mba assignments guide 2011(1)

MBA Assignments Guide Handbook

© University of Bedfordshire 2009

(Updated 2011)

Published by the University of Bedfordshire Business School Luton Campus, Vicarage Street, Luton LU1 3JU, United Kingdom

_______________________________________________________________________________________________ University of Bedfordshire MBA of 45 Unit Handbook: MBA Assignments guide 2011

Welcome

On behalf of the University of Bedfordshire it is our pleasure to welcome you to this MBA

programme. You will be following a growing worldwide band of University of Bedfordshire

Alumni who have used the qualification gained to good effect.

We aim to make your time on this programme stimulating and challenging. You will be

exposed to the latest thinking and developments in theories in the business sphere. As post

experience students you will quickly learn that you too, must challenge theories and evidence

that others feel to be true in order to come to a better understanding of the subjects you are

studying.

This handbook is intended to give you much of the information that you need for successfully

completing all your MBA assignments for all the different subjects that you are going to study

while doing this MBA programme.

Best wishes and good luck to all of you!

The MBA team


Contents Welcome ................................................................................................................................................. 2

Contents ................................................................................................................................................. 3

1 General assignment marking criteria for MBA ............................................................................ 4 1.1 Assignment writing style specifications ..................................................................................... 5

2 Report Writing ................................................................................................................................ 6

3 Essay Writing ................................................................................................................................ 11 3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 11 3.2 Writing an essay ...................................................................................................................... 11

4 Presentations ................................................................................................................................ 16 4.1 What is presentation? ............................................................................................................ 16 4.2 Barriers to presenting .............................................................................................................. 16 4.3 Preparing and planning your presentation .............................................................................. 17 4.4 Giving your presentation ......................................................................................................... 20 4.5 Communication channels ........................................................................................................ 20 4.6 Your style ................................................................................................................................ 21 4.7 Your best chance to work a miracle ........................................................................................ 22 4.8 Sample presentation ............................................................................................................... 23 4.9 Twenty tips for a perfect presentation ..................................................................................... 28

5 Harvard referencing ..................................................................................................................... 31 5.1 The importance of referencing ................................................................................................ 31 5.2 Formatting styles: Harvard referencing ................................................................................... 31 5.3 In-text referencing ................................................................................................................... 32 5.4 Using Quotations ..................................................................................................................... 34 5.5 References (Listed at the End of the Paper) .......................................................................... 35

6 Plagiarism ..................................................................................................................................... 41 6.1 University Regulations ............................................................................................................ 41 6.2 Penalties for Plagiarism .......................................................................................................... 42 6.3 Appeals ................................................................................................................................... 43

7 Assessment Submission Process .............................................................................................. 45

8 Group assignments...................................................................................................................... 45


1 General assignment marking criteria for MBA 1. Evidence of research and analysis: background reading that includes consideration of an

appropriate range of secondary sources – textbooks magazines and journals. This

research should reflect in the assignment in terms of references and critical analysis.

2. Understanding about the subject: Make use of concepts models and theories to

demonstrate your subject understanding. Thought you will study wide range of study

materials select relevant material for each assignment to support the arguments

proposed, discussion and conclusion.

3. Presentation critical engagement in the subject: The arguments made and evidences

provided for each assignment should indicate detailed investigations with theory and

practice. Make sure that when ever you put forward or support a particular view you also

indicate your knowledge about the opposing views. E.g. if you are doing Leadership

project assignment about leader of your choice, in order to indicate your openness and

unprejudiced views make sure that along with the positive aspects you also mention

some negative aspects about that leader. You may not necessarily agree with all the

negative views but it is critical to mention them.

4. Impressive presentation: A logical coherence and structured presentation would always

make better impact on the examiner. Most of the times, your conclusion or critical

reflection and evaluation are the most important elements of your assignment. They

directly linked with your actual learning of that particular subject.

5. Standard format, style and structure: The assignment has to be written in the

recommended format (essay, report, presentation: *please read the sections on Report

Writing, Essay Writing and Presentations for further details. Full bibliography and

appropriate referencing is essential. The University of Bedfordshire uses ‘Harvard

referencing system’ as standard referencing system. * Please read the sections on

‘Harvard referencing’ for further details. Being correctly written in Standard English,

numbered pages; clearly labelled diagrams with a clear and tidy appearance are also

very important to make an impressive presentation.

6. Knowing what not to do: While doing any assignment it very important to know Don’ts in

addition to Do’s.

o One of the top things to avoid is ‘Plagiarism’. *Please read the sections on

‘Plagiarism’ for further detail.


o Please make sure that you don’t use the non- recommended format while

doing your assignment. I.e. you should not write an essay when you have

been asked to create a report.

o If you are not sure about quality of your English make sure that you seek help

before submitting the assignment. In order clearly convey you thoughts and

understanding about the subject it is important to write assignments in good

English and with minimum grammatical and spelling errors.

7. Go thoroughly though all the sample assignments section for various MBA subjects to get

the clear vision about the marking criteria and to get a guide-line to understand the

minimum standard expectation that will demonstrate your learning of that particular

subject.

8. Group Assignments: Generally any group assignment would have to main parts

o Actual group work task

o Group presentation/ report

The groups will have 5-6 students and will be formed by consensus decision between

students and teaching staff. Group members confirm their group name and group members

to in writing (family name, first name, student number) to their course leader.

The assignment should reflect that it’s a team effort and should look professional.

* Please read the sections on ‘Group assignments and tasks’ for further details.

1.1 Assignment writing style specifications

The guide below is not hard and fast but will give you general idea about what will make your

assignment easy to read and print from any standard computer or printer

• Please make sure that for most of your assignments you use standard word

document with standard page margins

• To be readable the font face should be Arial regular font, font size: 11 and 1.5 line

spacing in the paragraph settings.


2 Report Writing Summary

This section will not take the place of a book on report writing. Its aim is to briefly set out

some principles and priorities for writing reports, whether for a firm or another organisation,

or in answer to the assignments set out in this course.

Purpose

In writing a report, particular care should be given to the needs of the reader and the purpose

- who and what is the report for? The recommended report structure places special emphasis

on providing a summary and a conclusion, with key sentences at prominent points in the

report. Construction of the text should be guided by conciseness, clarity, consideration to the

reader, and a concern for accuracy and truth.

Reports can be a tiresome chore for the writer, and therefore also the reader, or they can be

an opportunity. A report is an opportunity for the writer to communicate (not just put words on

paper) and for the reader to become better informed (not merely to read the words on the

paper).

There are two kinds of report that are of concern to me here:

• Assignment answers on this course which are specified to be in report form;

• Reports for use within organisations, or to go outside on its behalf.

Taking these two varieties of report in turn, I see the purposes of your work in preparing an

assignment as being to extend your study of the course material and get good marks and

useful comments from your tutor. These purposes require an answer which is a careful

display, for both you and your tutor, of the knowledge that you have gained from that part of

the course.

The purposes of a report within a firm or to go outside it are different. In an assignment

answer the purposes are defined by what is of value to the writer (extended knowledge,

grades, helpful feedback from the tutor). The prime purpose of a report in a firm is to serve

the needs of the recipient and reader. While the act of writing will help to clarify the problems


at issue, the benefit to the writer comes mainly to him or her indirectly, if the report is to be

valuable to its users.

Method

Despite the differences in purpose referred to in the previous section, common questions can

be used in the preparation of any report, and they from a good basis for a method of report

writing.

