Women's health Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Women's health - Essay Example This paper discusses some diets that are being increasingly recommended for weight loss by the dieticians and nutritionists: The founder of Atkins diet – Dr. Robert C. Atkins says that he has proposed â€Å"the amazing no-hunger weight-loss plan that has helped millions lose weight and keep it off.† (Kennedy, n.d.). Atkins diet has been designed in such a manner that it follows the â€Å"ketosis principle† in that it burns excess body fat. This is achieved by taking-in food that has a highly suppressed amount of carbohydrate while that of protein is enlarged. Human body develops excess fat as a result of high insulin levels that are produced by the excessive in-take of carbohydrates. The high amount of insulin in the blood raises sugar levels considerably and the unused energy is stored as fat, ultimately contributing to the development of obesity. With reduced carbohydrate intake, the body relies on secondary source of energy i.e. stored fat. Within a couple of days, results show up in the form of weight loss and improved body figure. Atkins diet comprises four stages, namely the â€Å"Induction stage, Ongoing weight loss stage, Pre-maintenance stage, and Maintenance stage.† (Kennedy, n.d.). The Induction stage lasts for 2 weeks and foods to be taken are defined at the start of the stage. The person can take absolutely none of a food that was not included in the plan in the start. However, once the Induction stage is over, a little leniency is offered in terms of leverage of food. In-take of carbohydrate increases in successive stages. The metabolism ultimately gets attuned to function in a way that regulates the weight despite normal in-take of carbohydrates and fat. South Beach diet was introduced by Dr. Agatston in the 1990s, who wanted a change in the conventional low-fat diet plans so as to make them more satisfying to the food cravings. (Real Women’s Fitness, 2010). South Beach Diet focuses upon

Theories of Reading Essay Example for Free

Theories of Reading Essay So far, there are three main theories which explain the nature of learning to read. First, the traditional theory, or bottom up processing, which focused on the printed form of a text. (2) the cognitive view, or top-down processing enhanced the role of background knowledge in addition to what appeared on the printed page. Third, the metacognitive view, which is based on the control and manipulation that a reader can have on the act of comprehending a text, and thus, emphasizes the involvement of the reader’s thinking about what he is doing while reading. 1. The traditional bottom-up view The traditional bottom-up approach to reading was influenced by behaviorist psychology of the 1950s, which claimed learning was based upon â€Å"habit formation, brought about by the repeated association of a stimulus with a response† and language learning was characterized as a â€Å"response system that humans acquire through automatic conditioning processes,† where â€Å"some patterns of language are reinforced (rewarded) and others are not,† and â€Å"only those patterns reinforced by the community of language users will persist† (Omaggio 1993, 45-46). Behaviorism became the basis of the audio-lingual method, which sought to form second language â€Å"habits† through drilling, repetition, and error correction. Today, the main method associated with the bottom-up approach to reading is known asphonics, which requires the learner to match letters with sounds in a defined sequence. According to this view, reading is a linear process by which readers decode a text word by word, linking the words into phrases and then sentences (Gray and Rogers, cited in Kucer 1987). According to Samuels and Kamil (1988: 25), the emphasis on behaviorism treated reading as a word-recognition response to the stimuli of the printed words, where â€Å"little attempt was made to explain what went on within the recesses of the mind that allowed the human to make sense of the printed page†. In other words, textual comprehension involves adding the meanings of words to get the meanings of clauses (Anderson 1994). These lower level skills are connected to the visual  stimulus, or print, and are consequently concerned with recognizing and recalling. Like the audio-lingual teaching method, phonics emphasizes on repetition and on drills using the sounds that make up words. Information is received and processed beginning with the smallest sound units, and proceeded to letter blends, words, phrases, and sentences. Thus, novice readers acquire a set of hierarchically ordered sub-skills that sequentially build toward comprehension ability. Having mastered these skills, readers are viewed as experts who comprehend what they read. The bottom-up model describes information flow as a series of stages that transforms the input and passes it to the next stage without any feedback or possibility of later stages of the process influencing earlier stages (Stanovich, 1980). In other words, language is viewed as a code and the reader’s main task is to identify graphemes and convert them into phonemes. Consequently, readers are regarded as passive recipients of information in the text. Meaning resides in the text and the reader has to reproduce it. The ESL and EFL textbooks influenced by this perspective include exercises that focus on literal comprehension and give little or no importance to the reader’s knowledge or experience with the subject matter, and the only interaction is with the basic building blocks of sounds and words. Most activities are based on recognition and recall of lexical and grammatical forms with an emphasis on the perceptual and decoding dimension. This model of reading has almost always been under attack as being insufficient and defective for the main reason that it relies on the formal features of the language, mainly words and structure. Although it is possible to accept this rejection for the fact that there is over-reliance on structure in this view, it must be confessed that knowledge of linguistic features is also necessary for comprehension to take place. To counteract over-reliance on form in the traditional view of reading, the cognitive view was introduced 2. The Cognitive View (top-down processing) In the 1960s a paradigm shift occurred in the cognitive sciences. Behaviorism became somewhat discredited as the new cognitive theory represented the mind’s innate capacity for learning, which gave new explanatory power to how humans acquired their first language; this also had a tremendous impact on the field of ESL/EFL as psycholinguists explained â€Å"how such internal representations of the foreign language develop within the learner’s mind† (Omaggio, 1993: 57). Ausubel (cited in Omaggio, 1993: 58), made an important distinction between meaningful learning and rote learning. An example of rote learning is simply memorizing lists of isolated words or rules in a new language, where the