Understanding and Managing Resistance to Organisational Change

Understanding and Managing Resistance to Organisational Change Introduction In the ever changing dynamic world, change is inevitable. Businesses have to be adjusted with the changing environment. Change in a business is a gradual process that must be well planned. The management should be actively involved in the change process since support is required from all corners.Advertising We will write a custom critical writing sample on Understanding and Managing Resistance to Organisational Change specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More When an organization or a country at large, wants to make a change in the way things are done then the start point is understanding the need that require a change. People are not willing to change, they tend to be in a state of inertia; however if well implemented then it can be a smooth transition. Change in organizations is greatly favoured by the mode of organizational culture, if a company has a freelance culture; this is a culture that embraces a system that the employee s feel free to air their views to the higher leadership, then change can be smoothly implemented. In large organizations, there can be a division into various departments and the departments are supposed to face a certain area; the same departments can be undergoing varying changes. As much as there are departmental meetings, and departments are supposed to come up with their own way of doing things, there are meeting with the larger managements that are not restricted to the team managers alone. Views from all are weighed equally and no one is supposed to be seen as the sole holder of wisdom when a change policy is being discussed. Views from all stake holders must be considered. Though decisions in this type of organizations take a long period of time, in most cases they make informed decisions. They are firms that embrace change and keep changing gradually. Innovations in the organizations are seen as the order of the day and entrants are highly encouraged to be innovative and em brace change. This paper discusses how to manage change effectively. Change The world is undergoing different transition; these translations require organisations to align themselves with the changes in the world. Change can be to improve the current conditions, take a complete strategy or adopt a different way of doing things. Change management is a process where the management learn, understand, and critically think about alterations they are supposed to make in an organization.Advertising Looking for critical writing on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More However, for an effective change process, change should not be imposed to employees but they should be involved in the change system. When undertaking a change, the employees are the immediate people who will be affected and thus they need to be engaged from the earliest stage. To remain competitive in the changing environment, there is need to a dopt new mechanisms which ensure that a business is up to the task with the changing environments. When a business has taken the path of change, there are mechanisms that must be adopted for a smooth transition from the traditional method, of doing thing to a new mechanism. This takes the form of psychological needs, technical expertise, and structure of a business, suppliers and other stakeholders. To undertake this task, the management need to do their homework well for a smooth ride. The power of inertia will act negatively to the management since people generally do not want to be moved from their areas of comfort to adopt a change. This is where the need for a psychological approach is required. Objectives of a change management program Change is taken for different reasons; each reason has some objectives that it aims at meeting; the universal objectives are; Improve current working condition and strategies Adopt a different way of doing things Make new combinations of resour ces in an organization Adopt new technology Change of business, target market, production formulae, management, job schedules, and job description among others Have a different human resource management system, computer system among others Change process Before a company adopt a new system of doing things, there is need to appreciate that the new way can only succeed if the employees are positive about the change. This calls for a gradual way process of implementing the change. The organizational culture is one of the factors that can affect the change negatively or positively. The change agents should understand this well before implementing the change program. Generally a change follows the following procedure. Problem identification and analysis This is where the agents of change realize that there are / is some process that has to be made. After this there is the looking for the probable solution to the problem that must be alighted with the mission and vision of the organizati on. The staffs that will be affected as well as the entire team should be given the detailed analysis of what the organization want to do.Advertising We will write a custom critical writing sample on Understanding and Managing Resistance to Organisational Change specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More At this stage the management brain storms the effect of the program with the employees and let the employees learn how they will be affected. If there is any learning needed it is done at this stage. Generally to have a job well-done, it is of great importance that people involved start from the beginning. Change management is not an exemption. In this stage, a good context of the problem is grasped. It is only after getting the correct understanding of the problem that he/she can make a good decision. Pilot study There is always no guarantee that the new system is going to be more effective