• What has the future reader asked to be told about?

• What is the situation in which the need for the report is set?

• What is the starting point for the investigation behind the report, and any changes

argued for in the report?

• How will the report be judged? Will the reader be looking for general areas for future

investigations, clear avenues for development, or cut and dried and fully costed

plans?

• How can information needed for the report be found and worked on? Analysis should

yield answers that can be set alongside each other and against external data, for

comparison and selection of the best options.

• How do I ensure a favourable reception?

• How long have I got, in terms of time, for the preparation of the report and word

length that the reader will accept?

• How do I know that I am correct?

In writing a report these questions are not tackled one by one, with each one completed

before the next. Rather, they are a checklist that can be referred to again and again, so that

at the end you can look back at them and see that they have all been taken on board at

some stage. Notice that these questions could well prompt a preliminary report and

discussion which lead to a better main investigation and final report. Certainly, several of

these questions might send the investigator back to those who asked for the report, to seek

clarification.


Structure

A strong structure is vital to a report. Structure is not a boring chore; it is a feature that gives

shape to the report; it tells the reader facts about the report and, incidentally, about the

reporter. A clear structure helps the writer to set out the work behind the report. It gives the

reader confidence in what has been done and said because a logically structured report

cannot conceal an investigation which itself lacks order.

The number of elements of structure will depend on the length of the report, but structure

should be based on the old advice: ‘State what you are going to say, say it, say you have

said it and stop’. Think for a moment about the nine o’clock news on the television. They

follow this rule; they start with the main news headlines (“Russia declares war in Chechnya;

the Chancellor warns of interest rate increases, the drought claims its first victim”) then

deeper reporting of the individual headline items, and finally a summary of the main

headlines. On this basis the shortest report or memorandum could use its title as a summary,

followed by a main body of a sentence or two, and a conclusion. Although we are concerned

with reports which are longer than this, the same principle holds and the same features

appear, but in an extended form.

Below the title the report begins with a heading showing where the report comes from, rather

like the writer’s address at the top of a letter. In similar vein the report is dated and the author

is named, although these can come at the tail of a short report.

Next part is the most important section, the summary. A busy reader will read this first, and

might read no further, so the summary should state the contents and the conclusions of the

report briefly and firmly. The summary has to attract, hold and inform the busy reader; it

prepares the ground for a more detailed study of the report by those who have the need and

the time to read further. The summary is one of the opportunities for you to put your points; it

must be concise and yet complete in the right particulars. It is rather as if you met the

Managing Director in the lift on his or her way out of the building. Your only chance is to win

an ear for a few seconds. If you have time to practise any aspect of report writing, do it by

writing and rewriting summaries of your reports and other people’s reports. Not only will you

get practice in summarising, you will find that searching for the key points for a summary

reveals those that are missing in the report; you will soon learn to include them. After the

summary there should be an explanation of the purpose of the report and the background to


it. These sections will set out the author’s understanding of the points in the first three

questions in the section on ‘method’ above.

Reports vary in length and the greatest variation occurs in the main body of the report. For

this reason general titles for sections cannot be given: they will be special to the firm and to

the purpose. Instead the titles should point the reader to the particular section that he or she

is interested in or should pay close attention to: ‘Factory layout’, New systems of

communication’, ‘Need for retraining’, ‘Benefits and costs’.

Besides the use of explanations in words your report may well need tables, graphs, pictures,

plans, printouts and so on. Relegating these to the end of the document helps the printer to

produce the printed item quickly and cheaply but it may be a false economy if it discourages

the reader from consulting them and seeing them as part of the argument. Put at the end

they are too easily ignored or taken out of context. The excuse that they are easy to find

there can apply just as well to any piece of text, and in fact non–text items such as photos

and diagrams stand out very well when the report is flipped open to look for them.

The last main section of a report will be the conclusions. These will have been outlined or

introduced already in the summary, and also will have emerged in the main body of the

report because the analysis given there led to the conclusions. This repetition is useful as it

emphasises the final result of the work and presents it at more than one place. At the end of

the report put the appendices detailing investigations of side issues or other matters which fit

badly into the mainstream text, section of references or list of documents consulted would

appear at the end too. Enough detail should be given to enable an interested reader to obtain

the source material for themselves.

The writing process From the welter of information on how to write, it is George Orwell’s six elementary rules that

give the surest succinct advice:

• Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing

in print;

• Never use a long word where a short one will do;

• If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out;

• Never use the passive where you can use the active;


• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an

everyday English equivalent;

• Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Orwell went on to suggest that, ‘A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask

himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express this?

What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And

he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that

is avoidably ugly?

Writing is never easy and on bad days composing even the shortest memorandum can seem

like a one–sided wrestling match with an impossible language. In such circumstances,

perseverance is the key: even the best writers have difficulties. Sheridan observed: You write with ease to show your breeding,

But easy writing’s vile hard reading.


3 Essay Writing 3.1 Introduction Essay writing involves expressing ones views and interpretations in relation to a specified

subject area and this clearly cannot be done in accordance with a fixed or universally

applicable formula. Yet we would, I think, all agree that an essay can be judged in terms of

what an informed reader can ‘get out of it’ and also that a ‘good’ essay is one which such a

reader will find interesting, informative and easy to understand. If this is accepted it becomes

possible to articulate some general features of an essay which will make it more interesting,

informative and accessible.

1. Address the question or title;

2. Follow a structured and signposted sequence;

3. Demonstrate a familiarity with relevant literature;

4. Present an analysis and evaluation of the ideas and theories discussed;

5. Reveal internal integration and coherence;

6. Use references and examples to support its claims and arguments;

7. Detail references and sources and bibliography/referencing sections.

3.2 Writing an essay

3.2.1 Addressing the Question/Title An essay should address what is meant by the title/question to which it refers. It should, in

other words inform the reader of the issues of which are to be considered and the manner in

which they are to be related. This may, for example, be achieved by describing previous

definitions of, or approaches to, a problem and/of by offering the writers own interpretation of

the issue/s.

For Example, on approach to writing an essay entitled ‘Is intelligence a valid concept for the

educational psychologist’ could be introduced as follows:

‘The concept of intelligence has been used differently by different psychologists, so that, the

very meaning of the term has become a matter of debate. Most noticeable, perhaps, is the

divergence of definitions and research programmes adopted by, on one hand,


psychometricians, such as Spearman, Burt and Eysenck, and, on the other

developmentalists such as Bruner and Piaget....

In this essay I shall consider the applicability of these alternative perspectives on

‘Intelligence’ to the process of education.’

Such an introduction serves to ‘frame’ the issues for the reader so that she/he knows what

the essay will be about. Having thus ‘framed’ the content of the essay the writer must ensure

that the arguments and evidence she/he presents are directly relevant to the issues as

she/he has interpreted them. There would, for example, be little point in following the

introduction given above the by a blow by blow account of the Cyril Burt controversy!

Briefly then, the essay must outline the issue which the writer sees as pertinent to the title

and must then proceed to present material which can be clearly demonstrated to be relevant

to those issues.

3.2.2 Following a Standard and Signposted Sequence The material in an essay should be seen to be related to the unfolding of the central

argument or discussion. The order in which material is presented will, therefore, depend

upon the development of the overall structure with earlier sections preparing the ground for

later connections and conclusions. This development should be ‘signposted’ for while it may

be obvious to the writer it may be far from clear to the reader. For example: ‘Having

discussed the two different notions of ‘ability’ which underline the psychometric and

developmental approach to intelligence, I shall now consider the implications of each for the

organisation of an ‘educational system’. Such ‘signposting’ informs the reader of the

significance of what has just been said and prepares her/him for what is to come.