information becomes temporary and subject to loss. Meaningful learning, on the other hand, occurs when new information is presented in a relevant context and is related to what the learner already knows, so that it can be easily integrated into one’s existing cognitive structure. A learning that is not meaningful will not become permanent. This emphasis on meaning eventually informed the top-down approach to L2 learning, and in the 1960s and 1970s there was an explosion of teaching methods and activities that strongly considered the experience and knowledge of the learner. These new cognitive and top-down processing approaches revolutionized the conception of the way students learn to read (Smith, 1994). In this view, reading is not just extracting meaning from a text but a process of connecting information in the text with the knowledge the reader brings to the act of reading. In this sense, reading is a dialogue between the reader and the text which involves an active cognitive process in which the reader’s background knowledge plays a key role in the creation of meaning (Tierney and Pearson, 1994). Reading is not a passive mechanical activity but purposeful and rational, dependent on the prior knowledge and expectations of the reader. It is not merely a matter of decoding print to sound but also a matter of making sense of written language (Smith, 1994: 2). In short, reading is a psycholinguistic guessing game, a process in which readers sample the text, make hypotheses, confirm or reject them, make new hypotheses, and so forth. Schema Theory Another theory closely related to top-down processing called schema theory also had a major impact on reading instruction. It describes in detail how the background knowledge of the learner interacts with the reading task and illustrates how a student’s knowledge and previous experience with the world is crucial to deciphering a text. The ability to use this schemata, or background knowledge, plays a fundamental role in one’s trial to comprehend a text. Schema theory is based on the notion that past experiences lead to the creation of mental frameworks that help a reader make sense of new experiences. Smith (1994: 14) callsschemes the â€Å"extensive representations of more general patterns or regularities that occur in our experience†. For instance one’s generic scheme of an airplane will allow him to make sense of airplane he has not previously flied with. This means that past experiences will be related to new experiences, which may include the knowledge of â€Å"objects, situations, and events as well as knowledge of procedures for retrieving, organizing and interpreting information† (Kucer, 1987: 31). Anderson (1994: 469) presents research showing that recall of information in a text is affected by the reader’s schemata and explains that â€Å"a reader comprehends a message when he is able to bring to mind a schema that gives account of the objects and events described in the message†. Comprehension is the process of â€Å"activating or constructing a schema that provides a coherent explanation of objects and events mentioned in a discourse† (Anderson, 1994: 473). For Anderson and Pearson (1988: 38), comprehension is the interaction between old and new information. They emphasize: â€Å"To say that one has comprehended a text is to say that she has found a mental ‘home’ for the information in the text, or else that she has modified an existing mental home in order to accommodate that new information†. Therefore, a learner’s schemata will restructure itself to accommodate new information as that information is added to the system (Omaggio, 1993) Content and formal schemata Schema theorists differentiate formal schemata (knowledge about the structure of a text) from content schemata (knowledge about the subject matter of a text), and a reader’s prior knowledge of both schemata enables him to predict events and meaning as well as to infer meaning from a wider context. Formal schemata refers to the way that texts differ from one another; for example, a reading text could be a fictional work, a letter to the editor, or a scientific essay, and each genre will have a different structural organization. Knowledge of these genre structures can aid reading comprehension, as it gives readers a basis for predicting what a text will be like (Smith 1994). For example, if a reader knows that the typical format of a research article consists of sections subtitled Introduction, Theoretical Basis, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion, that knowledge will facilitate their interaction with the article and boost  comprehension. On the other hand, if he is not familiar with this formal schema, teaching it to him could lead to improved reading ability with lasting and beneficial effects. Content schemata refers to the message of the text. One’s familiarity with the content will make more productive and efficient. As Anderson (1994: 469) explains, â€Å"a reader comprehends a message when he is able to bring to mind a schema that gives account of the objects and events described in the message†. Activating and building schemata  Since the reader plays a fundamental role in the construction of meaning, his age, gender, experience, and culture are important considerations for teachers who want to select readings that will motivate their students. Anderson (1994) notes that when readers cannot locate a schema that fits a text, they may find it incomprehensible. In some cases readers may not have a schema that is significant to the text, or they may need help to activate the pertinent schema to be able to comprehend the text. In such cases it may not be possible for the reader to understand the text, and the teacher must be ready to engage in â€Å"building new background knowledge as well as activating existing background knowledge† (Carrell, 1988: 248). In parallel with this, Bransford (1994) points out that difficulties in comprehension may be caused by the lack of background knowledge presumed by the text, and he sees the responsibility of instructors as being twofold: to activate preexisting schemata and to help students to integrate isolated â€Å"parcels† of knowledge into a schema or to build a new one. If the texts to be read contain a cultural context that is different from the student’s, the issues of formal and content schemata become even more important. McDonough (1995), explains that, to a higher extent, this is the reason why ESL and EFL students find it difficult to read in a second language with texts that contain cultural assumptions of the target culture. They may lack the culture-specific background knowledge necessary to process the text in a top-down manner. His reports on several studies demonstrate how people outside a given culture may misunderstand events with unfamiliar cultural connotations. (Students from different cultural backgrounds taking standardized tests which assume common schemata for will also face the same problem. ) Applying schema theory to L2 reading