France's chance

Apr 12th 2007

From The Economist print edition

After a quarter-century of drift Nicolas Sarkozy offers the best hope of reform

Bridgeman/Rex

NO FRENCH presidential election in 50 years has looked as unpredictable as this year's, the first round of which takes place on April 22nd. This is so even though the leader in every opinion poll so far has been Nicolas Sarkozy, the candidate of the ruling centre-right UMP party. His support may be overestimated, just as that of the far-right Jean-Marie Le Pen may be underestimated. The rise of the centrist François Bayrou, who at one point almost overtook the Socialist Ségolène Royal, has muddied the electoral arithmetic. And with only ten days to go, more than two in five voters are undecided.

This election matters. France is the euro zone's second-biggest member and home to ten of Europe's 50 biggest companies. But it is deeply troubled. It has the slowest-growing large economy in Europe, a state that soaks up half of GDP, the fastest-rising public debt in western Europe over the past ten years and, above all, entrenched high unemployment. Over the past 25 years French GDP per person has declined from seventh-highest in the world to 17th. The smouldering mood of the suburbs (banlieues), home to many jobless youths from ethnic minorities, blazed into riots in 2005 and lay behind new trouble that flared recently at a Paris railway station. The disenchantment of voters is reflected not only in opinion polls but also in their rejection of the European Union constitution in 2005. Tellingly, they have not re-elected an incumbent government for a quarter-century.

The most urgent cure for all these ills is to get the economy growing faster. That requires radical liberalisation of labour and product markets, more competition and less protection, lower taxes and cuts in public spending, plus a shake-up of the coddled public services. None of these things was seriously tackled in the past 26 years, under the presidencies of François Mitterrand, from the left, and Jacques Chirac, from the right. This was a time when other European countries, such as Britain, Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland and the Nordics, transformed themselves for the better, and still largely retained their cherished social models and welfare systems. Here lies the biggest challenge for the next French president.

Worst, worse, bad

How do the candidates measure up? Only three of the 12 are serious runners (see article). A fourth who may shape the outcome is Mr Le Pen, the veteran leader of the racist National Front, who shamed France by edging past the Socialist candidate into the run-off against Mr Chirac in 2002. Mr Le Pen's poll numbers are better now than they were at the equivalent stage then. It is vital for France and its image that Mr Le Pen be kept out of the second round this time.

Ms Royal would be an asset in the second round, turning it into a satisfyingly direct left-right contest. She has other attractions: the first woman to be a serious contender, the boldness to push past the elephants in her party to win the nomination, a willingness to break with Socialist taboos by praising Britain's Tony Blair and criticising the French state's imposition of a maximum 35-hour working week. Unfortunately her policies are woolly even by modern standards. And in economics, she stands squarely behind all the old left-wing shibboleths: state intervention, rigid labour protection and high taxes.

On the face of it, the centrist Mr Bayrou is more promising. His pledge to curb the public debt is more credible than Ms Royal's and even Mr Sarkozy's. But he has failed to promote a free-market agenda—he is distressingly fond of farm subsidies and state intervention. Nor is it clear how he would form a government: his centrist party is tiny, and his vague musings of drawing in like-minded leaders from left and right smack of the lowest common denominator.

Faute de mieux

Which leaves Mr Sarkozy as the best of the bunch. Unlike the others, and despite his long service as a minister under Mr Chirac, he makes no bones of admitting that France needs radical change. He is an outsider, born to an aristocratic Hungarian émigré father; he openly admires America; he is enthusiastic about the economic renaissance of Britain. He plans an early legislative blitz to take on hitherto untouchable issues such as labour-market liberalisation, cutting corporate and income taxes and trimming public-sector pensions.

But there are two doubts about Mr Sarkozy. As he showed in his brief stint as finance minister, he has most of the traditional French politician's meddlesome economic instincts, favouring a strong industrial policy, protected national champions and even interfering in supermarket prices. Recently he has taken to heaping blame on the European Central Bank for France's self-inflicted failings.