Of course the organisation of an essay in terms of such a structured sequence is made a lot

easier if the writer begins by spelling out how she/he intends to address the question/title. It

is essential, therefore, that before beginning the essayist considers the question/title in detail and constructs a plan of the points, connections and conclusions she/he wishes to

make.


3.2.3 Demonstrating Familiarity with the Literature An essay should aim to briefly review a number of the major works or positions which are

directly relevant to the topic under discussion. This will serve to inform the reader of the

previous research and analyses upon which the writer is basing her/his case. This should not

take the form of endless quotations or listings of other people’s ideas, but rather concise

descriptions (in the essayist’s own words) of the approaches adopted by other workers in the

field. With regard to the essay on intelligence and educational psychology for example, it

would seem almost inevitable that the contributions made by Binet, Burt and Bruner would be

relevant at some stage or another. A knowledge of the relevant literature can, of course, only

be acquired by reading that literature (!) and an essay will often reveal just how familiar the

essayist is with her/his chosen topic.

3.2.4 Presenting and Analysis and Evaluation of the Ideas and Theories Discussed An essay should, however, do more than report on previous work in the area. It should

attempt to relate the various positions reviewed both to one another and to the writer’s own

position on the issues under discussion. This involves articulating the similarities and

differences between different writers’ perspectives and evaluating them in terms of a set of

criteria arising out of the essayist’s own discussion. The essayist must, in other words,

develop her/his own ideas as she/he explores the topic and judge other writers’ approaches

in terms of developed arguments is often the distinguishing feature of a very ‘good’ essay. An

example of this kind of evaluation in terms of (previously) developed arguments is given

below:

‘I have argued that where a conventional view of education (as knowledge transference) is

adopted ‘intelligence tests’ can be used as a convenient means of selection. It also follows,

however, that within the alternative of education as a process of cognitive development,

these tests are of little or no value.’


3.2.5 Reveal Internal Coherence and Integration Each part of the essay should relate to the overall theme being expounded. If the essay

persistently addresses itself to the title and follows a structured sequence this should be

virtually assured, but it is important that the essayist considers how the implications of what

she/he says at any particular point reflect on her/his discussion as a whole. In other

words, she/he should ensure that the implications of one piece of analysis are carried

forward to later discussions and that there are not implicit, or explicit, contradictions or

disjunctions between different parts of the essays. It would, for example, be confusing for the

reader if an essayist were to conclude at one point that “intelligence is too broad a concept to

be of use to the psychologist” and then go on to argue that the “Welchler Adult Intelligence

Scale is their most accurate measure of intelligence in individuals of sixteen years and

above”. Of course it would be consistent to argue that the W.A.I.S. subscales were accurate

measures of specific abilities, but the earlier rejection of its assessment which take ‘its’

existence for granted.

3.2.6 Use References and Examples to Support Arguments It is important that where the essayist is not stating her/his own opinions or evaluations

she/he should inform the reader of the source of his propositions by noting references. By

referencing the essay in this way the writer reveals how her/his position relates to the work of

other researchers in the field. For example:

It has been argued that ‘X’ is ‘Y’ (Brown, 1974; Smith, 1982)

Unreferenced statements such as ‘psychologists generally think ....;’ ‘evidence has shown

that ....;’ ‘most people accept that ....’ should be strictly avoided as they convey a sense of

vagueness about the state of research and opinion within the discipline.

It is also helpful if the essayist illustrates her/his general statement by means of particular

examples. For example:

‘It has been pointed out that some of the items included in intelligence tests draw upon

culture–specific knowledge. The following examples taken from the Welchsler Intelligence

Scale for Children reveal how a knowledge of particular literature may be requested: ‘Who

wrote Hamlet?;’ ‘Who wrote the Iliad?’ (Kagan and Lang, 1978).

3.2.7 Detail References and Sources


A reference section details the sources you have mentioned in your essay and allows the

reader to follow up what you say. It is important to include all the references you use in the

essay and to complete them so that someone less familiar with the literature than yourself

can access your sources.

A bibliography section will include books and papers you have found useful but not

necessarily mentioned. This is not, however, necessary for most essays.


4 Presentations 4.1 What is presentation?

• A communication event;

• A presenter makes a commitment to help the audience to do something they really

want (e.g. solve a problem) — the audience makes a simultaneous evaluation of the

worth of that commitment;

• It is the audience’s self-interest that is key (though most presentations drone on

endlessly about the presenter’s interests, with a generous portion of ego);

• Your mission is to win all the audience;

• “I need you, you need me”;

• The audience needs help, counsel, wisdom, inspiration, a way of doing things

differently, a fresh way that can be applied profitably, perhaps tomorrow;

• The presenter needs approval;

• A presentation is a partnership between audience and presenter, not a performance;

it is a relationship, not confrontation; a pulling together, not pulling apart.

4.2 Barriers to presenting Some studies show that fear of presenting is third only to fear of snakes and spiders! We are

not afraid of flying, but we are afraid of crashing! We fear failure with our presentations.

Pilots are in control of their planes and they are not afraid of crashing — if we do the same

with presentations we can tackle our fears and might even enjoy it! We need to take a

planned, controlled approach, and timing is the key element of control.

The areas of control are:

• Managing the audience;

• Managing the material;

• Managing the resources;

• Managing ourselves.

When you know which areas do your fears relate to, you can concentrate your efforts to

ensure that you are in control.


4.3 Preparing and planning your presentation An ill–prepared presenter sends the message to the audience “I don’t think you are very

important; if I did, I would be better prepared.

So, proper preparation is the difference between success and failure. Remember the 90:10

rule — spend 90% time preparing, 10% presenting.

Main areas of planning:

1. Establishing your Aims;

2. Introduction — making a good start;

3. Key areas your presentation will cover;

4. Your conclusion;

5. How long?

Establishing your Aims

You must have a clear idea of what you want to achieve before deciding on the way to

achieve it. For example is your presentation intended:

• To inform ( e.g. sales campaign);

• To educate (e.g. a new form of lighting technique);

• To persuade (e.g. product presentation);

• To change opinions (e.g. new approach to design);

• To challenge.

Whatever your aims, they must focus on satisfying the needs of your audience.

Establishing your aims helps to:

• Define what you want to achieve through the presentation;

• Decide what should/should not go into it;

• Keep the plan on track. It will also help you decide on:

• Content;

• Structure ( the way the ideas are developed and ordered);

• Style (e.g. formal or informal);

Making a good start Tell them what you are going to tell them


The audience will form their impression of the presenter and the presentation within the first

2 minutes, and this will colour all that the presenter says and does for the remainder.

Therefore the first 2 minutes are absolutely crucial. It’s time for drums and trumpets!

Within the first 2 min your introduction needs to:

• Capture the audience interest e.g. “......the impact of .....on.....”;

• Demonstrate they have a need to listen e.g. “we are all experiencing ......... therefore

we need to .......”;

• Convince them of your sincerity and honesty

• Prove your credibility And inform them:

• What the aims of the presentation are;

• What key areas it is going to cover;

• How long it is going to take.

Then you will have a receptive and attentive audience, and you will have taken a big step

towards a successful presentation.

Key Areas your presentation will cover

Tell them

• Identify and map related topic areas and key stages (e.g. use Fishbone diagram etc.)