Based on the aforementioned ideas, it is obvious that in order to teach reading effectively, the teacher’s role to activate and build schemata is paramount. To achieve it, he should in advance select texts that are relevant to the students’ needs, preferences, individual differences, and cultures in order to provide meaningful texts so the students understand the message, which entails activating existing schemata and helping build new schemata. Then, after selecting the text, he needs to do the following three stages of activities to activate and build the students’ schemata. (1) Pre-reading activities, in which the teacher have students think, write, and discuss everything they know about the topic, employing techniques such as prediction, semantic mapping, and reconciled reading. The objective is to make sure that students have the relevant schema for understanding the text. (2)During-reading activities, in which the teacher guide and monitor the interaction between the reader and the text. One important skill teachers can impart at this stage is note-taking, which allows students to compile new vocabulary and important information and details, and to summarize information and record their reactions and opinions. (3)Post-reading activities which facilitate the chance to evaluate students’ adequacy of interpretation, while bearing in mind that accuracy is relative and that â€Å"readership† must be respected as long as the writer’s intentions are addressed (Tierney and Pearson, 1994). Post-reading activities focus on a wide range of questions that allow for different interpretations. While schema activation and building can occur in all three stages, the pre-reading stage deserves special attention since it is here, during the students’ initial contact with the text, where their schemata will be activated. Pre-reading activities Pre-reading activities is aimed to activate existing schemata, build new schemata, and provide information to the teacher about what the students know. In their report on the positive effect various pre-reading activities had on reading comprehension, Chen and Graves (1995, 664), define them as â€Å"devices for bridging the gap between the text’s content and the reader’s schemata†. Various activities and materials can help the teacher introduce key vocabulary and reinforce concept association to activate both formal and content schemata. Formal schemata will be activated by employing devices such as advance organizers and overviews to draw attention to the structure of a text. The content schemata will be activated by using various pre-reading activities to help learners brainstorm and predict how the information fits in with their previous knowledge. One of the most important pre-reading activities proposed by schematic theorists isprediction. According to Goodman (1988: 16), prediction is important because â€Å"the brain is always anticipating and predicting as it seeks order and significance in sensory inputs†. Smith (1994, 19–20) defines prediction as â€Å"the prior elimination of unlikely alternatives†. According to him, predictions are questions the readers ask the world and comprehension is receiving the answers. He emphasizes that it is prediction that makes skilled readers effective when reading texts that contain familiar subject matter. â€Å"Prediction brings potential meaning to texts, reducing ambiguity and eliminating in advance irrelevant alternatives. Thus, we are able to generate comprehensible experience from inert pages of print† (Smith 1994, 18). Another pre-reading activity is previewing, where students look at titles, headings, andpictures, and read the first few paragraphs and the last paragraph; these activities can then help students understand what the text is about by activating their formal and content schemata and making them familiar with the topic before they begin reading in earnest. Semantic mapping is another pre-reading activity that Carrell, Pharis, and Liberto (1989: 651) describe as a useful way to pre-teach vocabulary and to â€Å"provide the teacher with an assessment of the students’ prior knowledge or schema availability on the topic†. This activity asks students to brainstorm about the reading topic as the information is displayed on a graphic â€Å"map. † As students make associations, the map becomes a thorough summary of the concepts and vocabulary that they will encounter in the reading. It can also help build schemata and vocabulary that students do not yet possess. Again, it is important to know something about the students so the selected texts contain the type of material that is likely to be familiar and interesting to them. Reutzel (1985) proposes another type of pre-reading activity called reconciled readinglesson, which reverses the sequence presented by many textbooks where the text is followed by questions. Instead, the teacher develops pre-reading questions from the questions that appear at the end of the reading. Smith (1994) criticizes comprehension exercises presented at the end of a reading because they are like memory tests. He argues that using prior knowledge efficiently contributes to fluent readers, and he believes that there is a reciprocal relationship between visual and non-visual (prior knowledge) information; the more the readers have of the latter, the less they need of the former. Although not all the post-reading questions can be easily turned into pre-reading ones, this strategy can be invaluable to activate schemata. 3. The metacognitive view According to Block (1992), there is now no more debate on â€Å"whether reading is a bottom-up, language-based process or a top-down, knowledge-based process. † It is also no more problematic to accept the influence of background knowledge on readers. Research has gone even further to define the control executed by readers on their trial to understand a text. This control is what Block has referred to as meta-cognition. In the context of reading, meta-cognition involves thinking about what one is doing while reading. Strategic readers do not only sample the text, make hypotheses, confirm or reject them, and make new hypotheses while reading. They also involve many activities along the process of reading, whose stages can be divided into three, i. e.before reading, while reading, and after reading. The activities the readers involve before reading are to identify the purpose of the reading, identify the form or type of the text. In the second stage (while reading), they think about the general character and features of the form or type of the text—such as trying to locate a topic sentence and follow supporting details toward a conclusion, project the author’s purpose for writing the text, choose, scan, or read in detail, make continuous predictions about what will occur next based on information obtained earlier, prior knowledge, and conclusions obtained within the previous stages. Finally, in the last stage, they attempt to form a summary, conclude, or make inference of what was