than the old system, thus there is the need for the system to be run as a pilot study alongside the old system. This also offers the employees the time to have a hand on experience on the new system. They learn more about it and may even improve on it. If the program is seen as a better one, then the final stage is done. In this stage the manager should gather all relevant data and facts. It is from the facts and data that he develops various alternatives of choices that can be used to solve the problem at hand. The statistics will also be the ones that will support the final decision. There are various methods of collecting data; they include researching, brainstorming, and experimentation. It is the manager’s duty to choose the right method to adopt because different problems call for different methods. Depending on the problem, the people to be consulted differ. However, an effective manager should ensure that he/she consults those who matter and those who know. Consultation assists in making a more informed decision and as sists in generating more alternatives of choice. Their opinions and viewpoints should be considered in the final decision making, but the manager should always keep in mind that it is his/her responsibility to come up with the right decision. Choosing the best alternative After taking time and pondering over the issues (time taken depends on the urgency of the decision on the right change to be adopted), he/she chooses and implements the best alternative. At the initial stage a lot of support of the decision is required to ensure that the whole organization or the departments concerned have adopted it effectively.Advertising Looking for critical writing on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More It is not always that a decision made bring the expected results; thus feedback from the people on the ground and the general performance of the business should be sorted, so as areas that need improvement are recognized. In-case an area that needs improvement has been recognized, it should be addressed appropriately Full adoption, control, and monitoring At this stage, all things are alighted to follow the new system and the old one is switched off. All the employees are supposed to adopt the system. Improvement of the system is the major thing that follows this. Manager’s role in change Management Leaders are the people who are mandated with the task of pioneering a business to its desired objectives. In transitional period the leaders is the one who guides subordinates to the desired path. They jointly make rules and policies to be followed in attaining the goals. The role of the leader in this case is to oversee the performance of the roles of subordinates and giving guid ance in various areas. Change needs to be planned at all times when it is being implemented and conducted in such a way that it will be accepted in the business. The role of the leader in such case is the change agent. His (charisma) is put to test. He is supposed to guide his subordinate in a way that will inspire them and give intellectual stimulation. He will consider what is referred to as individualized consideration, where by the focus will be on making each individual in the business comfortable with the change and be able to contribute to decisions as expected. One of the major hindrances of change is organizational culture. A manager when pioneering a company from one wave of leadership to another should first of all understand the culture of the company. The use of opinion leaders is another way that a manager can use. Change is inevitable however it is one of the things that need to be planned by the concerned change agents since human being repel change; but when well de veloped and implemented it is adopted freely. Major barriers to an effective change system The first step in successful business change is to identify the communication channels to use in coaching employees. This can be through brainstorming where challenges facing the business can be identified. Such challenges can be obtained through reviewing the day to day activities of the business. Some questions may serve as a guideline, these include: Have employees been provided with a good working environment? Are they happy with what they are doing? Has the business been able to satisfy all the clients? Is proper information provided to all stakeholders? Is there good flow of conversations? Four communication weaknesses or barriers at any company are overload of messages, failure to share information among major stakeholders, failure to include employees in decision making processes, and personal attributes. Employees are given many instructions and they are not given room to practice the m nor to show their expertise. Communication means more than just giving out messages; it involves speaking, listening, sending, and receiving messages. In communication, listening is the key to success and most of the time listening gets people into problems because they do not practice it. For business communication to be successful, listening has to be proficient. Listening simply means holding back one’s judgment and allowing answers to come from outside. Sharing of important information is poor and most of the time it is withheld from the staff. The top managers are responsible to make different ideas and views concerning the development of the organization which may be influenced by their knowledge and culture. If incompetent decisions are made effecting a change is a hard task. Good communications will assisting employees embrace change effectively, transition period will also be reduced and efficient. Change and Organizational culture Organisational culture is a set o f belief that exists in an organization and determines how the employees interact with each other as well as how the workers respond to a certain situation. Culture of an organisation determines how employees