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Please review my Recommendation Letter

Aquilotto — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 11:07:40 GMT

Hi All,

I wrote the attached recommendation letter and I need someone to review it, since I am italian and I'm not english mother tongue.

The letter is preatty long, but I hope it is quite well written.

Thank you very much for your help.

Best Regards

Lorenzo
________________________________________________

Question N.1 - How long and in what capacity have you known the candidate?

I met Lorenzo at the University in 1998 and since then we cultivated a strong friendship culminated in 2006 when we structured a mutual agreement in order to manage some business related projects. From that year our professional relation has emerged reinforced by the fact that his knowledge of corporate finance is more advanced and systematic than mine, while I am more used to deal with fiscal matters. I collaborated with Lorenzo in two different projects: during the first project, that lasted for six months, in January 2006 we performed a merger of two companies operating in the field of industrial plant design creating a new company with an asset of 150 million â¬ and 1200 employers; with the second project, that lasted for four months, we created a Trust with an asset of 85 million â¬ in real estate, stocks, bonds and cash.

Question N.2 - If this is a work related reference, in what position is/was the candidate employed and for how long?

While being involved in these projects, we worked closely together for ten months, five days a week, twelve hours a day. In both projects Lorenzo was the manager and I was in charge of optimizing the fiscal impact on the corporate structure in the first project and in the second I was in charge of studying and designing the Trust's fiscal structure.

Question N.3 - Please elaborate below or in a separate letter on the evaluation you have given above and provide any additional clarification about the applicant, which you consider would be helpful to the Admissions Committee.

Intellectual or Academic Ability

Lorenzo has an extreme flexible and vivid intellectual ability. I realized his attitude to study, research and in-depth examination when we were at the University and now, I found the really same approach in the projects we structured, characterized by very specific technical issues where intellectual and academic ability background sits on the first place. His intellectual ability relates to match a rigorous training with managerial skills and ability to adapt to different conditions.

Competence in current position

Lorenzo's competence as project leader and manager clearly demonstrates to be live up in every situation. I had the clear perception that our clients entrusted all the actions proposed by Lorenzo. When our clients asked Lorenzo specific questions related to our work, he always managed to demonstrate confidence and precision thanks to the competencies he has.

Oral Communication Skills

Lorenzo has a very clear and concise way to express his point of view. He is able to do that thanks to an innate ability to enter into dialogue with others. His approach does not change whether he speaks with a colleague or with the CEO of the company. Lorenzo always personalized his style knowing how to put his counterpart in confidence and at ease. Particularly, I remember as during one Board of Directors he was asked too many questions about every single detail of the merger that was planned and he answered all the questions in a flawless and confident way that everybody felt more secure in conducting the operation in the direction Lorenzo prospected.

Written Communication Skills

Lorenzo has excellent writing skills, as he manages to synthesize and explain very difficult concepts simply producing clear and easy-to-read documents. The very technical vocabulary of our work tends to be difficult to understand; therefore, it is very important to make sure that all the documents delivered to our clients are easy to understand. I remember that once, while we were monitoring the merger of companies, Lorenzo was the person that prepared informally the minutes of the Board of Directors that were used later as formal documents presented to the notary.

Analytical Skills

Lorenzoâs analytical skills are very important and effective in our field of work. Particularly, he is very skilful in conducting economic-financial analyses. Having said that, I would like to acknowledge that thanks to his excel file we were able to develop a model, and using this model we simulated the effects of the merger of two companies in terms of accounting, and with this model we also were able to analyze the first yearâs net circulating capital of the new company resulting from the merger. Evidently, such a task requires mastering and modelizing of the different aspects of balance sheets of the two companies.

Leadership Potential

Lorenzo definitely possesses great leadership qualities. He freely shares his skills and experience with the team, making them look to him even more as a leader. Lorenzo exhibits the courage of hard decisions and stand by them, thanks to his solid theoretical and practical preparation. Lorenzo is not intimidated by much, but he has also good judgment. When he has considered the facts of a situation and is certain he is on solid ground, he will not hesitate to take a strong stand. Lorenzo realizes that in any group everything is ultimately about persuasion, negotiation, and compromise. He is such a good leader, looked up by others, because they know he will accept a decision that does not go his way if he feels he has had a fair hearing. Lorenzo leads by listening to others and building consensus.