read. Guidelines for Effective Teaching of Reading After discussing the ideas and concepts presented in the three reading theories, we are now on the position of arranging tips and guidelines for implementing a theory of reading which will help to develop our learner’s abilities. These tips are arranged in three sections which are parallel with the three consecutive reading stages: before reading, during reading, and after reading. Pre-Reading Tips Before the actual act of reading a text begins, some points should be regarded in order to make the process of reading more comprehensible. First, teachers need to make sure that the texts to read contain words and grammatical structures familiar to the learners. If the texts contain unfamiliar vocabulary, teachers can introduce key vocabulary in pre-reading activities that focus on language awareness, such as finding synonyms, antonyms, derivatives, or associated words. Second, teachers should make sure that the topics of texts chosen are in accordance with the age range, interests, sex, and background culture of the students for whom they are intended. If they are not, it is necessary to provide the necessary background information to the reader to facilitate comprehension. This activity could be carried out by letting the class members brainstorm ideas about the meaning of a title or an illustration and discuss what they know. The followings are some activities teacher can use during the pre-reading stage. These activities will not take a very long time to carry out. However, they are very effective in overcoming the common urge to start reading a text closely right away from the beginning. 1. Teacher-directed pre-reading, in which some key vocabulary, ideas in the text, and the type of the text are explained. In this approach the teacher directly explains the information the students will need, including key concepts, important vocabulary, and appropriate conceptual framework. The text types are also necessary to introduce because texts may take on different forms and hold certain pieces of information in different places. The students’ familiarity with the types of the text they are reading will develop their understanding of the layout of the material. Such familiarity will, in turn, enable them to focus more deeply on the parts that are more densely compacted with information. Even paying attention to the year of publication of a text, if applicable, may aid the reader in presuppositions about the text as can glancing at the name of the author. 1. Interactive activities, in which the teacher leads a discussion in which he/she draws out the information students already have and interjects additional information deemed necessary  to an understanding of the text to be read. Moreover, the teacher can make explicit links between prior knowledge and important information in the text. 1. Reflective activities, in which students are guided to make themselves aware of the purpose and goal for reading a certain piece of written material. At the beginning stages this can be done by the teacher, but as the reader becomes more mature this strategy can be left to the readers. For instance, the students may be guided to ask themselves,â€Å"Why am I reading this text? What do I want to do or know after finished reading this? Being aware of their purpose and goal to read, later—in during reading activities—they can determine what skill(s) to employ: skimming, scanning, reading for details, or critical reading During-reading tips The activities carried out in during-reading stage consist of taking notes, reacting, predicting, selecting significant information, questioning the writer’s position, evaluating, and placing a text within one’s own experience. These processes may be the most complex to develop in a classroom setting, the reason being that in English reading classes most attention is often paid to dictionaries, the text, and the teacher. The followings are tips that encourage active reading. Practicing them will help the students be active readers. 1. Making predictions: The students should be taught to be on the watch to predict what is going to happen next in the text to be able to integrate and combine what has come with what is to come. 2. Making selections: Readers who are more proficient read selectively, continually making decisions about their reading. 3. Integrating prior knowledge: The schemata that have been activated in the pre-reading section should be called upon to facilitate comprehension. 4. Skipping insignificant parts: A good reader will concentrate on significant pieces of information while skipping insignificant pieces. 5. Re-reading: Students should be encouraged to become sensitive to the effect of reading on their comprehension. 6. Making use of context or guessing: Students should not be encouraged to define and understand every single unknown word in a text. Instead they should learn to make use of context to guess the meaning of unknown words. 7. Breaking words into their component parts: To keep the process of comprehension ongoing, efficient readers analyze unfamiliar words by break them into their affixes or bases. These parts can help them guess the meaning of a word. 8. Reading in chunks: To ensure reading speed, students should get used to reading groups of words together. This act will also enhance comprehension by focusing on groups of meaning-conveying symbols simultaneously. 9. Pausing: Good readers will pause at certain places while reading a text to absorb and internalize the material being read and sort out information. 10. Paraphrasing: While reading texts, it may be necessary to paraphrase and interpret texts sub-vocally in order to verify what was comprehended. 11. Monitoring: Good readers monitor their understanding to evaluate whether the text, or the reading of it, is meeting their goals. After-reading tips 12. Post-reading activities basically depend on the purpose of reading and the type of information extracted from the text. Barnett (1988) states that post-reading exercises first check students’ comprehension and then lead students to a deeper analysis of the text. In the real world the purpose of reading is not to memorize an author’s point of view or to summarize text content, but rather to see into another mind, or to engage new information with what one already knows. Group discussion will help students focus on information they did not comprehend, or did comprehend correctly. Accordingly, attention will be focused on processes that lead to comprehension or miscomprehension. 13. Generally speaking, post-reading can take the form of these various activities: (1) discussing the text: written/oral, (2) summarizing: written/oral, (3) making questions: written/oral, (3) answering questions: written/oral, (4) filling in forms and charts (5) writing reading logs (6) completing a text, (7) listening to or reading other related materials, and (7) role-playing. RESEARCHED BY: FARNAIDA L. ABUBACAR, MAT-ENGLISHJULY 01, 2011.