are going to perceive change. The culture like any other society defines issues and expected response to them. It is worth saying that the culture is not written down somewhere but is exists and controls the behaviour of the organization. There are some values that the organization holds, and for one to be seen as a â€Å"compliant† member of the larger group, you need to act in line with the expectation. As individuals we have our personality that is different from others, the same happens with other organizations; they have an organizational personality that is can be termed to as the organizational culture. An organisation which has a freelance culture adopts change more easily than one with a power culture. A certain language is developed, signs and symbols start def ining situation in the organization. As much as there is no set way of punishing those who don’t act in line, with the culture, it is self reinforcing. The culture after it has developed is very hard to change. The entire entity seems to have deep roots in the culture and anybody who goes against is seen as an outcast and don’t interact smoothly with the other colleagues. There are different issues of organizational culture and have different effects on the leadership of the organization as well as well as the conduct of the employee (Jones 12). Eight steps to successful change by John P Kotters Increase urgency This is involving all the people affected by a change in understanding the current position and the need for change. The management should let their employees understand how the change will affect them. One of the barriers to an effective change is negative perception of employees. The perception is brought about by lack of people understanding of change effect s. Build the guiding team Depending with the kind of change to be implemented, management should develop a team of change agents. They are people who should be well informed about the change to occur and used to train others on the way forward. They are opinion leaders. The most effective people for this task are leaders in departments. Get the vision right This is the stage where objectives and timeframes for change are set and discussed with the people who will be affected by the change to occur in a business. Objectives should be attainable. Communicate for buy-in This is the most important stage where there is communication to employees on the change. It is the time for training of the new way to employees. An effective communication strategy should be prepared to be proactive. This is a plan that is prepared after defining a business’s success and getting solution from the listening activities. Things to be included in the plan includes: taking employees to seminars that cover topics such as customer care, organizing get together between employers and employees, rewarding employees, holding regular meetings, including major stakeholders in business decision, assurance to personal service, among others. This plan does not concentrate in solving past troubles but in laying down a good foundation that guarantees business future success. A communication plan should take into consideration the availability of resources and whether the business aims at a long term or short term objective. Once a communication plan has been prepared, the company now focuses on its implementation. The expected result should be kept in mind and the main constitute of the plan reviewed to make sure they are in line with the expected result. The implementation process should involve as many people as possible but it should have one person who is answerable to it. Empower action This is the stage where practical change is undertaken although operated with the traditional syste m. This stage assists in polishing any issues which may have been ignored in the initial stage. Employees learn more about the new system and its operations. Create short-term wins This is timely evaluations of the system to ensure that it is efficient and can replace the old system. There is no need to wait for long periods for results but can even be done on daily basis. Dont let up This is polishing any deficits recognised as the new system is undertaken. This is support from all angles where the system is made more understandable to the users. At the same time polishing of areas and people who have not grasped the system well is done. Make change stick Monitoring and sticking to change. This is where the old system is forgotten and focus is put on the new system. Those people who are repelling the new system are expelled from a company and those entering it will only hear of the old system as some stories of the company (Kotter 57-78). Conclusion In the ever changing environment , change is inevitable. Business processes need to be adjusted with the changing environment. Change is a gradual process that must be well planned. Management should be actively involved in the change process since support is required from all corners. The main objective in a change management process is to facilitate better methods of doings things for a cost effective business. For an effective change, employees should be involved right from the start. They should understand how the change is going to affect their employment; this is through training and good leadership. Leaders are the people who are mandated with the task of pioneering a business to its desired objectives. In transitional period the leader is the one who guides subordinates to the desired path. They jointly make rules and policies to be followed in attaining the goals. One of the major barriers of change is communication barrier and organisational culture. Jones, Helen. Managing Change. Businessdate 11.1 (2003 ): 1. MasterFILE Premier. EBSCO. Web. Kotter, John P. Leading change: Why transformation efforts fail. Harvard Business Review, 73(2), 59. 1995. Retrieved from ABI/INFORM Complete. (Document ID: 4470386).