Teamwork

Lorenzo knows how to lead and orientate a group of people in the day after day life in order to obtain the desired results. At the same time Lorenzo is able to adapt to the different characters of the team members because he has an outstanding attitude of hearing, of motivating, of respecting and of communicating with all the colleagues. It's not easy to develop a project from the design phase till implementation but Lorenzo is able to give the right attention and the right amount of responsibility to all team members in order to drive the team to reach the final result.

Problem Solving

In managing problems Lorenzo always proved to be very proactive and ready to anticipate aspects that could impact on our projects. His ability to manage both complex situations and supply solutions is driven by his attitude to do analogies with similar cases already solved and also by break up a complex problem in a series of multiple small themes more easy to be solved.

Maturity

Lorenzoâs maturity is exceptional in our field. I am sure that his maturity comes from the fact that he graduated very early and, consequently, had an opportunity to get involved in many different kinds of situations from which he learned a lot. His maturity is proven by his communication skills, his motivation and his ability to take a deep and careful approach to everything he does. Particularly, I refer to his ability to put all his interlocutors at ease, as, for instance, once I saw him negotiating with the banks very favourable terms for our clientâs company, which was possible only because during these years of hard work he has distinguished himself as a trustful and professional person.

Management Potential

Based on my experience the most important factor that I can observe in Lorenzo is that he gets things done. He is able to get the most from different situations by controlling all the critical aspects that a good manager must have: organization, charisma, leadership, teamwork, vision, integrity. All these are part of his character and are evident in his personality, given that have always been recognized also by our clients. To deliver concrete results to companies is our mission and the only was to reach this goal is to be good managers serving our clients.

Question N.4 - What do you consider to be the candidateâs principal strengths/talents?

I consider Lorenzo's principal talents his attitude to create a collaborative working environment, his competence in analyzing and solving problems, his extremely oriented to teamwork personality and his willing not to be satisfied by the results achieved and always looking for new ventures and new opportunities.

Question N.5 - What do you consider to be the candidateâs weaknesses or areas that need improvement?

A weakness that Lorenzo might have compared to other team members that I regularly work with is related to his high moral standards. Lorenzo tends to trust the people with whom he works, and this is why he expects to be treated the same way. If a person disappoints him, Lorenzo tends to distance himself and does not treat this person in the same way.

Question N.6 - What is your opinion of the candidateâs motivation towards, and suitability for a career in management?

I think that Lorenzo is the right person for a career in management and I can say that because I saw him in action. Lorenzo already has a very successful future ahead of him. I believe that this is the right time for him to get his dream of doing an MBA in a prestigious university like Manchester. I'm sure that his knowledge and competencies would benefit from the MBA and together with his actual level of management practice he will gain an absolute level of respect in the management field. We spoke a lot about his willing to gain the MBA and even if against my own interest, that is to hold him in Italy to continue to collaborate to new projects, I believe that for his ambitions the right thing is to go in a place where both theory and practical experience can allow him to fully develop his enormous potentialities.

Re: Three Questions: All Plural Possession

Anonymous — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 17:26:47 GMT

In terms of grammatical correctness, it is essential to keep in mind whether the pronoun in question should be subjective or objective. One says "My wife and I own this tree" because in this case one ("I") is the subject of the verb. One uses "me" when he or she is the object: "My wife owns me." Not only verbs take objective forms of pronouns; prepositions in English also do so. For example, "My brain is fried" can be restated as "The brain of me (not I) is fried." Consequently, Ryan Smith's posting "If the form "...the Christmas tree belonging to my wife and I." is valid, then why use "me and my wife's"? " is a good question, except that "the Christmas tree belonging to my wife and I" is not valid. It should read "the Christmas tree belonging to me (and whomever else with whom I choose to associate, be it my wife or a killer gerbil.)" When it comes to possessive pronouns, considerations of objectiveness and subjectiveness are no longer relevant. What is relevant is that "my" is acting as an adjective here. One would not say "me tree" unless one was a pirate. This is because "me" is a pronoun and "tree" is a noun: in normal English it makes little sense to write two consecutive words functioning as nouns ("zebra I" or "dictionary iceberg"). "My tree" is clearly correct. The redundancy of "my and my wife's tree" is obvious irksome to the ear. While correct, the proposed form "the tree of my wife and me" (or better yet, "the tree of me and my wife") sound better to me. Keep in mind that ". . . of me and my wife" is correct, and not "of I", because the preposition "of" requires an objective pronoun, not a subjective pronoun such as I and we. With regards to Moijelesuis's comments, me is how I refer to myself, but note that "I" refer to "me" (or myself, to emphasize the reflexivity of the situation.) "Me and my wife's house - the house belonging to us, me and my wife" is not a correct analogy. The house belonging to me requires a pronoun, so "us, me and my wife" is correct. My wife's (and the first person's in some form) house should read "my", because my is an adjective describing house, not a noun compounded to the house. Happy grammatical adventures, all!