Catcher In The Rye :: essays research papers

  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Holden Caulfield is a sixteen-year-old prep school student who has flunked out of school the week before Christmas. Several days before he's expected home for Christmas vacation, he leaves school, planning to spend some time on his own in New York City where he lives.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Though Holden is friendly with many people at school, and though he has several friends in New York, he's constantly lonesome and in need of someone who will sympathize with his feelings of alienation. The person Holden feels closest to is his ten-year-old sister, Phoebe, but he can't call her for fear of letting his parents know he has left school. He spends his time with a variety of people, but he can't make meaningful contact with any of them.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  After a day of this futility, he sneaks into his home to see Phoebe, but she disappoints him by being annoyed at his being expelled from still another school. Holden decides that the only solution to his overwhelming problem is to run away and establish a new identity as a deaf mute who will not need to communicate with anyone. On the verge of a nervous collapse, Holden changes his mind and decides to rejoin his family. He then enters a hospital or rest home not far from Hollywood, California, and he is telling us his story while in this institution.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   At the novel's close, Holden isn't sure whether he'll be able to handle things better when he leaves the institution, and he's sorry he told his story at all.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Catcher in the Rye is a rich psychological portrait of a boy who's frightened at the prospect of growing up, a boy who has few of the tools necessary to face the world on his own.

How ICT has helped people with special needs Essay

Introduction In this essay I will be analysing how the usage of ICT helps people with special needs. There are 3 types of special needs. What is a physical disability? The term â€Å"disability†, as it is applied to humans, refers to any condition that impedes the completion of daily tasks using traditional methods. National governments and global humanitarian agencies have narrowed this definition for their own purposes, only pledging aid to those with specific disabilities of a certain severity What is a sensory disability? Is when someone is you are Deaf, visually impaired, hearing impaired or have a significant combination of hearing and sight loss. What is a learning difficulty? A disorder in basic psychological processes involved in understanding or using language, spoken or written, that may manifest itself in an imperfect ability to listen, think, speak, read, write, spell or use mathematical calculations. The term includes conditions such as perceptual disability, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia. How ICT is used to help those with Learning Difficulties Multimedia software Helps people who find it hard to concentrate. It uses different forms of media, pictures, sound clips and video to keep the user interested. Specialised educational software There’s a huge range of software available to help people struggling with different subjects and useful tips e. g. help with reading and basic maths. Touch screens These are useful for people who finding using a mouse or any other sort of input device difficult. Spell checkers Can help people with dyslexia who finds it difficult to spell; you can set it up so check your words as you type. How ICT is used to help those with visual difficulties. People with hearing difficulties can still use most computer functions normally. One thing you can do though is set up the computer to display visual icons rather than using sound. DVDs are much better than videotapes as you can use the subtitle facilities. Many recent communication technologies like e-mail and texting work really well for people with hearing. Being able to set mobile phones to vibrate or flash is also very useful. Text phones are an older system that replaces a standard telephone with a keyboard and a screen. What you type on both screens- a bit like a chat-room. Both sender and receiver need a text phone machine. If a person has problem seeing or is completely blind they would be categorized as having a Visual disabilities. If a person cannot read small type then there are a lot of magnification devices out on the market, which fit almost anything from phones to monitors. For example a person with low vision would use a keyboard with extra large print. If a person is completely blind then they would use a speech recognition device. Changing the screen settings can help. You can also change the colour scheme, screen resolution and fonts to make it clearer. For the blind, special hardware is available- Braille keyboards make it easy to type, and describe what’s on the screen. Screen readers are pieces of software that use speech synthesis technology to read out and describe what’s on the screen. Text-To-Speech. A text-to-speech is designed for individuals with reading difficulties. It works by simultaneously highlights and reading aloud of text. There are other devices for people with reading disabilities such as spellcheckers How ICT is used to help those with hearing difficulties. Speech Recognition There are two uses for speech recognition these are Dictation and Computer control. Speech recognition is one of the desired assistive technology systems. People believe speech recognition is a natural and easy method of accessing the computer A dyslexic person who has problems with writing English would use the speech recognition to make sure their English is correct. A person planning to use speech recognition must be aware he is required to go through a training session. This is a one-time reading when the user must read aloud an excerpt of text that is displayed during the training feature of the speech recognition application. Depending upon the speech recognition software, there is several enrolment training excerpts to select from. A person planning to use speech recognition must be aware he is required to go through an enrolment (training) session. This is a one-time reading when the user must read aloud an excerpt of text that is displayed during the training feature of the speech recognition application. (For an example of enrolment text, please see What Is Speech Recognition) Depending upon the speech recognition software, there is several enrolment training excerpts to select from. Personal Communicator tool for Learning and Communicating Sign Language. The Personal Communicator creates a common ground for communicating in Sign Language. Using hypermedia technology, the Personal Communicator is a user-friendly program that brings sign language communication capabilities to the desktop and notebook computer. With more than 2500 digital video signs and 4500 English words. The Personal Communicator can be a useful tool in communication, education, and other environments. If someone is not able to use a mouse because they haven’t got full control in there hands then there are mouse alternatives to help people with the disabilities. How ICT can help those with Physical Difficulties Many people find mice difficult to use- there are many alternatives such as tracker balls, Joy Sticks and tough pads. People with limited hand movement can get specially designed keyboards to suit there needs. Voice Recognition software can be used by people with little or no hand movement. It lets you speak to the computer to navigate menus and do what you want it to do. If you are severely limited, you can use a computer with switches carefully arranged- Stephen Hawking is a famous example of someone who uses ICT in this way. For people with limited mobility, environmental control systems can be set up to atomically open, close curtains, turn lights on and off, operate heaters and so on. How ICT can help those with Language difficulties Dictionary software can help you to quickly translate individual words. Learning software can help you practise an unfamiliar language with exercises where you can hear phrases spoken. It can also record your voice and play it back to see how well you have done. Most word processing packages can check your spelling in different languages and check that your sentences make sense. In conclusion it is fair to say that people with disabilities might need variations on the standard equipment to use computers, but once they have these mentioned above I am sure it can change the way they live.