- 3 to 5 topics max.;

• Create a logical sequence;

• Work on each stage as a separate unit, and time them individually; this will help the

audience to make sense of your presentation, and help you plan and time the

delivery;

• Create a logical sequence to ensure:

o a logical development of ideas;

o a coherent argument;

o a smooth flow from one idea to the next;

o it tests well against Title and Aims.


Your Conclusion/Summary

Tell them what you told them

The last words will be the ones your audience remembers most clearly - so ensure your

conclusion is decisive and positive, and your talk will be remembered in the same way. A

strong, positive ending will give the whole presentation a good effect whereas a poor

anticlimax will weaken an overall good effect. This part of the presentation signals to the

audience that they have been given all the information. Use the opportunity to remind and

reinforce your key points. You can make recommendations or suggest action plans based on

them in your conclusion if you wish. Make your thank you’s, invite questions if appropriate,

but give no new information in your ending. So, the role of your conclusion is to:

• Reinforce the main points;

• Bring the presentation to a recognisable conclusion;

• Create a lasting positive impression.

How Long? Think carefully about the needs of your audience and the aims of your presentation. Adjust

the length of the presentation to suit. For example:-

• A sales presentation;

• A demonstration of a sample to a contractor;

• A lecture seminar to a firm of architects;

• How to use the product catalogue.

Research shows that people can concentrate on one thing for no more than five to seven

minutes. They also need some kind of break around every 30 minutes.


4.4 Giving your presentation Warm up the Audience and yourself

• Make eye contact with each member of the audience — let them know they are

important. You should be building a relationship (not a case for your presentation!)

with every person in the room.;

• Radiate energy, be enthused, don’t plod, don’t be afraid to let the audience know

you’re excited about them.;

• All audiences are wondering “when is the presenter going to start talking about me?”

They need to feel good about themselves — glad they are there!

Scripts and notes

Never read a presentation from notes! It will sound dull and boring, lack conviction; you can’t

maintain audience interaction, it’s too easy to lose your place and interruptions can

completely throw you. Although they may be derived from a script, notes are a memory aid

not a script. For convenience they can be small numbered cue cards, tied together.

4.5 Communication channels A presentation is a form of communication, and 80% of a communicated message is

received through non-verbal channels. And so, you need to use a combination of sight,

sound, touch, taste and smell to ensure the audience understands and remembers your

presentation — and that their attention and interest is maintained. Focusing on one thing

gets boring after a while and a presentation is largely one-way, from presenter to audience.

By using channels other than sound, you can get the audience to take a more active role and

provide more interest for the audience.

Sight Body language, visual aids, the room

Sound Words, tone, music, sound effects

Touch Samples, where/how the audience sits

Taste

Smell


For example, imagine a presentation on a new lighting scheme for a prestige office block:

What the lighting looks like

Show a sample or a picture

What it feels like Describe how the lighting effect feels to people

What it’s like to touch Pass the sample around for the audience to touch

What the lighting “sounds” like

Describe what satisfied customers have

said about it

Smell

4.6 Your style Are you Red, Blue or Grey?

There are three kinds of presenter — Red, Blue or Grey. There are variations of Red — from

scarlet to pink, and of Blue — from midnight to eggshell — but Grey is one big blob.

What colour presenter are you? would you like to be and should be?

Blue presenters are analytical, logical, pragmatic, thoughtful, deliberate, rational, restrained,

intellectual, insightful, and secure in knowledge, with an intensity that builds steadily. This

requires sharpness of word and manner.

To be a Blue presenter, you need a ton of preparation and a nimble memory. Executives

prefer blue presentations because they believe emotions have no place at work; audiences

are tolerant of them, allowing them to build their case — but ramblers are not tolerated. Blue

presentations are generally more persuasive than Red ones, but logic is not as memorable

as emotion.

Red presenters charge the atmosphere: you feel the presentation. It is emotionally driven,

surprising, instinctive, charismatic, creative, impulsive, daring, disjointed, volatile. Red

presenters elicit a feeling of emotional participation from the audience. Because their style is

more outgoing and personal, they involve their audiences more quickly. Red speakers make

things happen in a hurry and they are an important part of the message in addition to the

content.


Grey presenters are safe. They lack the heat of the Reds and the incisive edge of the Blues.

They are cautious, traditional, accommodating, compromising and predictable, non–

committal, ambivalent and boring.

Grey presenters are eminently forgettable. When we’re scared, we become neutral when we

speak — less of what we are more of something safe and conventional — Grey and

BORING!

By emphasising your greatest strength, more of what you really are, you’ll be much less

nervous — and much more interesting to everybody.

4.7 Your best chance to work a miracle

• Start thinking positively;

• Be enthusiastic — even if you don’t feel it!

• Put the words “you” and “your” into your presentation as often as possible;

o “let’s look at it from your perspective”;

o “here’s what it means to you”;

o “what’s in this example for you here are some things that you can do”;

o “let’s relate that to you and your situation”;

• Always bring it back to the needs of the audience;

• Get audience participation wherever possible.

Handling Questions

With any difficult question, there are three stages:-

• Quell any emotional response you may feel;

• Explore the question and ask the questioner to elaborate and refine it.

• Respond:

o answer the question;

o admit you don’t know and promise to find out;

o defer it to deal with privately at greater length afterwards;

o refer it to an expert colleague if you have brought one;

o refer it back to the person who asked it;

o refer it back to another member of the audience;

o put it up for general discussion.


With any important presentation, it is a good idea to brainstorm with colleagues potential

audience questions and choose the most appropriate answers in case they arise.

4.8 Sample presentation For those who are interested to see how some of these principles in this unit might be

applied in practice. As you can see, the left–hand of the page indicates the principle being

illustrated, and the right–hand side is a (fictitious) presentation by a manager to the board of

their company on the subject of a new company pension scheme. The pension presentation

has been based on the needs of a small company employing mainly young staff.

Preface Presenter

Opening courtesies First of all I would like to thank the Board for giving me

what has turned out to be a much more interesting

project than I expected when I took it on.

Disclaim excessive authority

As you know I’m not an expert on pension schemes

although I have been administering the present scheme

for the past 3 years.

Give relevant experience.

State the intention of the

presentation in terms of the

listeners interest.

Outline the course of the

presentation with timings: The

‘Route Map’.

Give the ‘Rules of the Road’ —

when you want to take

questions, whether

interruptions are permitted.

Get them nodding.

You asked me to review our present staff arrangements

and make proposals. What I suggest — if you’re happy?

— is that I give a brief run–down on the present scheme,

then look at the various kinds of scheme we might move

to, and then suggest two possible alternative schemes, If

only as a discussion starter. That should take about 15

minutes, and I do hope you’ll stop me if there’s anything

you don’t follow; but if it’s a general point it will probably

save time to keep it for the discussion session. Is that all

right?


Position ‘As you know’ enables you to

tell those who don’t without

offending those who do If the

audience know more about the

present position than you do,

this is the place to ask

‘feedback’ questions to check

if you’ve got it right.

So, if I might start with the present scheme, as you know

it dates back to when the company was fairly new and

quite a lot smaller. It’s a very basic, minimum scheme:

the company pays in five per cent of each employee’s

salary each year into an accumulating fund which

provides insurance cover while they are at work and a

pension when they retire.

Problem ‘Something around’ and ‘on

average’ enable you to omit a

lot of unnecessary detail and

tedious qualification.

