Chapter 7 - 3

03 Office Hours

Listen to a conversation between a student and a professor. fill in the diagram with the information that you hear.

M: Good afternoon, Professor Stevens. Are you free right now?

W: What time is it? Hmm, I think I can spare moment. What’s up, Aron?

M: I wanted to talk to you about my last paper. I’m pretty unhappy with my grade. Plus, I’m not sure what you meant by some of the comments. Do you think we could go over it?

W: Certainly. Do you have the paper with you?

M: Yup, here it is. See, in the introduction, you wrote, “logic”. I couldn’t figure out what you were referring to.

W: When I write that on paper, it means that the two sentences that are circled has no logical link to each other. You wrote: “The critical issue that Cineweb faces is how to make sure the company can succeed in light of the success of established Internet video rental services”. Next you write: “In addition, Cineweb’s name should be advertised more, in an effort to make it stand out from its competitors”.

The problem is that the second sentence didn’t seem to relate to the first. Instead, you’d want to add a sentence that would introduce the second sentence as one of the ways that Cineweb could deal with the issue, perhaps.

Otherwise, it doesn’t really make any sense.

M: Yeah, I see what you mean. OK, what about this: in the third paragraph, you circled the word “institution” and all it has next to it is a question mark. What does that mean?

W: Sorry, that is pretty vague. Let me explain you’re calling Cineweb an institution, but that’s not accurate. I sort of get the sense that you were trying to use it synonymously with “business,” but you can’t do that.

M: Right, I guess I was just worried about using “business” too much. But I do get it−an institution is not the same thing as a business.

W: Uh huh. Anything else?

M: Just one more. At the bottom of the page, you said that I didn’t provide sufficient evidence to back up my proposals, but I thought I did that by talking about precedents with other companies.

W: You did do that, but what I really wanted you all to do was relate the precedents to how it could apply to Cineweb. Do you understand?

M: Right… so not just include companies that have tried a certain tactic before, but how it could benefit or harm Cineweb in particular.

W: Exactly. You know, Aaron, taking a second look at this, it seems that you didn’t quite understand the assignment.

M: It’s true. But thanks for explaining some of these comments to me… I just wish I could do something about my grade. I know I could do better if given a second chance. Especially now that I have a clearer idea of what you’re looking for.

W: Why don’t you do a rewrite?

M: Really?

W: Yup. What I’ll do is just average year first grade and the grade from the rewrite together. Does that sound fair?

M: More than fair. Thank you so much! I really appreciate it.

1) What does the professor imply when she says this: time is that? I think I can spare moment

2) What does the student imply about his support of the precedents?

3) According to the conversation, what can be inferred about the student’s paper?