The Savage Beast†Man’s Inherent Primitivism as Shown in Lord of the Flies

Ray Penman Oct 3, 2010 The Savage Beast— Man’s Inherent Primitivism as Shown in Lord of the Flies A running theme in Lord of the Flies is that man is savage at heart, always ultimately reverting back to an evil and primitive nature. The cycle of man's rise to power, or righteousness, and his inevitable fall from grace is an important point that book proves again and again, often comparing man with characters from the Bible to give a more vivid picture of his descent.Lord of the Flies symbolizes this fall in different manners, ranging from the illustration of the mentality of actual primitive man to the reflections of a corrupt seaman in purgatory. The novel is the story of a group of boys of different backgrounds who are marooned on an unknown island when their plane crashes. As the boys try to organize and formulate a plan to get rescued, they begin to separate and as a result of the dissension a band of savage tribal hunters is formed. Eventually the boys lose all sen se of home and civilization. â€Å"The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away. (Golding, Ch 5) When the confusion finally leads to a manhunt, the reader realizes that despite the strong sense of British character and civility that has been instilled in the youth throughout their lives, the boys have backpedalled and shown the underlying savage side existent in all humans The novel shows the reader how easy it is to revert back to the evil nature inherent in man: if a group of well-conditioned school boys can ultimately wind up committing various extreme travesties, one can imagine what adults, leaders of society, are capable of doing under the pressures of trying to maintain world relations.Lord of the Flies’ apprehension of evil is such that it touches the nerve of contemporary horror as no English novel of its time has done; it takes us, through symbolism, into a world of active, proliferating evil which is seen, one feels, as the natural condition of man and which is bound to remind the reader of the vilest manifestations of Nazi regression. In the novel, Simon is a peaceful lad who tries to show the boys that there is no monster on the island except the fears that the boys have. Simon tries to state the truth: â€Å"Maybe there is a beast†¦What I mean is†¦ maybe it's only us. † (Golding, Ch 5) When he makes this revelation, he is ridiculed. This is an uncanny parallel to the misunderstanding that Christ had to deal with throughout his life. Later in the story, the savage hunters are chasing a pig. Once they kill the pig, they put its head on a stick and Simon experiences an epiphany. As Simon rushes to the campfire to tell the boys of his discovery, he is hit in the side with a spear, his prophecy rejected and the word he wished to spread ignored.Simon falls to the ground dead and is described as beautiful and pure. The description of his death, the manner in which he died, and the cause for which he died ar e remarkably similar to the circumstances of Christ's life and ultimate demise. The major difference is that Christ died on the cross, while Simon was speared. However, a reader familiar with the Bible recalls that Christ was stabbed in the side with a spear before his crucifixion. When Piggy, the largest advocate of the law, is killed near the end of the book, the conch is broken.Until that point, the conch had been a way to control and pacify the crowd— only someone holding the conch may speak. When Jack and the boys have had enough of Ralph’s laws, the boys kill Piggy and shatter the conch. The law ceases to exist, though when the boys are rescued, the â€Å"game† ends and they are once again just bedraggled boys smeared in mud and blood on the shore. William Golding discusses man's capacity for fear and cowardice. In the novel, the boys on the island first encounter a natural fear of being stranded on an uncharted island without the counsel of adults.Once th e boys begin to organize and begin to feel more adult-like themselves, the fear of monsters takes over. It is understandable that boys ranging in ages from toddlers to young teenagers would have fears of monsters, especially when it is taken into consideration that the children are stranded on the island. The author wishes to show, however, that fear is an emotion that is instinctive and active in humans from the very beginnings of their lives.This revelation uncovers another weakness in man, supporting the idea or belief that man is pathetic and savage at the very core of his existence. Throughout the novel, there is a struggle for power between two groups. This struggle illustrates man's fear of losing control, which is another example of his selfishness and weakness. The fear of monsters is natural; the fear of losing power is inherited. The author uses these vices to prove the point that any type of uncontrolled fear contributes to man's instability and will ultimately lead to h is demise spiritually and perhaps even physically.The author chooses to use an island as the setting for the majority of the story. The island is an important symbol in Lord of the Flies. It suggests the isolation of man in a frightening and mysterious cosmos. The island in the novel is an actual island, but it’s more than just that. It is a microcosm of life itself, the adult world, and the human struggle with his own loneliness. Man grows more savage at heart as he evolves because of his cowardice and his quest for power.The novel proves this by throwing together opposing forces into a situation that dowses them with power struggles and frightening situations. By comparing mankind in general to Biblical characters in similar scenarios, the novel provides images of the darker side of man. This darker side of man's nature inevitably wins and man is proven to be a pathetic race that refuses to accept responsibility for its shortcomings.Bibliography: Golding, William. Lord of t he Flies. 1952. 13. 3 (1952): 1-248. Print.