Compare abd contrast Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Compare abd contrast - Essay Example ference in the way these people eat, drink, dress, hang out, meet with new and known people, and bury their known ones as well as their day-to-day activities which vary a great deal when one thinks of them in a broader context. Hence the comparison holds solid ground due to the fact that these people, both from the American nation and the Saudi Arabian territories known how distinct and different they are from each other and it is good to know one’s strengths and weaknesses beforehand. The similarities exist within their nationalism and the attitude with which both the societies echo their voices in favor of the patriotism myth. Religion is pretty intrinsic to a culture of a society and in broader sense to a country where its different people carry out their rituals and activities in accordance with the customs and traditions as dictated by their respective religions. Same is the case for the two countries under study here which are basically being compared. United States is a much more developed nation that Saudi Arabia while the latter is an oil-rich state and fundamentally more than 90% of its inhabitants are pre-dominantly Muslims. While the super power nation of the world is more or less comprised of nearly all ethnicities that are found elsewhere, where one can find blacks known as the Afro Americans, the Asians consisting of Indians and Pakistanis mainly and so on and so forth. On the whole, United States of America has a lot of diversity has far as its single basic culture identification is concerned and hence the people obviously practice different religions in accordance with their beliefs and con victions. This paper discusses the comparison between America and Saudi Arabia in terms of their cultural values and religious bases. If one looks at the American distribution of people who have religion apart from that of Christianity, one finds that around 2% of them are Jews, 0.5% are Muslims while similar is the ratio for Buddhists. This accounts for the

Heat transfer by convection Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Heat transfer by convection - Essay Example A square cavity was used whereby its bottom and top walls were insulated. One of the side walls was presumed cold while the other side hot. Alumina/water nanofluid was used as the working fluid. It was concluded that using different thermophysical models might lead to opposite trend estimations for Nusselt number especially in high solid volume fractions. Effects of inclination angle (between 00 and 1200) of a square cavity filled with Cu/water nanofluid on heat transfer (Abu-Nada and Oztop). The boundary conditions of both experiments were similar. Different water based nanofluids containing Cu, Ag, CuO, Al2O3 and TiO2 nanoparticles were placed in a cavity with volume fraction up to 20%. One side of the walls was heated using heater mounted on the wall; cavity angle varied between 00 and 900 (Ogut). Increased concentration increases heat transfer rate. Average Nusselt number has a high sensitivity to viscosity compared to the thermal conductivity at high Rayleigh numbers; suitable v iscosity model should be selected (SAEED ZEINALI HERIS, Masoumeh Borhani Pour, Omid Mahian, Somchai Wongwises, 2014). Flow of Cu, Al2O3, and TiO2 nanoparticles is suspended in water in a cavity where top and bottom walls are insulated; right wall is kept cold while the left wall is subjected to the periodic heat flux. Use of Cu and TiO2 with volume fractions up to 20% leads to maximum and minimum heat removal from heat source respectively (Ghasemi and Aminossadati). Flow of Cu/water nanofluid (volume fractions up to 5%) in a square cavity and the bottom subjected to constant heat flux while cooling is conducted by entering a nanofluid flow from the left wall and exiting from the right wall (Shahi et al). It was concluded that an increase in the volume fraction increased the average Nusselt number in the cavity. Lin and Voili simulated the effects of particles size on natural convection flow of Al2O3/water nanofluid with volume fraction up to 5% in square cavity

Create a Popular Culture Artifact Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Create a Popular Culture Artifact - Assignment Example I would like to incorporate some popular culture elements in my website. As I said, I would include the shopping option using virtual shelves and windows displaying costumes that the e-consumer would like to buy after going through the catalogue and put into his shopping cart. He would be able to pay online using his credit card or any payment website like AlertPay or Pay Pal. Second, I would like to include the option of chat. The consumers will be able to have an online chat with the designers and other fashion-savvy consumers. I will also include blogs from the visitors of the website along with news about the upcoming events in the fashion industry. The website will have animations and colorful layout. I would also add the option of joining a favorite designers’ group at facebook by providing a link to the facebook page where the e-consumers would be able to join that group, become a fan of a specific designer, comment on his designed accessories, and view his collection. The visitors will be able to contact a designer through my website and place orders by explaining what type of costumes or accessories they want. I will include videos and podcasts about the fashion shows and events happening in the fashion industry. People will be able to download these videos and podcasts onto their media players. I will also give space to fashion advertisements and sponsors that will help people further explore the fashion world. I will be using Frontpage for basic programming along with EZGenerator website building software to make the best use of website templates that would help me incorporate all the popular culture elements I have mentioned above. I would take help from softwares like CoffeeCup, Ewisoft Website Builder, EasyWebEditor and Adobe Dreamweaver to make my website attractive and interesting to visit. I would like to incorporate beautifully created and colorful website icons in my