Attribute to your listeners the

highest motives you can

manage without choking

The problem is that this only provides a pension of

something around 17% of final salary on average, and

this is beginning to prove a stumbling block when we try

to recruit new staff. It’s also causing an increasing

amount of resentment amongst our existing staff,

especially the more senior ones, when

they find out the more generous pensions their friends in

other companies are getting. But of course

the principle reason for undertaking this review was the

clear feeling of the board that they would like to do more

for the staff now that the company is more firmly

established and profitable.

Show that you have reached

the end of the paragraph

So that’s the present position: the Board is nor satisfied

with the current level of pension it offers to its staff and

wants to look at ways of improving it.

Another place for an early

‘feedback’ check.

Any questions so far — anything I’ve got wrong or left

out?

Possibilities Show that you are starting a

new section.

Simplify the choices — leave

the secondary class for later

Right. So what are the options? You can get bogged

down in endless detail over this, and someone is going

to have to in the end — probably me. But as far as the

board is concerned, there are just three major policy

decisions.


discussions.

A visual aid on the three

decisions could help in

showing the listeners where

they are going — and later in

reminding them where they

are.

Premium Pension

Final

salary

Variable Fixed

Money

purchase

Fixed Variable

1. What type?

Final salary or money purchase?

2. How funded?

Contributory or non–contributory?

3. How large?

What % of total salaries should go into the fund?

Let me take them in turn. First, what type? A final salary

scheme aims to provide the employee with a pension of

— usually — 1/60th of his salary at or

near retirement for each year with the company. So

someone who as worked 30 years retires o half his final

salary, 30/60ths. A money purchase scheme

doesn’t guarantee any specific income — it builds an

accumulating fund, and the employee gets a pension

based on whatever size his fund has reached when he

retires.

Visual Aid You can see the difference on this chart: the final salary scheme has a variable premium and

a fixed formula for calculating the pension while the money purchase scheme has a fixed

premium and a variable pension.

Note how the jargon–type

phrase ‘open–ended

commitment’ is immediately

translated in plain English and

clarified with an example.

The drawback with a final salary scheme — for our

company at this stage of its development — is that it

is an open–ended commitment: the company cannot

know in advance how much it may have to pay, to keep

up with inflation, say, especially in a bad year. On the

other hand, as a small company, with a money purchase


Always put the alternatives

you are proposing after the

one you are rejecting.

scheme, you know where you are;

it’s limited to a fixed percentage of the payroll. In

practice, more and more companies are going for money

purchase schemes, and everyone I’ve spoken to

recommends that type for us because so many of out

staff are under 30.

Make it clear that you are

moving to a new section: if you

are using a visual aid, this is

where you change from 1 to 2.

‘Chipping in’ is the sort of

colloquialism that helps a

personal presentation but it

would be out of place in a

written report.

Second, should it be contributory or non–contributory?

Again, it would be nice to guarantee everyone generous

pensions without their having to make any personal

contribution, but that sort of commitment is usually

beyond the reach of companies our size. In fact, eighty

per cent of all schemes include an employee

contribution, and apart

from giving them a very good tax–free method of saving,

a lot of companies find that it involves employees more

in the scheme if they are chipping something in

themselves.

Starting a new section again.

Simple visual aids

Tell people that they’ll be

getting copies, or some will

Finally, how much? This is really two questions — how

much in total, and then, what proportion of that total

should be the company’s contribution? First, how much

in total? Well taking 5% of the company’s salary bill as

the minimum and 20% as the most generous, this chart

shows the estimated distribution for companies of under

50 employees. As you see, anything over 16% is fairly

rare, and the broad mass of companies fall into the 8%

— 16% range. And second, what proportion? The other

chart shows what percentage of the total those same

companies contribute: again you see that most

companies fall into the 65% — 75% range. I’ll be

distributing these charts in a moment.


draw it for themselves and

miss what you’re saying.

Summarise where we have got

to at the start of a new section,

and where we are now going.

Make it clear you are not

telling your superiors what to

do. Re– emphasise that you

are looking at the question

from their point of view and

addressing yourself to their

interests. Visual aids repeated

with new element. Note that its

complexities are easy to follow

because the audience has

already assimilated the basic

charts.

State the next action and

target date, followed by a

benefit to them if these are

met.

So the two decisions that really need to be taken are,

first, what should be the total percentage of payroll

allotted to the pension scheme, and second, how

much of that should be paid by the company and how

much by the employee? Of course, it is for the board

to balance out its desire to be generous with its need to

ensure that the company will not find itself, at some

future date, short of the funds it needs to run the

business. So what I have done is to prepare examples of

two schemes at different levels, with a

calculation of how each of them would have affected the

Company’s accounts over each of the past 3 years,

making allowance for the tax savings, obviously. On

scheme ‘A’ employees would receive something around

X% of final salary average, on scheme ‘B’ something

around Y% of final salary

average. As you see, proposal ‘A’ would put us about

here on the chart of total contribution, and proposal ‘B’

would put us here. And on the chart of employer’s share,

proposal ‘A’ puts us here and proposal ‘B’ puts us here.

But, of course, these are just examples, and

you might opt for a larger total plus a smaller employee

contribution, or vice versa. You may also wish to opt for

further improvement in the pensions paid to senior staff.

But if we could have that board decision by the end of

the month, we’d be able to

work out a complete scheme for approval by Christmas,

and that could be ready or introduction at the start of the

next financial year.


Postscript Circulate details on separate

typescript after the end of your

presentation.

Closing courtesies

Obviously I’ve left out an enormous amount of detail —

transferability, widow’s pensions, death in service,

benefits, indexation, voluntary extra contributions — but

you’ll find it all in the folders along side the financial

calculations. You’ll also find examples of other sample

companies, and copies of the diagrams I was using. And

there’s some literature from the three insurance

companies I’ve been talking to — the three our brokers

recommended.

And that’s really it. Thank you for listening so patiently,

and if you have any questions I’ll do my

best to answer them. Thank you

4.9 Twenty tips for a perfect presentation

1. The rule of three — The best presentations come in three parts. The introduction

summarises your overall message, beginning with a title slide that succinctly states

what the presentation is about (which isn’t the same as telling the audience which

company they work for, who you work for, or what the date is). The main part delivers

the meat — usually by making a point with a simple, powerful text slide and then by

supporting that point with more detail from charts and subsidiary text slides. (For

some reason, three items of supporting data for each main point seems to work best).

The last bit is the summary that moves on to a conclusion and leaves the audience

with a message that will persuade them to act — to buy your scheme, for example, or

to applaud your department’s progress. Your final line is probably the only spoken bit

of the presentation that you will need to memorise.


2. Keep it simple — The single most common offence in presentations is putting too

much information on each slide. The second is trying to get too much visual impact—

too many colours on slides, and too many text attributes and typefaces.

3. Choose the right template — It makes sense to use one of the styles provided in

the package, because templates ensure visual consistency and should enforce some

basic principles of good design. But pick the right one, as it may be tricky to change

your mind once you’ve built a presentation. Some templates are designed for

slideshows with lots of automatic transitions, others are best for single–shot displays.

4. Be consistent — If you don’t use a template, or if you adapt one, make sure that you

use the same background colour for each slide, and use the same size and style of

type throughout (this makes it easier for the audience to distinguish between titles

and body copy).

5. Title tips — Slide titles which are all in upper case letters are hard to read and take

up too much space; capitalise only the first word.