In What Ways Do you Consider Decline and Fall To Be A Comic Novel Essays

In What Ways Do you Consider Decline and Fall To Be A Comic Novel Essays In What Ways Do you Consider Decline and Fall To Be A Comic Novel Essay In What Ways Do you Consider Decline and Fall To Be A Comic Novel Essay Essay Topic: Literature Evelyn Waugh has wrote the book Decline and Fall as a statement of what he felt was wrong with the English society in the 1920s. This is reflected through his book using a very dry and ironic humour. The novel is very much satirical, with the main character, Paul Pennyfather, satirising the English culture. In order to show this, I have chosen two events in the book, and I will focus on how Evelyn Waugh makes them comic. The two I have chosen are the sports day and the restoration of Kings Thursday house. To set the scene, in the first part of the novel, Paul Pennyfather had been dismissed from the Oxford University he had been studying at. He needed a job, so he went to work as a teacher at a public school. Unfortunately, he was sent to work at the awful llanabba Castle School. The teachers were all frauds, and their teaching methods were chaotic. The school is generally a disaster. This is Waughs way of saying the schooling system in England is a shambles. One of the events that is particularly funny is the sports day. The first humour comes in the ironic speech made by Dr Fagan, where he says During the last 14 years at this school, there have been six sports days and two concerts, all of which have been utterly disastrous. This is again commenting on how bad the school is. The teachers start talking about how well presented this years sports day is. Then, quite ironically Paul comments Nothing seems to have been done about marking out the ground. Imagine the ensuing chaos as boys ran frantically round, with the teachers setting their own race distances! As for the newly delivered hurdles, they were only Five feet high and were painted green with spikes. So the doctor, in a very sarcastic manner says It seems they have sent the wrong sort. The sports day starts to turn into a disaster. The Doctor says he wants there to be some style involved in the event. When he asks for a starting pistol, Philbrick pulls out his enormous revolver. He then says careful, its loaded. This made me laugh, what sort of school sports day uses a loaded revolver as a starting pistol? The then band arrives. Described by Waugh as men of revolting appearance. He said they were like a loping tread of wolves and ape-like. Philbrick then says Loonies! This is where I shoot. The teachers then find out that it is the band the school have booked. This was very ironic. Dr Fagans insulting comment regarding the bands Welsh nationality, then began insulting the bands nationality, they mate freely with the sheep. Further enhances the comedy of the situation. As the first race started, Mr Prendergast managed to shoot one of the boys in the foot. This was very dry humour coming into play as the book says clearly Tangent was not going to win. This was yet another sarcastic yet very funny line. The second part I will be focusing on is the re-building of Kings Thursday House. Margot Beste-Chetwynde owned the country house and it was in desperate need of restoration. It had not been changed for hundreds of years, but it was still a remarkable house. The house went up for sale and it was bought by Lord Pastmasters sister-in-law. The first ironic humour to hit this chapter it when Waugh is describing how Margot visited the house she owned for the first and only time. She said it was worse than I thought, whilst all the villagers who lived nearby almost worshipped the house. This shows a definite class distinction in Waughs writing. Margot decided to re-store the house, so she employed an architect who was given the instruction Something clean and square. So basically Margot wanted to change everything good about the house. The comic part in this section of the book is the interview by a journalist, with the architect. He is criticising his own profession, by saying I dont think it is possible to make architecture beautiful. Pessimistically he says Man is never beautiful, He says. My impression of this man is a crazy pessimistic architect who is a failure. The journalist realises this and tries a different approach by asking how much he expects to earn out of the job. The man replies by saying fuel. This made me laugh because here is yet another aspect of English society that in Waughs mind is a failure art. The architect carries on being pessimistic by saying in a gloomy voice I suppose there will have to be a staircase, why cant people just stay in one place? He then has another dig at humans by saying that they dont stay still and work. Followed by another amusing comment Do dynamos require staircases? Do monkeys require houses? He then goes on about how the human race is immature, self-destructive and half-formed. I think the man fails to realise he is a human himself. He is the complete opposite of what an architect should be full of ideas and full of life. Whereas this man is a sarcastic, unhappy and uncreative architect. This is what makes him such a failure, and ultimately what makes his character funny. Waugh has therefore displayed this event in an ironically amusing context. Although I have only focused on two parts in the novel, the same theme runs throughout the book. Waugh makes it clear that he thinks the English culture is a complete shambles. He has taken some quite serious events in Paul Pennyfathers life, and managed to make them interesting, and above all very amusing. In my view, Evelyn Waugh is a great comic novelist.