Nuclear Iran Essay -- Foreign Policy

Nuclear Iran Should United States confront Iran for its behaviors for enriching uranium? For decades the extremist Islamic regime of Iran has been the number one enemy of U.S and its allies particularly, Israel. Also, Iran has been supporting the terrorist groups such as Taliban and Al Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan to kill American troops. Moreover, during the past ten years Iran has been working to become nuclear which can allow them to make nuclear bombs and weapons to wipe Israel off the map which they have claimed before they would without any hesitation. While, Iranian government insists that it has no intentions of expanding its nuclear program to make weapons and it is only for peaceful purposes, ayatollah Mohammad Baqer Kharrazi, secretary general of Iranian Hezbollah, stated, â€Å"We are able to produce atomic bombs, and we will do that(1).† So, there is a great conflict between Middle Eastern countries and Arab countries that are U.S’s allies such as Israel and Saudi Ara bia to let Iran become a nuclear power, and a greater conflict inside U.S because of the two invasion wars that have cost trillions and thousands of lives. Therefore, there are two sides to this important issue that whether U.S should let Iran to become nuclear or shall we air strike them and maybe cause a war that we will not be able to afford? Even though Iran persists that there are no harmful intentions and they are only enriching uranium to help their technology and hospitals, I believe U.S and its allies should stand up united to Iran and stop giving them any freebies and confront them militarily because of Iran’s behavior in the past and present; also, proving themselves as not trustworthy to U.S. At first, beginning with the opposition side of this... ...eneral of Iranian Hezbollah, February 14, 2005, written for CQ Researcher, cqpress.com, the Iranian leadership is far more dangerous than most Westerners realize, argues a longtime Iran hawk. 2. Senator Byrd, Robert, chairman, senate appropriations committee. Written for CQ Researcher, November 2007, arguing with President Bush’s administration over attacking Iran. 3. Bakhtiari, Farshid, a young computer salesman, February. Quoted in Kim Murphy, â€Å" Iran reformist want U.S. to tone down†, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 11,2007, p.A1 4. Rubin, Michael, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute. Rubin argues that the sanctions won’t be effective due to Iran’s history of untrustworthiness, cqpress.com, pro/con part, pp3, November 11, 2007. 5. Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, the 62nd U.N. assembly, unmistakably referring to the United States, sep. 26,2007, www.president.it/en/.

Complexity of Poetry Essay

Poetry is a way for the reader to openly interpret a poem in almost any way they see fit. Because there is so much freedom of interpretation with poetry, there leaves a lot of room for discussion and opposition. Billy Collin’s poem, â€Å"Introduction to Poetry†, breaks down the basic ways for interpreting and understanding a poem. In summary, he explains that the reader cannot focus on trying to figure out one specific meaning of a poem, but instead, try to piece together small parts to understand a deeper meaning. Collin’s rules on how to interpret a poem can be applied to Hughes’s poem about a young student writing a poem for homework. Instead of looking at Hughes’s poem as a whole, the reader can better understand it by breaking it down and figuring out why each line is important and how it ties together with the poem as a whole. Understanding Collins rules to interpret a poem, help the reader decipher Hughes poem on a deeper, more academic level. Langston Hughes’s poem explains how a black, twenty two year old man and the rest of his white classmates are given an assignment to write a paper. The narrator, who is also the student, explains his thoughts about the assignment and how him being the only colored one in his class might be reflected on his grade on the assignment. At the beginning of the poem, he explains how he has to get to class everyday by traveling across some of the â€Å"better† parts of town. The student goes on to explain how even though he is colored, he likes the same things and has the same wants as everyone else. He states that he is no different than the rest of his class and that he too has knowledge to share. By stating this, the student is expressing to the reader how he thinks him and the instructor are equal. In the last few lines the student writes, â€Å"As I learn from you, / I guess you learn from me† (37-38). This explains how even though their skin color and age is different they are still able to learn from each other. The student has a somewhat optimistic and