Such economic populism may merely be a ploy to win over an electorate that has long been averse to the market. But in Mr Sarkozy it is yoked to a second unattractive streak: a form of nativism, reflected in his harsh comments about immigrants and national identity. His supporters say he must tack right to lure voters from Mr Le Pen. But he is now so unpopular in the banlieues that—unlike Mr Le Pen—he has barely set foot in them during the campaign. As interior minister, he took great interest in how to improve the lives of French Muslims, but he has dropped all such talk as a candidate.

This may also explain the biggest defect in Mr Sarkozy's foreign policy: his fierce hostility to letting Turkey join the EU. Ms Royal has bravely supported the principle of Turkish membership. But this is unlikely to be put to the test for at least a decade, and on other EU issues, such as the future of the constitution, Mr Sarkozy has a more sensible, pragmatic approach than either of his main rivals. He is also the most likely candidate to repair France's tattered relations with America.

On the evidence of his career and his campaign, Mr Sarkozy is less a principled liberal than a brutal pragmatist. Yet he is the only candidate brave enough to advocate the “rupture” with its past that France needs after so many gloomy years. It has been said that France advances by revolution from time to time but seldom, if ever, manages to reform. Mr Sarkozy offers at least a chance of proving this aphorism wrong.

Why We Dream

By:Hara Estroff Marano

Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/rss/pto-20050420-000004.html

If dreams are the royal road to the unconscious, as Freud claimed, then that route may be a highway full of tortuous twists and turns—leading nowhere. But it affords some spectacular vistas along the way.

By turns, dreams have been deemed prophecies of the future, full of meaning—if only someone could figure out what it is—or the effluence of nerve cells randomly unwinding from a busy day. Once considered a hallmark of the periodic surges of brain activity known as rapid-eye-movement sleep, dreaming now seems somewhat less bundled up; at least 25 percent of dreams are scattered through other parts of the night. Dreaming has been seen as critical for learning, or at least important for solving problems—or as nice but unnecessary. It's an emblem of mental illness—or a safety shield deflecting it.

The newest switchback on dreams comes from South African neuroscientist Mark Solms. Maybe, says Solms, we've been confusing cause and effect. Dreams, he suggests, are not a by-product of sleep, as has been assumed all along. Dreaming may be what allows us to sleep in the first place.

"Dreams protect sleep," Solms says. They furnish an ersatz world to keep the brain temporarily occupied in its unyielding quest for activity. His iconoclastic view of dreams springs from emerging evidence that REM sleep and dreaming are not synonymous, and that the brain mechanisms involved in REM sleep may be entirely different from those involved in dreaming. Dreaming, in fact, is now thought to recruit areas of the brain involved in higher mental functions.

In other words, dreaming does for the brain what Saturday-morning cartoons do for the kids: It keeps them sufficiently entertained so that the serious players in the household can get needed recovery time. Without such diversion, the brain would be urging us up and out into the world to keep it fully engaged.

"Dreams are a delusional hallucinatory state" driven by activation of the brain's basic motivational system, Solms told a recent gathering of scientists in New York City. And like delusions, they appear to be stoked by an abundance of the neurotransmitter dopamine.

Dopamine, scientists now know, plays a critical role in directing our attention. The neurochemical decrees what is salient in our environment, regardless of whether that environment is inside us or outside. Under dopamine's influence, events or thoughts jump out of the background, grab our attention, move us to act and drive goal-directed behavior.

Dreams trick us into thinking we're out striving in the wider world. "The fundamental problem of being alive is that we must get all our needs met in the outside world," says Solms. The brain has an answer to that; it has developed a kind of unified motivational force variously called the "seeking" or "wanting" system, an orchestration of primitive and higher neural structures that orients us to the outside world with an air of anticipation and positive expectancy. As Solms puts it, "It's an all-purpose looking-for-pleasure-in-the-world drive" that sends animals out to satisfy their needs.