Re: Is 'rave' a verb here?

CalifJim — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 07:53:31 GMT

This is an unusual use of to. It is used by analogy with sentences like The actors played to an enthusiastic crowd. The expression after to tells to whom the acting is directed, so to speak, while telling, more obliquely, how the action was received, i.e., enthusiastically. It is this more oblique connection that is emphasized in expressions like opened to rave reviews, which says that the opening was greeted by rave reviews or received with reviews which were extremely positive.

The play opened to rave reviews.

Another possible paraphrase is accompanied by, although this minimizes the idea that we are talking about a reaction to the situation.

The play opened accompanied by rave reviews.

Another example:

The graduates entered the hall to the strains of solemn music.

This says:

When the graduates entered the hall, [they were greeted by / they immediately heard / they were accompanied by] the strains of solemn music.

CJ

Re: Depiction of Mohammed

JCfromChicago — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 07:51:06 GMT

<BLOCKQUOTE><table width="85%"><tr><td class="txt4"><img src="/Themes/default/images/icon-quote.gif"> <strong>Anonymous wrote:</strong></td></tr><tr><td class="quoteTable"><table width="100%"><tr><td width="100%" valign="top" class="txt4">Because we're not interfering or making fun of any other religions' beliefs. That's all.</td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

<P>I know that is how you feel as an individual, but I must say your fellow muslims might be a bit more discriminatory towards other regions/religions. See: http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/ArabCartoons.htm </P>

<P> JANISSARY, I agree with Anonymous and his/her comparison is relevant to this discussion and your response to him/her did not justify the double standard that exists. </P>

<P> WAITI, I agree that my analogy sucks. However, it shows that the Muslim world can also create controversy. It cannot be up to you or I to determine that U.S. and Mohammed portrayals are "not measurable." I think they are, you do not. You claim a fundamental fact that is foreign to me and a lot of the non-Muslim world and expects us to respect it without question. Well being raised in a secular society, I found myself to question very much the validity of this fundamental fact. You provided a great amount of insight into why images of Mohammed are forbidden(thank you) but to me it sounds like a method to strive for Islam purity by elimindating all detractions from the original religion. I have no problem with that, Islam can declare anything to ensure its surivival and purity. I'll leave to Young Californian to discuss the religious aspect because he seems to be more articulate and concise on this subject. </P>

<P> What I do have a problem with is that Muslims expect the world to respect their fundamental ideals and yet cannot respect the importance of freedom of speech in secular societies. Muslims whom have immigrated to European and American countries have mostly enjoyed freedom to practice their religion. Does anyone else find the Muslim protests in the EU ironic? That is, them utilizing the very fundamental freedom that they are protesting against(if you consider freedom to protest to be equal to freedom of press). </P>

<P> I also hope that ALL OF YOU, regardless of religion, are not condoning the destruction of Danish embassies; it just further promotes the violent Muslim stereotype.</P>

<P>BTW, thank you moderator for fixing my previous post to make it more readable.</P>

Re: Hypercorrection

Sindy — Wed, 15 Jun 2005 10:54:53 GMT

Hypercorrection [From Greek hyper- (over) + correction.] is

-a construction or pronunciation produced by mistaken analogy with standard usage out of a desire to be correct, as in the substitution of I for me in on behalf of my parents and I.

-the production of such a construction or pronunciation.

- a grammatical, usage or pronuciation mistake made by `correcting'
something that's right to begin with. For example, use of the word whom in
"Whom shall I say is calling?"

- In grammar and usage, hypercorrections are the new mistakes we make in the effort to avoid old ones.

Hope that this will help you.