6. Four colours good — If you have less than three colours on a slide (including text

and background) it may look drab. More than five and the slide will probably just be

confusing.

7. Contrast colours — Stick with colour choices that provide clear contrasts — and not

just in the colours themselves, but also in brightness. Bright yellow on bright blue

provides a clear colour contrast, for instance, but it’s hard to read; go for a darker

blue. A white background will usually be too bright. Blue backgrounds work well,

particularly with yellow or white text. The primary colours (yellow, red and blue) go

well together. So, in general, do cool colours (green, blue and violet) and warm

colours (red, orange and yellow). But clashing colours almost never work well —

green on purple anyone? — and neither do colours that tend to blend too much, such

as yellow on orange.

8. Unclever colours — Before you go colour crazy, remember that colour–blind people

have difficulty distinguishing between blue, green and red. And don’t forget that some

colours have definite connotations — for instance, red is indelibly associated with

losses and black with profits.

9. Match your media — For 35mm slides you need the lightest colour in front and the

darkest colours in the background. But the reverse applies for overhead

transparencies — dark foreground, light background.


10. Better backgrounds — If you don’t have much information on your slide, try using a

background that graduates from light at the top to dark at the bottom — the light– to–

dark sequence guides the eye down the slide through your points. With graphics and

complicated charts it’s best to stick with a solid and dark background which won’t

distract.

11. Chart clutter confuses — If the punters must have detail, give it to them in the

handouts and in your speech. Use your slides to make strong, simple points.

12. Tight text — You shouldn’t really have more than six lines of text per slide, and

preferably only three or four. You should only display one idea per line, consisting of

no more than six or seven words. In particular, don’t put complete sentences on your

slide.

13. Typeface tamers — Sans serif typefaces such as Helvetica are easier to read. The

best size for title text is 36 or 24 point; subtitles work best at about 18 points; a good

size for Helvetica body text is 14 points.

14. Fewest fonts — You won’t usually need more than one typeface; using two

typefaces is acceptable, mixing three or more is rarely necessary. If you need to

emphasise text, choose a bold or italic version of your main typeface, not a different

typeface altogether, But use bold, italic, and underlined type as little as possible.

15. Tasteful text — Special effects like gradient fills and drop shadows on text may look

pretty, but they are frequently illegible. Use such effects only on title lines, and only

with a heavy typeface.

16. Better bullets — Here’s an opportunity for imagination. You needn’t stick with round

blobs; try using symbols from dingbat fonts or cut–down clip–art.

17. Use the right characters — You don’t have to use short hyphens when you really

want long dashes: and it will probably look better to show proper ‘typographic’ quote

marks (the ‘66’ to open ‘99’ to close). The presentation package itself might have

some of these features built in, and your chosen font will probably have some special

characters (plus proper copyright signs, trademark symbols, foreign currency signs

and more).

18. Beefy bar charts — Don’t clutter bar charts with too much data — ideally you should

have no more than eight bars; five to six is a better maximum. Don’t clutter the

surrounding space, either; use lines and grids sparingly.

19. Perfect pie charts — Five slices is the absolute maximum. If you have more than

that, group the smaller items into a slice named ‘other’ — you can still detail them if


you need to by pulling that slice away from the pie and linking it to another chart

showing its contents.

20. Limit your lines — Line graphs are great at showing change over a period of time,

but never have more than four lines of data — and if the lines cross, stick to three as

the maximum.

5 Harvard referencing

5.1 The importance of referencing There are three main reasons why accurate referencing is important:

• it provides relevant background information, illustrations of ideas or theories, or

evidence for an argument that you are making in your essay or report. Your ideas

need to be based on prior reading, and referencing is a way of showing that you have

done this and are familiar with the field.

• it enables readers to find any source of information mentioned in the text, if they want

to follow up on a point or examine a theory more closely. In other words, if you refer

to someone's work in an essay or report, you have to give enough information to

allow readers to find it for themselves, if they find it interesting or relevant.

• it gives due credit to the person(s) from whom you acquired the information. Using

those ideas and/or words as if they were your own, or without acknowledging where

they came from, is equivalent to 'stealing' someone else's ideas and counts as an

academic offence in Britain known as plagiarism.

5.2 Formatting styles: Harvard referencing There are many different formatting styles for referencing, and each journal uses a specific

style. So in that sense, there is no single, correct way in which to format your references.

Nevertheless, it is inappropriate to mix styles (like it is inappropriate to mix using English and

American spelling in a single paper), and it is best to get used to using a specific style. One

of the most well known styles is known as Harvard referencing. This is the style used at this

university, and is the one you are therefore expected to use in any written work here.

To reference accurately, you need to do TWO main things:

• reference properly within your text


• provide a reference list at the end of your essay/paper

5.3 In-text referencing Identifying authors within the text of your essay/paper To identify an author or authors within the text of your essay, you should give the surname(s)

followed by the year of publication. Do NOT give the name of the book this information is

given in the reference list at the end of your essay/paper.

1. One author:

2.

Give the author's surname followed by the year of publication; e.g.

Hofstede (1991).

Two authors:

3.

Give both authors' surnames, in the order in which they appear on the

book or the article; e.g. Brown and Levinson (1987)

Three/four authors:

4.

Give all three/four authors' surnames, in the order in which they

appear on the book or the article; e.g. Wish, Deutsch, and Kaplan (1976); Coupland,

Coupland, and Giles (1991 ). Subsequently, you can refer to them as Wish et al. and

Coupland et al. in the same paragraph, and as Wish et al. (1976) and Coupland et al.

(1991 ) in following paragraphs.

Initials:

5.

Do not add the initial of the author's given name, except in rather rare

circumstances. It is only done when there could be some confusion as to who is

being referred to; for example, in politeness theory, the most well known 'Brown' is

Penelope Brown, but one of two papers are written by Roger Brown. So if you have

referred a lot to Penelope Brown's work and then mention Roger Brown's, it could be

helpful to add initials to help make this clearer.

Brackets:

6.

If you want to identify one or more sources to back up an argument, but do

not want to write specifically about them, put their surname(s) and date of publication

in brackets; for example, "Over the years, an extensive body of knowledge about

conducting crosscultural research has been generated (e.g. Lonner and Berry, 1986;

Triandis and Berry, 1980; van de Vijver and Leung, 1997)."

Unusual Author Names:

7.

Very occasionally, there seems to be no personal names for

the authors, only the name of a group or organisation. Don't worry! Occasionally this

happens. Use the first two or three names of the organisation or group of people

responsible for the publication; for example, Chinese Culture Connection, 1987.

Using Secondary Sources: Sometimes you want to refer to an author's work, but you

have only read about it in another person's book or article. Suppose, for example, that


you read about Brown and Yule's (1983) distinction between the interactional and the

transactional functions of language in Spencer Oatey's book, but have not read

Brown and Yule's original work. In this case you should not simply give the Brown

and Yule reference, but add where this information was cited; for example:

Brown and Yule (1983; cited in SpencerOatey, 2000, p.2) identify two main functions of

language: the transactional (or information transferring) function, and the interactional (or

maintenance of social relationships) function.

In your list of references at the end of your essay/paper, include both references; i.e. give the

full reference for the primary source (in this case, Brown and Yule), and for the secondary

source (in this case, Spencer-Oatey).

Here are some examples to illustrate these points. The numbers refer to the numbered

paragraphs above.