Pioneering neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp describes the seeking system as a "goad without a goal" (goals, such as gathering food, being dictated by the specific situation). It is a readiness for action, an appetitive arousal, the neurobiological descendant of Freud's idea of libido. Representing a very basic function of the brain, it commands and activates an array of neural circuits.

Researchers mapping the functions of the brain have shown that the hallucinations of psychosis involve hyperactivation of the seeking system's structures. They also involve dysregulated dopamine transmission. Increasingly viewed as "the wind of the psychotic fire," dopamine prompts the brain to assign abnormal importance to its own internal representations. Delusions, in other words, are errors of salience attribution. We overvalue our own thoughts, which are mistaken for perceptual experience of the world.

Dreams share many qualities with hallucinations. They are the hallucinations we all experience. Both dreams and hallucinations involve intensive activation of the seeking system. And Solms points to accumulating evidence that dreaming, like hallucinating, is driven by dopamine.

French neuroscientist Claude Gottesmann reported that dopamine release in the brain's nucleus accumbens, a site long recognized to be involved in the hallucinations of schizophrenia, is maximal during dream sleep. "Dreaming and schizophrenia have the same neurochemical background," Gottesmann says.

Other studies show that the dopamine-boosting drug L-dopa, commonly used to treat Parkinson's disease, prompts people to have more dreams, more emotional content to their dreams and more bizarre dreams.

Driven by dopamine, dreams fill our minds with myriad stimuli that feel worthy of our attention, says Solms. "That's necessary because the body is withdrawn from the external world."

Goaded into seeking but blocked from action by paralyzing neurochemicals released during dream sleep, we feed on our own internal representations of the world. And we wake hungry for new experiences that build our psychic cinema of internal representations.

Says Solms, "The dopamine hypothesis is at the core of why we dream."

New Words: Christian and democracy

From a reading of Christian view on democracy

Multitude
Downtrodden
Irrevocable
Portion
Integral
Monotheism
Defy
Iconoclasm
Idolatry
Apathy
Majesty
Humility
Adversary
Rudiment
Covenantal
Transcendent
Evangelical
Congregation
Concomitant
Normative
Magistrate
Homage
Penetration
Theological
Depravity
Preponderant
Coerce
Prerogative
Inordinate
Inclination
Proneness
Paternalistic
Cleavage
Equilibrium
Dispersion
Vocation
Scripture
Judeo-Christian (also spelled Judaeo-Christian) is a term used to describe the body of concepts and values which are thought to be held in common by Christianity and Judaism, and typically considered a fundamental basis for Western legal codes and moral values.

Brain Structure

Reflection Paper

Source 1: http://www.cascadia.ctc.edu/facultyweb/instructors/jvanleer/intro%20geol/Reflection%20Paper%20Guidelines.htm

Reflection papers are designed to formally consider what they have been learning and to organize it through writing.

When writing, consider the following:

• What have we studied that is interesting?
• What new things have you learned?
• How has your learning affected preconceptions or misconceptions you brought with you into class
• How does your learning affect you view of the world and the universe?
• Will what you have learned change your behavior in the future?

Source 2: http://daphne.palomar.edu/di/reflectionpaper.htm

A reflection paper should report some of your thoughts about the reading in question. It may include questions about the reading, arguments on the issue raised by the author, and relevant point not raised by the author.

Feel free to write down questions you have about the reading or issues it raises. Feel free to disagree with the reading and criticize the writer's point of view. Stick to specifics. Criticism is fine; vague whining is not. Write about what the writer says, not just how you feel about having to read it. But feel completely free to criticize or disagree with what he or she says. Feel free to raise other issues suggested by the reading.

If I don't give you a specific question to write on, reflect on these questions: What are the issues this reading raises? That is, what questions does the writer set out to answer? What are her answers? How would you evaluate the evidence she presents to support her position? Where do you think the author is right? Where wrong? Why? What points need further exploration?

