Chat rooms or “chats” are one of the most interactive
areas on the Internet and they are regularly visited by children and teenagers. Putting it plainly and simply, a chat room is a place on the Internet where people meet to talk about various subjects. Conversation is simultaneous,synchronous and written. A user writes a message onto the computer and the message is immediately displayed on another computer. From a teacher’s point of view, chat rooms may turn out to be one of the best places to engage our students in real and meaningful language practice. From a student’s point of view, chats are an exciting means of communication and an enriching opportunity to communicate with native or non-native speakers in English.

Generally speaking, chat rooms provide students with a stress-free and uninhibited language practice but most importantly they foment linguistic interaction. Much has already been said and written about the utter importance of interaction in the learning and acquisition of a second language. It has already been proved that the more the student (meaningfully) interacts, the more opportunities he/she will have to learn language and the more language the student learns, more input can he/she can solicit in order to learn more language

So, in order to increase students’s interaction in the English language, we can include chat rooms in our lessons. Students’s active participation will allow them to experience and experiment language as a real thing. This type of interaction, although written and not face-to-face, will prove more authentic than a conversation with the teacher, especially because in a chat
room language is no longer a goal but an instrument to pursue other (real) goals

Precautions
However, despite the inherent advantages of using chat rooms for educational purposes, one must be conscious of some dangers:

Students often have a difficult time using computers, which might endanger the activity. A good solution is to provide students with the basic computer skills (using the keyboard, reading from the screen) Chat rooms users often use acronyms and slang that students may fail to understand. A good way to solve this problem is to introduce students to those particular expressions (for instance, prepare a lesson based on Netiquette, which includes specific vocabulary items used on the Internet). Students may be confronted with harassment situations and/or verbal confrontations. This is why it is of utter importance to develop your activities in a moderated chat room and to create your own chat room. A chat room for educational purposes should have published a list of main topics and subjects currently under discussion.
Activities

As an activity, the use of chat rooms has to be considered fluency work; thus, the teacher should only intervene if the students’ mistakes jeopardise communication. It is also necessary to keep in mind that the teacher should only act (during the activity) as a prompter and a resource, in order to allow real interaction.

Activity 1: Who’s who?
Objectives: By the end of the lesson, students should have:

acquired the necessary knowledge about the basic functioning of a chat room (log in, write and read a message, log out); used the English language in a communicative way; demonstrated the necessary skills to make and answer questions; demonstrated their understanding of the dialogue; reflected on their use of the English language.
Procedure:
Students will be told that they will dialog with their classmates in a chat room and that they will play a game called “Who’s who?”. Each student will have a nickname, e.g., a fake identity, and that the objective of the game is to guess the true identity behind the nick. Students must also be instructed to keep their nicknames secret. Students will then be told the address of the chat room they’ll be accessing and, individually, their nicknames. The teacher should help students to log in and make sure everyone is able to send, read and write messages. Students should then approach their colleagues and try to find out who is behind the nicknames. In the end, students will be asked to come to the blackboard and write down the names behind the nicks. It is also very interesting to print and hand out the transcript of one or two dialogues and lead a brief reflection on how students used the English language.

Procurement describes the acquisition of goods or services at the best possible cost, in the right quantity, time and place, for the direct benefit of the firm. The question now arises: how do you prioritize when you only have a limited amount of money to spend? That’s where the role of budgeting comes in.

A budget is a quantitative expression of financial plans. How are budgets useful? Budgets induce management to think systematically about the future. They also serve as a device for coordinating the complex operations of the business, and provide a medium for communicating the financial goals of the firm.

In order to be useful, the budget must be drawn up for a specific time period. Usually, the budget is drawn up for a year. The operating budget for the firm may be constructed in terms of programs or responsibility areas. The program budget is developed in terms of products that are regarded as the principal programs of the business. Such a budget shows the expected costs and benefits of various products and services.

A cost center is responsible for keeping track of costs and expenses. To assess its performance, the actual costs are compared with the budgeted costs. The latter represent expenses that should have been incurred, given the actual activity level. The variance between actual costs and budgeted costs is analyzed for control purposes.

What is the base for preparing the budget? A commonly used base is the level of operations in the current year. Using this, the expected and planned changes in the forthcoming year are identified to develop the budget for that year. Under this approach, referred to as the incremental approach to budgeting, the focus of budgeting is on the operations during the budget period.

In every firm, there is a critical factor which sets a limit to its level of activity. Often, the expected demand is the limiting factor that defines the scope and level of operations. When the demand is fairly strong, the limiting factor may be the production capacity of the firm, which cannot be augmented in the short run. For firms that do not have easy access to the capital market, finances may be a limiting factor.

