.

The vast amount of information speeds up changes in the nature of reading and makes these kinds of critical reading skills all the more essential. Thus, we may say that English language has influenced greatly with the globalisation and vice a versa. Being a reader or learner of the language we must think about these new skills of reading.

In the last part we will discuss the new language skill of writing in the light of ICT, in order to face the challenge of globalisation. Please do place your comments on ‘what do you think about globalisation as impressive influencer?’

(Assistant Professor, Late BRD Arts and Com. Mahila Mahavidyalaya, Nashik Road)