Globalisation's offspring

From The Economist print edition
Apr 4th 2007

How the new multinationals are remaking the old

FOR as long as multinational companies have existed—and some historians trace them back to banking under the Knights Templar in 1135—they have been derided by their critics as rapacious rich-world beasts. If there was ever any truth to that accusation, it is fast disappearing. While globalisation has opened new markets to rich-world companies, it has also given birth to a pack of fast-moving, sharp-toothed new multinationals that is emerging from the poor world.

Indian and Chinese firms are now starting to give their rich-world rivals a run for their money. So far this year, Indian firms, led by Hindalco and Tata Steel, have bought some 34 foreign companies for a combined $10.7 billion. Indian IT-services companies such as Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro are putting the fear of God into the old guard, including Accenture and even mighty IBM (see article). Big Blue sold its personal-computer business to a Chinese multinational, Lenovo, which is now starting to get its act together. PetroChina has become a force in Africa, including, controversially, Sudan. Brazilian and Russian multinationals are also starting to make their mark. The Russians have outdone the Indians this year, splashing $11.4 billion abroad, and are now in the running to buy Alitalia, Italy's state airline (see article).

These are very early days, of course. India's Ranbaxy is still minute compared with a branded-drugs maker like Pfizer; China's Haier, a maker of white goods, is a minnow next to Whirlpool's whale. But the new multinationals are bent on the course taken by their counterparts in Japan in the 1980s and South Korea in the 1990s. Just as Toyota and Samsung eventually obliged western multinationals to rethink how to make cars and consumer electronics, so today's young thrusters threaten the veterans wherever they are complacent.

The newcomers have some big advantages over the old firms. They are unencumbered by the accumulated legacies of their rivals. Infosys rightly sees itself as more agile than IBM, because when it makes a decision it does not have to weigh the opinions of thousands of highly paid careerists in Armonk, New York. That, in turn, can make a difference in the scramble for talent. Western multinationals often find that the best local people leave for a local rival as soon as they have been trained, because the prospects of rising to the top can seem better at the local firm.

First, count your blessings

But the newcomers' advantages are not overwhelming. Take the difference in company ethics, for instance, which worries plenty of rich-world managers. They fear that they will engage in a race to the bottom with rivals unencumbered by the fine feelings of shareholders and domestic customers, and so are bound to lose. Yet the evidence is that companies harmonise up, not down. In developing countries (never mind what the NGOs say) multinationals tend to spread better working practices and environmental conditions; but when emerging-country multinationals operate in rich countries they tend to adopt local mores. So as those companies globalise, the differences are likely to narrow.

Nor is cost as big an advantage to emerging-country multinationals as it might seem. They compete against the old guard on value for money, which depends on both price and quality. A firm like Tata Steel, from low-cost India, would never have bought expensive, Anglo-Dutch Corus were it not for its expertise in making fancy steel.

This points to an enduring source of advantage for the wealthy companies under attack. A world that is not governed by cost alone suits them, because they already possess a formidable array of skills, such as managing relations with customers, polishing brands, building up know-how and fostering innovation.

The world is bumpy

The question is how to make these count. Sam Palmisano, IBM's boss, foresees nothing less than the redesign of the multinational company. In his scheme, multinationals began when 19th-century firms set up sales offices abroad for goods shipped from factories at home. Firms later created smaller “Mini Me” versions of the parent company across the world. Now Mr Palmisano wants to piece together worldwide operations, putting different activities wherever they are done best, paying no heed to arbitrary geographical boundaries. That is why, for example, IBM now has over 50,000 employees in India and ambitious plans for further expansion there. Even as India has become the company's second-biggest operation outside America, it has moved the head of procurement from New York to Shenzen in China.

As Mr Palmisano readily concedes, this will be the work of at least a generation. Furthermore, rich-country multinationals may struggle to shed nationalistic cultures. IBM is even now trying to wash the starch out of its white-shirted management style. But today, General Electric alone seems able to train enough of its recruits to think as GE people first and Indians, Chinese or Americans second. Lenovo's decision to appoint an American, William Amelio, as its Singapore-based chief executive, under a Chinese chairman, is a hint that some newcomers already understand the way things are going.