Re: To whom/whom

Casi — Mon, 17 Jan 2005 14:36:02 GMT

Don't worry about Thematic roles. We can get by without them. SMILE

I feel the more foreign their L1 to English, the more English learners tend to get stuck to the mud of grammar.

Well, now, isn't that honest to goodness truth? I agree. Moreover, and in my own case, learning Japanese grammar has been an uphill climb for me.

It may be one of the reasons why we Japanese are so bad in speaking skills despite the fact they relatively well know about English.

What I'm about to say might just rock your world. Have you ever consider that short-term memory and long-term memory have more to do with language acquisition than the L2 language itself? For example, if we have to pass a test, we memorize the rules and sadly enough, after the test is done, we seem to forget what we memorized. The information is no longer of any use to us. We use our short term memory in taking the test. But if the test covers a topic important to us, something we like, and maybe something might even major in at university, we try to understand how the rules work, and when we know how, we are better able to generate those rules ourselves, as in Math. We use our long-term memory. The information is important to us, we see a need in not just "learning" the rules but in "acquiring" the rules.

Language acquisition is bit like that. If there's a personal need for the information, the language tends to settle in long-term memory, and if there isn't a personal need for the information, then it settles in short-term memory.

Now, let's go one step further. Let's bring that analogy to the foreground of culture. What if, and this is purely hypothetical, short-term memory processing is more predominant than long-term memory processing in some cultures, and say, in some individuals, as well. In those cultures/people, short-term memory would be quite the efficient system, more so than long-term memory, specifically for processing non-exceptional rule-orientated information (i.e., Math and Science). Short-term memory would be the primary or dominant processor.

Given its architecture, though, it wouldn't be as efficient in processing systems that generate exceptions. That is, exceptions don't fit into the neatly braided structure, so they are teated as additions and sent off to a new area within the short-term memory. They're not treated as part of the system, they're teated as adjunctive knowledge. And trying to marry that knowledge with the system's knowledge results in, you got it, a head-ache. So, in brief, if we (that's you, me, and anyone else) are having difficulty learning a language, no matter the degree of our tenacity, our apparent inability to pick it up as quickly as we acquire other things, may have more to do with how we, ourselves, process information than how that information is fundamentally structured. And the only solution, I see, would be to generate what's possible (non-exceptional rule-orientated information), and to avoid trying to generate the exceptions by memorizing phrases and sentences, which in the end, reminds us that we don't own the language, and that give us grief. Well, at least, me, that is.

Do you feel any essential difference between in the action of "give" in "I gave money to my brother" and that of "donate" in "I donated money to the church"?

Yes, I do. When I donate money to someone, that someone is the recipient of my gift. They benefit from my gift. If I were to incorporate the IO, it would mean the money is the recipient. That's why 1) sounds odd:

1) *I donated Paco to money.
2) I donated money to Paco.

With "give", there isn't a recipient role. There's a goal:

3) I gave Paco money.
4) I gave money to Paco.

The money moved towards Paco. He is, in fact the recipient of the money, but more so the the goal of my giving. You see, "give" implies a reciprocal relationship, whereas "donate" does not. If you donate money to the church, the church is not going to reciprocate that gift in like form.

Does that help?

Re: Kinds Of

jack112 — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 09:53:11 GMT

Is that any better, Jack?

Yes, thank you very much. Your XYZ analogy is very useful.

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1994_01_24_thenewrepublic.html
1. To whom I say: Maven, shmaven! [Kibbitzers] and [nudniks] is more like it. (What's the subject and what is the verb for this sentence? How come 'is' is not 'are'?)

Thanks.

Re: How would you pronounce these foreign names?

Mister Micawber — Sun, 31 Oct 2004 22:36:49 GMT

Hi Demicjusz (whom I call 'Demi' not because I thought you were female, but because the combination of vowels in your suffix are difficult to remember and copy down),

No excuses, no analogies-- I just incorporate what sounds I seem to remember about some foreign languages of which these might be examples, and plunge in. 'Genre' is English, retaining (to a varying degree) its French pronunciation, so that is general knowledge. I have no precedents to rely on for my Chinese pronunciation; I have a little for my Germanic, hence the 'Ã¼' in '-bruk'. I use that knowledge if I have it.

Also, I don't have a full set of IPA symbols, which I would dearly love to find somewhere. Any sources?