Owning a property can help you benefit from the property tax deduction. This can actually be broken down in to several separate advantages. This tax deduction is actually a general deduction encompassing many. Some of the areas that advantages can be taken in that are included in the deduction are listed below.

One area that is included in this tax deduction is any interest paid on your mortgage. This is because the interest you collect on your house is also deductible up to a maximum of $1 million.

Another part of this deduction is what is called fee points, which are points that are associated with a home acquisition mortgage. Because each one is worth 1% this can really add up when it comes to taking advantage of this portion of the deduction.

Something else that is part of this deduction is equity loan interest. This interest that is the amount that you would pay on a home equity loan is only partly deductible, not fully. This part of it has a few regulations that must be followed according to the Internal Revenue Service.

A few other things that can be included in applying for the tax deduction includes home improvement loan interest and the home office deduction. With the home improvement interest you cannot include anything considered a repair. But with the home office deduction you can include any part of your home used for business, and can include repairs.

One thing that is a fairly big part of the deduction is the selling costs. These can include the real estate broker’s commissions, title insurance, legal fees, advertising costs, administrative costs, and inspection fees. By taking advantage of this part of the property deduction you can lower your taxable capital gains.

This leads us to the capital gains exclusion that is part of the property tax deduction. If you have lived at your residence for at least two of the last five years then you are excluded from having to pay a capital gains tax. Married who file jointly have a limit of $500,000, while single or married filing single have a limit of $250,000 in the amount than keep in profits from any sale.

A small side note regarding moving and this deduction, is that if you relocate due to your job, you can include deductions related to the cost of this move. This deduction though is not quite as easy to take advantage of because of some of the IRS regulations regarding it.

The fact also that your property tax deduction is completely deductible from your federal income taxes among these other benefits, definitely makes it worth looking into.

The procedure of investing in rental property as beginners can be thrilling; however, before you get too energized it is imperative to run some groundwork numbers to make sure you know precisely what you are facing to make sure a winning investment.

First, you will want to carefully inspect potential rental income. If the home has already served as a rental property, you will require to take the time to discover how much the property has rented for before and then investigate to decide whether that amount is on the mark or not. In some cases, properties may have rented for lesser than they should have whilst in other cases a property may be over-rented. Look at equivalent properties in the neighborhood to make sure you know whether the property in question is on mark; otherwise you may find that the quantity you think you will be getting in rental income is unlikely.

Mortgage interest is an additional area that should be thought-out carefully. Make certain you identify and comprehend the current interest rates as well as the details of your precise loan since mortgage interest is the major cost you will come across when purchasing investment property. First, recognize that homes and duplexes are inclined to have loan structures that are alike to any mortgage loan. With a bigger property; however, such as a triplex; rates are inclined to be higher. If you are looking at commercial land with even more units; the matter of terms and rates is entirely different. Normally, the more money you are able to put down on the acquisition of the property, the lesser amount of interest you will have to pay.

Taxes are an additional issue. Numerous people utilize the taxes from the year during which the property was purchased and think they can use these numbers to guess everyday expenditures. This is not always the case as taxes do not stay the same; they characteristically alter every year. More often than not, taxes rise after a property is purchased. This is particularly accurate if the property was formerly owner occupied. So, it is normally an excellent idea to just presume that the taxes will increase on the property subsequent to you purchasing it.

A part which many people fall short to take into contemplation is the expenditure of the property being empty. As you would surely hope that your property would stay rented all the time, this basically is not reasonable. There will most likely be times when your property will be vacant. In general, you should believe that your property will include on average a 10% vacancy rate.

The expenditure of occupant turnover should also be taken into deliberation. This is often a big shock to many landlords who take for granted they will lease out their properties and the occupants will stay in the property for a number of years. Even more of a revelation is how expensive it is to sort out the property to rent out yet again. Just a few of the costs to take in are not only advertising for a new renter but as well repainting, clean-up, etc. If damage was done to the property, the full amount of restoration may not be wholly covered by the security deposit charged.

Of course, the price of insurance ought to also be taken into full deliberation. Bear in mind that the insurance for rental properties is typically higher than a proprietor occupied property. Make sure you acquire a quote rather than just using the insurance cost for your own home as an estimating guide. In addition, make sure you take into deliberation not only property insurance but also liability insurance as well.

Utility costs are an additional area that are often under-projected. If the property has previously served as a rental property make certain you find out precisely what the proprietor pays for and what the tenants pay for. You must also make sure to discover whether you will be accountable for additional costs such as garbage collection.

Lastly, take into deliberation the costs of property management if you will not be running the property on your own.