IBM's approach is possible only because globalisation is flourishing. Many of the barriers that stopped cross-border commerce have fallen. And yet, Mr Palmisano's idea also depends on the fact that the terrain remains decidedly bumpy. Increasingly, success for a multinational will depend on correctly spotting which places best suit which of the firm's activities. Make the wrong bets and the world's bumps will work against you. And now that judgment, rather than tariff barriers, determines location, picking the right place to invest becomes both harder and more important.

Nobody said that coping with a new brood of competitors was going to be easy. Some of today's established multinational companies will not be up to the task. But others will emerge from the encounter stronger than ever. And consumers, wherever they are, will gain from the contest.

Secondary Data

Source 1: http://brent.tvu.ac.uk/dissguide/hm1u3/hm1u3text2.htm

SECONDARY DATA COLLECTION

All methods of data collection can supply quantitative data (numbers, statistics or financial) or qualitative data (usually words or text). Quantitative data may often be presented in tabular or graphical form. Secondary data is data that has already been collected by someone else for a different purpose to yours. For example, this could mean using:

• data collected by a hotel on its customers through its guest history system
  
  
• data supplied by a marketing organisation
  
  
• annual company reports
  
  
• government statistics.

Secondary data can be used in different ways:

• You can simply report the data in its original format. If so, then it is most likely that the place for this data will be in your main introduction or literature review as support or evidence for your argument.
  
  
• You can do something with the data. If you use it (analyse it or re-interpret it) for a different purpose to the original then the most likely place would be in the ‘Analysis of findings’ section of your dissertation. A good example of this usage was the work on suicide carried out by Durkheim. He took the official suicide statistics of different countries (recorded by coroners or their equivalent) and analysed them to see if he could identify variables that would mean that some people are more likely to commit suicide than others. He found, for example, that Catholics were less likely to commit suicide than Protestants. In this way, he took data that had been collected for quite a different purpose and used it in his own study – but he had to do a lot of comparisons and statistical correlations himself in order to analyse the data. (See Haralambos, 1995, for details of Durkheim’s work).

Most research requires the collection of primary data (data that you collect at first hand), and this is what students concentrate on. Unfortunately, many dissertations do not include secondary data in their findings section although it is perfectly acceptable to do so, providing you have analysed it. It is always a good idea to use data collected by someone else if it exists – it may be on a much larger scale than you could hope to collect and could contribute to your findings considerably.

As secondary data has been collected for a different purpose to yours, you should treat it with care. The basic questions you should ask are:

• Where has the data come from?
  
  
• Does it cover the correct geographical location?
  
  
• Is it current (not too out of date)?
  
  
• If you are going to combine with other data are the data the same (for example, units, time, etc.)?
  
  
• If you are going to compare with other data are you comparing like with like?

Thus you should make a detailed examination of the following:

• Title (for example, the time period that the data refers to and the geographical coverage).
  
  
• Units of the data.
  
  
• Source (some secondary data is already secondary data).
  
  
• Column and row headings, if presented in tabular form.
  
  
• Definitions and abbreviations, for example, what does SIC stand for? For example, how is ‘small’ defined in the phrase ‘small hotel’? Is ‘small’ based on the number of rooms, value of sales, number of employees, profit, turnover, square metres of space, etc., and do different sources use the word ‘small’ in different ways? Even if the same unit of measurement is used, there still could be problems. For example, in Norway, firms with 200-499 employees are defined as ‘medium’, whereas in the USA firms with less than 500 employees are defined as ‘small’.

There are many sources of data and most people tend to underestimate the number of sources and the amount of data within each of these sources.

Sources can be classified as:

• paper-based sources – books, journals, periodicals, abstracts, indexes, directories, research reports, conference papers, market reports, annual reports, internal records of organisations, newspapers and magazines
  
  
• electronic sources– CD-ROMs, on-line databases, Internet, videos and broadcasts.

The main sources of qualitative and quantitative secondary data include the follwing:

• Official or government sources.
  
  
• Unofficial or general business sources.