1

5

2

3

6

1

An obvious issue for needs assessment should focus on the language

skills of the sojourner and the role played by cultural differences in

communication patterns. Fantini (1995) emphasized the importance

of learning the host language as crucial to becoming competent in a

cross cultural situation. Smalley (1963) points out that language

learners may feel ridiculed, and may find language study tiring,

boring and frustrating. Such problems can induce animosity or

bitterness towards other people, and even cause genuine illness

(Moghrabi, 1972). They could also cause dissatisfaction with being in

the US and with relationships with Americans (Morris, 1960).

Deutsch and Won (1963), studying 94 foreign trainees in the US,

found that the trainees rated their own English skills, the more

satisfaction they felt about the training they received and their social

experiences in the US. Lee, Abdella, and Burks (1981) revealed that

self-evaluation of language ability is a better predictor of the level of

adjustment than the score on the TOEFL. That is, the higher the

students rated their own language proficiency, the better they felt

about adjustment.

Research on culture related values (e.g. Chinese Culture Connection,


4

1987; Hofstede, 1980; Schwartz, 1994) has identified power as an

important dimension on which cultures vary. However, interpersonal

relationships are not only affected by power. Research into the

fundamental dimensions of interpersonal behavior (including

linguistic behavior in different role relationships) has also identified

distance/closeness as a significant variable, a dimension relating to

friendliness and affect of degree of association (e.g. P. Brown and

Levinson, 1987; R. Brown and Gilman, 1960; Leech, 1983;

Triandis,1978).

5.4 Using Quotations In an academic essay or paper, it is quite acceptable (and often good) to use other people's

words. However, be careful not to include too much direct quotation. It is not acceptable to

'pad' your paper with quotations, and they should not usually make up more than 10% of the

whole paper. People sometimes (wrongly) include quotations because they feel the need to

refer to an authority, regardless of whether the quotation is apt or not. However, it is essential

that the quotation actually contributes to your argument. It should follow on from what you

have stated, or lead into what you are about to write. Frequently when a quotation is

included, the writer comments upon it in some way.

You MUST make it clear when you are using somebody else's words.

8. Page number: If you quote directly from an article or book, or refer to a specific

argument or example that an author gives, you should always give the page number

from which the material comes; for example:

Lewis (1995) observed that at schools in Japan, children "didn't just work in

groups; they worked as groups" (p. 84).

9. Author and page number: If a Sentence does not start with the reference, then you

should give the reference and page number, in brackets, after the quotation; for

example:

Many Japanese children attend private school, called juku, after the regular

school day mainly to prepare for the entrance examinations. "Education

minded mothers are eager to place their children in the best of these schools,

hoping this will lead their beloved children down the golden path of

educational success" (Kumagai, 1996, p.67).


10. Short quotations: If the quotation you want to use is relatively short (about 25 words

or fewer) then keep the quotation within the paragraph, as shown in the examples in

paragraphs (8) and (9).

11. Longer quotations: If the quotation you want to use is relatively long (over 25 or so

words), then it should be in a paragraph by itself, indented by about two spaces.

Here are some examples to illustrate (the numbers refer to the points above). 10

9

11

Power distance (PD) is "the extent to which the less powerful

members of institutions and organizations accept that power is

distributed unequally" (Hofstede and Bond, 1984, p.419). Individuals

from high PD cultures accept power as part of society, and

individuals from low PD cultures do not.

Cultural Masculinity Femininity (MF) focuses on the equality in

gender roles in a culture, and the behaviours associated with these

gender roles.

Masculinity pertains to societies in which social gender roles are

clearly distinct (i.e. men are supposed to be assertive, tough, and

focused on material success whereas women are supposed to be

more modest, tender, and concerned with the quality of life);

femininity pertains to societies in which social gender roles overlap

(i.e. both men and women are supposed to be modest, tender, and

concerned with the quality of life). Hofstede 1991, pp.823)

5.5 References (Listed at the End of the Paper) At the end of your essay/paper, you must provide a list labelled “References” that contains all

the references you have identified during your paper.

• List ALL the references that you have mentioned/cited in your essay

• Order them according to the surname of the first authors


• Indent the second and subsequent line(s) of each reference

• Format them correctly (see below)

Do NOT

• Do not number the references

• Do not divide the reference section into Books, Edited Books, Journals, etc.

(The division below into 'books', 'edited books', and so on, is purely to demonstrate

how to write individual references taken from those types of sources. It does not

mean that you should order your references in this way!)

Books

1. Identify the author(s), giving their surname/family name first, followed by their

initial(s).

2. Give the year of publication in brackets. To find this, look near the front of the book

often opposite the contents page find the date given next to the ©. That is the date

when the book was first published.

3. Give the title of the book, either underlined or in italics. Start each of the main words

with a capital letter.

4. Give the place where the book was published, and then after a colon, give the name

of the publisher.

EXAMPLES:

Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. W. (1995) Intercultural Communication, Oxford: Blackwell.

Thomas, J. (1995) Meaning in Interaction. An Introduction to Pragmatics. London:

Longman.

Edited books

Edited books are formatted in the same way as authored books, except that "ed" is added in

brackets before the date of publication to show that it is an edited book.

EXAMPLE

Spencer-Oatey, H. (ed) (2000) Culturally Speaking. Managing Rapport through Talk

across Cultures. London: Continuum.


5.5.1 Chapters from Edited Books If one of your sources is a chapter in an edited book, you need to provide several extra

pieces of information. You need to give the author information first:

• the author(s) of the chapter, as usual giving the surname/family name first, followed

by the initial(s)

• the year of publication

• the title of the chapter, using lower case letters for all except proper names

Then you need to give details about the edited book:

• Write 'In' and then list the editor(s), giving their initial(s) first followed by their

surname(s)

• Give the title of the book: either underlined or put it in italics, and start each of the

main Words with a capital letter.

• Give the place where the book was published, and then after a colon, give the name

of the publisher.

• Give the page numbers of the chapter, using the abbreviation 'pp'.

EXAMPLE

Palmer, S. (1999) In search of effective counseling across cultures. In S. Palmer and

P. Laungani (eds) Counselling in a Multicultural Society. London: Sage, pp.153173.

Zegarac, V. & Pennington, M. (2000) Pragmatic transfer in intercultural

communication. In H. Spencer-Oatey (ed) Culturally Speaking. Managing Rapport

through Talk across Cultures. London: Continuum, pp. 165190.


5.5.2 Journal Articles As usual, give the author information first:

• the name(s) of the author(s) first · the year of publication in brackets

• the title of the article, using lower case letters

Then provide the following additional information:

• give the name of the journal, in italics or underlined, and with a capital letter at the

start of each main word

• give the volume number of the journal, in italics or underlined

• give the issue number of the volume in brackets after the volume number (sometimes

this information is missing; for example, the Journal of Pragmatics does not show an

issue number)

• give the page numbers of the article (but there is no need to use 'pp')

EXAMPLES

Coupland, J., Coupland, N., and Robinson, J. D. (1992)"How are you?": negotiating

phatic communion. Language in Society, 21(2), 207230.

Fraser, B. (1990) Perspectives on politeness. Journal of Pragmatics, 34(2), 219236.

5.5.3 Using Articles from Newspapers or Magazines Sometimes you may wish to use material from newspapers or magazines. Often it is

acceptable to incorporate the full reference into the text of your essay/report, without having

to list it in the references section; for example:

Consider for example, the following extracts from the English speaking media:

In fact, it is all too easy to say sorry in Japanese. The language, perhaps more than

any other, has many forms of apology which present a bewildering pattern of

complexity to anyone unfamiliar with Japan's culture. (The Times, 16th August,

1995)

However, references from the popular press can also be listed using the Harvard system.