confident tone throughout the poem. He is aware of his capabilities and knows that he can be just as successful as anyone else. Billy Collins â€Å"Introduction to Poetry† explains how whenever people analyze a poem they do not try to find the true message of it. By writing, â€Å"But all they want to do / is tie the poem to a chair with rope / and torture a confession out of it,† explains how the majority of people are lazy and want everything handed to them effortlessly (12-14). This last stanza explains how some people look at poems from one point of view and expect the meaning of the poem to be written out for them. The author is stating that people should look at the poem from different angles just as one would look at the world from a color slide. He tries to explain to the reader that if one were to interpret the poem from a whole new approach, then they could find a deeper meaning than just the surface meaning. After reading Collins â€Å"Introduction to Poetry†, the reader should have a better sense of how to interpret Hughes’s poem. Throughout the first part of Hughes’s poem the reader may think all of the characters background information including his address, age, and hometown is pointless. After reading an entire stanza about this â€Å"pointless† information the reader may try to stop understanding the poem before they even finish it. If the reader uses Collins instructions about analyzing a poem, they may find that all of this â€Å"pointless† information is actually important and helps contribute to the characters feelings of insecurity. Collins poem explains that not all poems have one specific answer or meaning the writer is trying to get across. Keeping this idea in mind, the reader may realize that Hughes’s poem, in fact, does not state an answer or solution to the characters mixed feelings. Although both of these poems leave room the readers own special interpretation, there is a basic meaning and idea to each one. Both of these poems fit well together because Collin’s thoughts and ideas can be directly applied when reading Hughes’s poem. The poems are an effective example of how even though a poem may seem short and simple, there is usually a deeper and greater meaning beneath the surface.

English Language History, Definition, and Examples

The term  English  is derived from  Anglisc, the  speech  of the Angles—one of the three Germanic tribes that invaded England during the fifth century. The English language is the primary language of several countries, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and many of its former colonies, and the United States, and the second language in a number of multilingual countries, including India, Singapore, and the Philippines. Its an official language in several African countries as well, such as Liberia, Nigeria, and South Africa, but is spoken worldwide in more than 100. Its learned around the world by children in school as a foreign language and often becomes a common denominator between people of different nationalities when they meet while traveling, doing business, or in other contexts. According to Christine Kenneally in her book The First Word, Today there are about 6,000 languages in the world, and half of the worlds population speaks only 10 of them. English is the single most dominant of these 10. British colonialism initiated the spread of English across the globe; it has been spoken nearly everywhere and has become even more prevalent since World War II, with the global reach of American power. The influence of the English language has also spread globally through American pop culture, music, movies, advertising, and TV shows. Spoken Worldwide About 20 percent of the worlds population speaks English as a first or secondary language, about 1.5 billion people. If you include people who use it, that brings the estimate up to more than one-fourth of the world, or more than 2 billion of the worlds 7.7 billion people, as of 2019. Only about 360 million people speak it as their first language, though. There are now estimated to be 1.5 billion English speakers globally: 375 million who speak English as their first language, 375 million as a second language and 750 million who speak English as a foreign language, noted Tony Reilly in English Changes Lives in Britains  The Sunday Times. He continued: The elites of Egypt, Syria and Lebanon have dumped French in favour of English. India has reversed its former campaign against the language of its colonial rulers, and millions of Indian parents are now enrolling their children in English-language schools—in recognition of the importance of English for social mobility. Since 2005, India has had the world’s largest English-speaking population, with far many more people using the language than before independence. Rwanda, in a move dictated as much by regional economics as post-genocide politics, has decreed a wholesale switch to English as its medium of instruction. And China is about to launch a colossal programme to tackle one of the few remaining obstacles to its breakneck economic expansion: a paucity of English-speakers. English has official or special status in at least 75 countries with a combined population of two billion people. It is estimated that one out of four people worldwide speak English with some degree of competence. When English Was First Spoken English derived from a  Proto-Indo-European  language spoken by nomads wandering Europe about 5,000 years ago. German also came from this language. English is conventionally divided into three major historical periods:  Old English,  Middle English, and  Modern English. Old English was brought to the British Isles by Germanic peoples: the Jutes, Saxons, and Angles, starting in 449. With the establishment of centers of learning in Winchester, histories being written, and the translation of important Latin texts into West Saxons dialect in 800s, the dialect spoken there became the official Old English. Adopted words came from Scandinavian languages. Evolution of the English Language In the Norman conquest in 1066, the Norman French dialect (which was French with a Germanic influence) arrived in Britain. The center of learning gradually moved from Winchester to London, so Old English no longer dominated.  