The output of all publishers of non-official sources is included in the most comprehensive directory available:

Mort D. (1997) Sources of Unofficial UK Statistics 3rd Edition Aldershot: Gower

The guide lists 1,059 statistical titles and series published by 635 different organisations. It excludes one-off surveys or market reports.

The arrangement is alphabetical by organisation with details of titles produced and contacts for further information. It lists references to the following types of sources:

• trade associations
  
  
• trade and other journals
  
  
• private research publishers
  
  
• stockbroking firms
  
  
• large company market reports
  
  
• local authorities
  
  
• professional bodies
  
  
• academic institutions.

• European Union (Community) sources.
  
  
• International sources.
  
  
  • Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
    
    
  • United Nations and related organisations.

Sources for the last two categories are many and varied. If your dissertation requires these sources you need to conduct a more thorough search of your library and perhaps seek the assistance of the librarian.

______________________________________________________

Source 2: http://oassis.gcal.ac.uk/rms/irm/sd.html

SOURCES & USES OF SECONDARY DATA

• What Is Secondary Data?

• Data may be described as Primary or Secondary
• Primary data - collected by the researcher himself
• Secondary data - collected by others to be "re-used" by the researcher

• What Form Does Secondary Data Take?

• Qualitative Sources

  / Sources for Qualitative Research:
• Biographies - subjective interpretation involved
• Diaries - more spontaneous, less distorted by memory lapses
• Memoirs - benefit/problem of hindsight
• Letters - reveal interactions
• Newspapers - public interest & opinion
• Novels & Literature In General - eg Atkinson's tribute to usefulness of Gordon's "Dr Novels"; McLelland's study of achievement motivation in different cultures via children's stories & folktales
• Handbooks, Policy Statements, Planning Documents, Reports, Historical & Official Documents (Hansard, Royal Commission reports) etc. nb Marx's use of Factory Inspectors reports in developing his theories of the labour process

• Quantitative Sources

• Published Statistics:
• National Government Sources
• Demographic (Census, Vital Statistics, Cancer Registrations)
• Administrative (by-product of Government)
• Collected by Govt. Depts. overseen by ONS (eg. employment, prices, trade, finance)
• Government Surveys (input to Government)
• General Household Survey (GHS)
• Family Expenditure Survey (FES)
• Labour Force Survey (LFS)
• Family Resources Survey (FRS)
• Omnibus Survey
• Local Government Sources
• Planning Documents
• Trends Documents (eg former Strathclyde Social Trends and Economic Trends)
• Other Sources
• Firms & Trade Associations eg Society of Motot Manufacturers & Traders (SMMT)
• Market & Opinion Research eg Gallup, NOP, SCPR System 3
• Trade Unions, TUC, STUC
• Professional Bodies eg CIPFA (Chartered Instiute of Public Finance & Accountancy) provides a Statistical Information Service re Local Government Statistics
• Political Parties
• Voluntary & Charitable Bodies eg Low Pay Unit, SCF (Save the Children Fund), Rowntree Foundation
• Academic & Research Institutes eg
• Micro-Social Change Research Centre (MSRC) at Essex Uni
• National Institute for Economic & Social Rsearch (NIESR)
• Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS)
• International Sources
• EU, OECD, World Bank, IMF
• Non-Published / Electronic Sources
• Data Archives eg the Data Archive At Essex
• Data Sub-Setting Service On Tape, Disk, Postal Or Via Janet
• On-Line Access To National Computing Centres
• MIMAS (Manchester Information & Associated Services)
• EDINA (Edinburgh)
• International Sources on Internet & Web

• Ways of Using Secondary Sources

• Exploratory phase - getting ideas
• Design Phase - definitions & sampling frames, question wording
• Supplement to Main Research
• - Re-Inforcement &/Or Comparison
• Main Mode of Research
• - Direct Data Collection Impossible
• - Or Costly & Time Consuming

• Limitations of Secondary Data

• Collected For A Different Purpose
• Problem of Definitions
• Problem of Comparability Over Time
• Lack of Awareness of Sources of Error/Bias
• Has the Data Been "Massaged"?
• What Do The Statistics Really Mean?
• Eg. Health, Crime, Unemployment
• Limitations of Survey Data
• Representativeness
• Validity of Responses
• Limitations of Documents
• Documents "Construct" As Well As Report Social Reality

• How to Search & Use Secondary Sources?