Within the text of the essay, the reference will appear like any other (e.g. Monahan,


2001), but in the references list, it should appear as follows:

Monahan, J. (2001) Australia's lost generation. The Guardian Education, 29th May,

p. 66

5.5.4 Citing Sources from the World Wide Web Citing material from Web pages can be tricky since the name of the author or the date it was

either created or updated is not always plain. Most professional sites, however, will have

such information. Where possible, put the author name followed by the copyright or 'last

updated' date from the website. In some cases the title of the page may be all that is

available. The use of angle brackets is becoming a general standard for citing URLs

(Universal Resource Locator- a web address). The date following the URL should be the

date that you looked at

the website.

Professional Website:

White, R. (1997) Going round in circles: English as an international language, and

cross-cultural capability. http://www.rdq.ac.uk/AcaDepts/cl/slas/circlems.htm

[2004, 10 Sept.]

5.5.5 Other Types of References

Conference Paper

Spencer-Oatey, H. (2001) Disagreement in authentic Chinese-British

business meetings: unpackaging the role of culture. Paper presented at the Regional

Conference of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, July,

Winchester, UK.

Unpublished Dissertation/PhD Thesis

Tsuruta, Y. (1998). Politeness, the Japanese Style: An Investigation into the Use of

http://www.rdq.ac.uk/AcaDepts/cl/slas/circlems.htm


Honorific Forms and People's Attitudes towards such Use. Unpublished PhD Thesis,

University of Luton, Luton.

Audiovisual Material

BBC Radio 4. (2000). Why people hate: race [Radio programme, presented by Imran

Kahn, broadcast on 22 May]. London: BBC.

Film Four (2000) East is East. [Film. Directed by D. O'Donnell] London: Film Four


6 Plagiarism

Plagiarism is claiming someone else's work as your own and is an academic offence. It

comes in a variety of forms. In order of seriousness, plagiarism includes:

• Downloading an entire essay from the internet, and/or paying someone to produce

your assignment

• Copying an entire essay word for word from books or journals (with or without

mentioning sources)

• Copying or paraphrasing another students' essay

• Copying large sections of books or journals and inserting your own comments every

now and again (with or without mentioning sources)

• Paraphrasing extended passages from a book or journal without mentioning

• sources

A certain amount of paraphrasing of descriptions of concepts or theories may sometimes be

necessary, but you MUST identify your sources.

Examples of copying sources that do NOT count as plagiarism but that won't get you a very

good mark includes:

• Large amounts of properly quoted passages with sources so that your essay does not

contain your own thoughts or interpretations

• Keeping rigidly to the structure or argument of a textbook instead of varying your

argument to suit the essay question

• Quoting trivial passages with sources

6.1 University Regulations Students are assessed on the basis that the work presented is their own (as indicated by the declaration on the assignment cover sheet), unless specifically indicated otherwise (such as group work).”


Plagiarism is an Academic Offence A student commits an academic offence if it is demonstrated on a balance of probabilities

that he or she has used unfair means to carry out an assessment or academic work through

cheating, plagiarism or fabrication of information.”

A Definition – Wider Than You Think

• This offence consists in copying work or attempting to copy from any other source,

published or unpublished, including the work of a fellow student or another person

and presenting the copied work as if it were the student’s own work. Work presented

by a student in an assessment is expected to be the student’s own, and while

quotations from published sources are usually acceptable, such cases must be

clearly identified and the source fully acknowledged.

• Forms of collusion are also not permitted and are classified as plagiarism, including

knowingly supplying work with consent, in which case the supplier and receiver may

be regarded as equally guilty. Intent to collude or plagiarise work will also qualify as

plagiarism

6.2 Penalties for Plagiarism The University of Bedfordshire takes plagiarism very seriously. For further information on the

possible penalties for plagiarism please see your MBA Programme handbook, or the

University of Bedfordshire regulations, and Academic Discipline Policy and Procedure which

can be found on the following link: http://www.beds.ac.uk/aboutus/quality/regulations

6.2.3 Excuses That Do Not Work When an academic member of staff is considering a possible case of plagiarism the following

excuses will not work:

• I had intended to put it into my own words but did not have time.

• But they said exactly what I wanted to say.

• In my country it is considered disrespectful to change the words of respected

scholars.

• My friends do it that way and they have never got into trouble.

• I thought the internet was free and so did not have to reference it.

http://www.beds.ac.uk/aboutus/quality/regulations


6.2.4 Ways to Avoid Plagiarism • Use your own words and ideas – building on the works that you have read

• Always put in references to your sources – often credit is given for wider reading on a

topic

• Do not re-cycle references from other peoples articles if you have not read them

yourself

• If you are using other peoples words put them in “inverted commas” - but do not use

too many quotations

• Do not try to assemble text from various sources as your first draft – this is more

difficult than writing your own words

6.3 Appeals For further information on Academic Appeals please visit the Academic Discipline Policy and

Procedure which can be found on the following link:


Avoiding Plagiarism

Plagiarism from other students

This tends to occur when people work together on a project such as an essay or report.

There is nothing wrong with working together in this way. The problems arise when you end

up with the same references, the same general outline, the same examples, and so on. You

might end up with two essays that are very similar and crosses the border into plagiarism.

Don't lend your work to other students. Others have been known to photocopy a student's

work and pass it off as their own. Bear in mind that both the person who copies the work and

the person who wrote it in the first place are both regarded as guilty of plagiarism and both

suffer the penalties outlined above. If someone is reading your work to help with

organisation, coherence, grammatical accuracy etc., make sure it is someone who is not

doing the same piece of work, and acknowledge that your work has been checked in this

way.

Plagiarism from other sources



Poor time management and poor note keeping and referencing can lead to keeping too

closely to other texts. If you don't leave yourself time to think about and plan how to

restructure information, then there is the danger of simply using the structure and information

available from other sources.

Poor time management and last minute panic can also be due to sudden domestic or

personal problems or illness. It is much wiser to let the relevant people know that you are

having problems than to risk plagiarism in order to get something in on time.

Don't assume that you can get away with plagiarism because the marker is likely to be

unfamiliar with the text being plagiarised or will not notice the change in writing style. Tutors

are usually acquainted with a range of texts and it is often easy to spot a plagiarised essay or

report.

You should bear in mind that if you are found guilty of plagiarism, not only will the offence be

on your record, but also you will have to pay extra tuition fees if you have to repeat a unit.


7 Assessment Submission Process For detailed instructions on how to submit your assignment please view the assessment

submission process document on your BREO site.

8 Group assignments During your MBA you will undertake various group assignments for various MBA units/ units.

As an example we will discuss some of them in this section and they will also appear as part

of sample assignments for each unit.

The groups will be formed by consensus decision between students and teaching staff.

Group members confirm their group name and group members to in writing (family name,

first name, student number) to their course leader.

The group assignment should reflect that it’s a team effort and should look professional. The

group work lead to group presentation and presentation will be reviewed by the tutor and

your peer groups. Generally there is a standard ‘Peer review form’ that is made available to

review and assess the assignment quality and presentation quality of your peer group.

The assignment submission procedure will be available in the ‘Assignments’ section of your

unit BREO site.

mba assignments guide 2011(1)

Documents

mba programme

mba team

bedfordshire alumni

unit handbook

essay writing

contents welcome

report writing

luton lu1