Varieties of languages and cross-cultural communication Essay

Varieties of languages and cross-cultural communication - Essay Example My spoken English differs from my written English, and they can acquire various forms. The register I use to speak in the classroom, during a presentation or with the teachers is not the same which I use to speak with my family and friends during a spontaneous conversation. Besides, my written English in a chat or informal e-mail has many oral characteristics (use of slang, contractions, colloquial words, repetitions), but my written formal English has the vocabulary that I usually do not speak, and I take care of the style and grammar. I live in a country with many immigrants, whose native language is not English. Many of them have learned English after they came, or in their countries of origin, where the taught language differs from the daily spoken language. When these people go to work or study, they can encounter cross-communication problems with native speakers. For example, when we engage in teamwork with foreign students, these problems often appear. Sometimes, due to the accents and pronunciation from their native languages, there could be problems of misunderstanding. When they write, they could use words that they find in their bilingual dictionaries, but these words have not the intended meaning in English, or they sound strange because they are not used in those contexts. Therefore, I try to speak louder and slower with foreign speakers, and I avoid slang and colloquial words they might not understand if they have not lived in the United States for a long time.

The use of undrained triaxial test Lab Report Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The use of undrained triaxial test - Lab Report Example The graph for normal stress against a shear stress is gives a straight line from the origin. This insinuates that for both shear stresses, an increase in normal pressure applied leads to increase in shear stress. Further, from the graph it is obvious that shear strength yields a greater frictional angle and failure envelope than that for the residual strength as expected for soils.With application of the masses, shear stress initially increased rapidly upto a certain point, after-which the increase reduced. Generally, this shows that with increasing loads, the shear stresses also increase. As shown in the graph, there is a strong positive increase observed in the value of shear strength upto the peak point where the slope starts to decrease into a shallow gradient. It is at this point that the residual stress is observed. The range for effective angles of friction range between 35 degrees for dense sands and 27 degrees for loose sands (Helwany, 2007, 107). Our results fall into these values that gives a medium density outcome for our sample. Consequently, the results are in line with the expectations that the peak strength should be greater than residual strength of the soil.Even though the experiment was successful in meeting its objective, there might have been sources of errors leading to slight deviations witnessed. Most obvious source is human errors arising when taking the readings from the instruments used. Further, there might have been mistakes when setting up the apparatus such as the shear box.