• Documents - Bibliographic Skills, Use of Keywords, Boolean Operators
• Published Statistics
• Guide to Official Statistics
• Digests & Abstracts
• Primary Publication
• Electronic Sources
• Biron
• Gateways - SOSIG, BUBL
• Search Engines - Infoseek, Alta Vista, Webcrawler etc.

The Evaluation Essay

source1: http://www.bestessays.com/evaluation_essay_guide.php

The aim of the evaluation essay is to give your opinion on the article, book or other material you have read and criticize it if you completely disagree with the mentioned above or only to some extent.

The main functions of your essay are:

• To analyze the material you were given as a source;
• To criticize the argument it presents;
• To state your opinion or to contribute to the existing one and give necessary arguments and show that they are trustworthy.

Evaluation essay is an assignment that requires research, analysis and a lot of patience. If you are going to present an opinion that will be completely different from that stated in the material, you will need an adequate convincing proof. In the intro you explain the evaluation matter given in the source. Thus the intended reader will get the idea what you are going to evaluate.

Formulating your thesis statement, present various approaches to the problem.

The main body should provide analysis of the source and additional information to prepare the background for your judgement. Make sure that your statements are complete and convincing. Every point of disagreement should be supported by a coherent chain of evidence. It may be a good idea to establish a plan on how are you going to develop your ideas concerning the problem. Make a chain of facts you are going to include in your essay and develop each of them in a separate paragraph.

Conclusion should summarize and develop a good solution for the problem under discussion. It is the most significant part of your essay and be ready that it will be treated very sceptically. Make sure you have written powerful and strong conclusion to leave any shadow of doubts.

Make sure to proofread your essay for a couple of times. Along with searching for spelling, grammar and other types of mistakes, think over the plot itself:

• Isn't it contradictory?
• Is the topic fully covered?
• Do the facts I give look trustworthy?
• Do I sound convincing?
• Is my language bright enough?
• Does the essay I wrote correspond to the format I was given?
• If I were an intended writer, would I be convinced with this essay?

After doing all the mentioned above, you can be sure that your essay is successfully written.

____________________________________________________

source2: http://www.customessay.org/2evaluation-essay.htm

An evaluation essay estimates an object, prompting the reader to accept the writer's point of view. Features of the evaluative essays are very similar to those of cause and effect essays, but no cause-effect relations are considered in evaluation essays. The evaluation technique is widely used for dwelling upon many processes and events: recent events, books, articles, movies, famous people and other.

In the first paragraph of the evaluation essay, the writer should provide the description of an evaluated object, carefully selecting the features he is willing to disclose. As stated above, the purpose of the evaluation essay is to persuade the reader that the writer's judgment is correct, and therefore each sentence should demonstrate the writer's competence. The writer should also provide brief historical information about the subject of evaluation in case he is going to evaluate a movie, book, canvas or any other subject with peculiar historical background (this may include the author's name, the history of creation, the date of publication, etc.). Further, the writer should express his opinion by formulating a definitive judgment in the form of a thesis statement. The following paragraphs should support and substantiate the formulated thesis refuting the possible counterarguments. However, profound argumentation should be left for an argumentative essay, while the evaluation essay should state the writer's estimation of an object in an authoritative manner.

The writer of an evaluation essay should be reasonable in his judgments, i.e. his estimations should be based upon some objective, universally recognized criteria. Each judgment should be supported by evidence (example, description, statistics, opinion of other individuals, etc.). In case the writer chooses to utilize comparisons in his evaluation, he has to be sure that the compared objects are equivalent. The writer should demonstrate an unbiased tone, though remembering the necessity to formulate his own opinion. The writing style should correspond to the object of evaluation.