Norman French, spoken by the aristocracy, and Old English, spoken by the common people, intermingled over time to become Middle English. By the 1200s, about 10,000 French words had been incorporated into English. Some words served as replacements for the English words, and others coexisted with slightly changed meanings. Spellings changed as people with the Norman French background wrote down the English words as they sounded. Other changes include the loss of gender for nouns, some word forms (called inflections), the silent e, and the coalescing of a more constrained word order. Chaucer wrote in Middle English in the late 1300s. Latin (church, courts), French, and English were widely used in Britain at the time, though English still had many regional dialects that caused some confusion. Structural and grammatical changes happened as well. Charles Barber points out in The English Language: A Historical Introduction: One of the major  syntactic  changes in the  English language  since Anglo-Saxon times has been the disappearance of the S[ubject]-O[bject]-V[erb] and V[erb]-S[ubject]-O[bject] types of  word-order, and the establishment of the  S[ubject]-V[erb]-O[bject]  type as normal. The S-O-V type disappeared in the early Middle Ages, and the V-S-O type was rare after the middle of the seventeenth century. V-S word-order does indeed still exist in English as a less common variant, as in Down the road came a whole crowd of children, but the full V-S-O type hardly occurs today.   Usage of Modern English Many scholars consider the early Modern English period to have begun about 1500. During the Renaissance, English incorporated many words from Latin via French, from classical Latin (not just church Latin), and Greek. The King James Bible (1611) and works of William Shakespeare are considered in Modern English. A major evolution in the language, ending the early subportion of the Modern English period, was when the pronunciation of long vowels changed. Its called the Great Vowel Shift  and is considered to have happened from the 1400s through the 1750s or so. For example, a Middle English long high vowel such as e eventually changed to a Modern English long  i, and a Middle English long oo evolved into a Modern English ou sound. Long mid- and low-vowels changed as well, such as a long a evolving to a Modern English long e  and an ah sound changing to the long a sound. So to clarify, the term Modern English refers more to the relative stasis of its pronunciation, grammar, and spelling than it has anything to do with current vocabulary or slang, which is always changing. Todays English English is ever adopting new words from other languages (350 languages, according to David Crystal in English as a Global Language). About three-quarters of its words come from Greek and Latin, but, as Ammon Shea points out in Bad English: A  History of Linguistic Aggravation, it is certainly not a Romance language, it is a Germanic one. Evidence of this may be found in the fact that it is quite easy to create a sentence without words of Latin origin, but pretty much impossible to make one that has no words from Old English. With so many sources behind its evolution, English is malleable, with words also being invented regularly as well. Robert Burchfield, in The English Language, calls the language a fleet of juggernaut trucks that goes on regardless. No form of linguistic engineering and no amount of linguistic legislation will prevent the myriads of change that lie ahead. Additions to the Dictionary After a certain amount of usage, dictionary editors decide whether a new word has enough staying power to add it to the dictionary. Merriam-Webster notes that its editors spend an hour or two daily reading a cross-section of material looking for new words, new meanings to old words, new forms, new spellings, and the like. The words are logged into a database with their context for documentation and further analysis. Before being added to the dictionary, a new word or change to an existing word must have a considerable amount of use over time in a variety of types of publications and/or media (widespread use, not just in jargon). The Oxford English Dictionary has a similar process for its 250 lexicographers and editors who are continually researching and updating language information.   Varieties of English Just as the United States has regional dialects and there are differences in pronunciation and words in British and American English, the language  has local varieties around the world:  African-American Vernacular English, American,  British, Canadian, Caribbean, Chicano, Chinese, Euro-English, Hinglish, Indian, Irish, Nigerian, Nonstandard English, Pakistani,  Scottish, Singapore,  Standard American, Standard British, Standard English,  and  Zimbabwean.