Subject-Verb agreement

You can find a document on subject-verb agreement with exercises here.  The key for the exercises is available here.

A longer document entitled "Grammar and Punctuation for Business Communication"  is hereby available.  Please refer to pages 11 - 14 for subject-verb agreement. 

More tips on PowerPoint presentations

Here you can find list of do's and dont's for PowerPoint presentations.

The dont's for PowerPoint

Here you can find Don McMillan's standup on the dont's of a PowerPoint presentation.

The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint

Here you can find Guy Kawasaki's recommendations on the length (10 slides), duration (20 minutes) and font size (30 points) in a PowerPoint presentation.

Here you can find a stream of his pitch. ('Bozo' means 'fool'.)

Lists of three and the rule of 3s: two speeches

Here you can find the first part of Steve Jobs's iPhone product launch speech.

Here you can find Barack Obama's inauguration speech.

In both of them, please pay attention to the usage of the lists of three and the rule of 3s.

Here is a stream where the rule of 3s is explained among other useful tips on making presentations.

Second sample summary

Global Population Growth Box by Box: Hans Rosling's TED Talk

This is a presentation on the future of global population growth given by Hans Rosling with the aid of Ikea boxes.

In 1960 the global population was 3 billion, one third of which was in the developed world. These people were rich, healthy and well-educated with small families. Their dream was to save for a car. The rest from developing countries, on the other hand, were struggling to have enough food and to save for a pair of shoes.

In 2010 there were 7 billion people in the world. Their situation can be summarised as follows:

-The 2 billion poor were still as poor as they had been in 1960.

- Four billion people lived in the new emerging economies, dreaming of buying a bicycle, and later on, a car.

- The 1 billion rich were even richer, saving to fly to exotic destinations.

Thus, the gap between the rich and the poor became wider, while most people were somewhere in the middle.

The  forecast for 2015 is that the level of welfare in places such as Shanghai will reach that of the western societies. At the same time, there will still be 3 billion people in emerging economies dreaming of an electric car if climate change is under control and energy is still cheap.   Moreover, the number of the poor looking for food  will increase by 50 to 100 per cent. Based on available data, these poor people tend to have large families and low child survival rates.

The solution that Mr Rosling proposes for a sustainable global population growth is to continue to improve child survival upto 90 % and to reduce family size by vaccination and family planning respectively. This is a way to ensure the well-being of the whole global population.

Along these lines, he considers himself to be a "possibilist".

In this process, he sees developed countries as the foundation of the modern world.

Food safety and traceability

Here you can find an article on food safety from The Economist.

Here you can find an article on food traceability from The New York Times.

Here you can find another text submitted by C.  Thank you C!