Death For Your Country Essays - France, Battle Of The Somme

Death For Your Country Essays - France, Battle Of The Somme Death for Your Country Is it glorious to die for your country?.... This question has been posed to many young people about to embark on war although the answer has usually been 'yes' in response to their country due mainly to the fact that the government instills it in the people of the country to support one's country and one way is to send young abled bodied men into the army. If you were one individual that was not in favour of fighting for your country you would surely become an outcast by the countries people. To avoid ridicule and becoming outcasted by the people living around you, you would join the army just in the thought that you were obligated to for the sole sake of your country. Such thoughts were reinforced by the government promotion of propaganda. Glorifying death is not needed to be taught and should be up to the sole individual. School systems should teach an unbiased point of view of war to enable the child to make their own decision to fight for one's country. Within the education system it was instructed to the teachers to teach the children at a young age during the brink of war to instill that their the life of the country and for them to defend their country against the enemy. Teachers showed being in a army was representing honour and the pride of the country. Guilt was laid on the students who showed rebellion by the teacher. Many times the teacher would try to show a soldier that looks happy and content trying to represent being a soldier makes you happy and content. Many young inexperienced soldiers were sent to training camps near the battle fields that they would soon be sent to fight, for their country and their life. The training camps were situated on similar enviroments that resembled the battle fields of where the fighting would take place. Reinforced displine to the young and ignorant men. Trench warfare is when many soldiers of opposing countries fight against each other across a vast desolate, dirt covered land, and the only sense of cover was to crouch in a usually water logged trench. The sense of death engulfed your very soul, the conezt bombardment of shells echo in your mind long after it had ceased. On the Western front conditions were horrible to say the least, stench of death remained coneztly in the air, bodies riddled with bullet wounds lay across the bottoms of the trenches, dismembered bodies scattered across the landscape and the sounds of agonizing and dying men echo across the battle grounds. Very limited rations offering very little in flavour was the only food available to the soldiers. Often raining, it caused muddy, damp conditions. The men staying in a trench filled with water and muddy conditions often caused such diseases as trench foot and trench mouth. Contagious diseases were spread quickly. Lack of cleaniness gave many soldiers lice and rats would run through the trenches feeding on the garbage and human wastes. Thousands of soldiers would line up under the cover of their trenches for a stretch of miles and wait for the leading officer to give the signal for the charge. When the signal was given the thousands of soldiers would all try to run across the no-man's land to attempt the breach of the enemies trench. This charge would be under conezt machine gun fire and mortar shelling by the enemy. These kind of attacks usually failed maily due to the fact the odds were already stacked against the attacking party. The diezces the charging men had to run to get to the enemies trench was far enough for the enemy to use it's conezt shelling and it's machine gun fire to dwindle the attacking army significant enough for the attacking army to retreat. Counter attacks were quickly attempted after the attacks. The counter attacks were similiar to the actual attacks except the difference was that the counter attack involved the killing of the retreating of the enemy instead of attacking someone under the cover of the trench. During the war all soldiers were affected either physically or phsycologically. Shell shock was an

Gravimetric Analysis Definition

Gravimetric Analysis Definition Gravimetric analysis is a collection of  quantitative analysis laboratory techniques  based on the measurement of an analytes mass. One example of a  gravimetric analysis technique  can be used to determine the amount of an ion in a solution by dissolving a known amount of a compound containing the ion in a solvent to separate the ion from its compound. The ion is then precipitated or evaporated out of solution and weighed. This form of gravimetric analysis is called precipitation gravimetry. Another form of gravimetric analysis is volatization gravimetry. In this technique, compounds in a mixture are separated by heating them to chemically decompose the specimen. Volatile compounds are vaporized and lost (or collected), leading to a measurable reduction on the mass of the solid or liquid sample. Precipitation Gravimetric Analysis Example In order for gravimetric analysis to be useful, certain conditions must be met: The ion of interest must fully precipitate from solution.The precipitate must be a pure compound.It must be possible to filter the precipitate. Of course, there is error in such an analysis! Perhaps not all of the ion will precipitate. They may be impurities collected during filtration. Some sample may be lost during the filtration process, either because it passes through the filter or else is not recovered from the filtration medium. As an example, silver, lead, or mercury may be used to determine chlorine because these metals for insoluble chloride. Sodium, on the other hand, forms a chloride that dissolves in water rather than precipitates. Steps of Gravimetric Analysis Careful measurements are necessary for this type of analysis. Its important to drive away any water that may be attracted to a compound. Place an unknown in a weigh bottle that has its lid cracked open. Dry the bottle and sample in an oven to remove water. Cool the sample in a desiccator.Indirectly weigh a mass of the unknown in a beaker.Dissolve the unknown to produce a solution.Add a precipitating agent to the solution. You may wish to heat the solution, as this increases the particle size of the precipitate, reducing loss during filtration. Heating the solution is called digestion.Use vacuum filtration to filter the solution.Dry and weigh the collected precipitate.Use stoichiometry based on the balanced chemical equation to find the mass of the ion of interest. Determine the mass percent of the analyte by dividing the mass of analyte by mass of unknown. For example, using silver to find an unknown chloride, a calculation might be: Mass of dry unknown chloride: 0.0984Mass of AgCl precipitate: 0.2290 Since one mole of AgCl contains one mole of Cl- ions: (0.2290 g AgCl)/(143.323 g/mol) 1.598 x 10-3 mol AgCl(1.598 x 10-3)x(35.453 g/mol Cl) 0.0566 g Cl (0.566 g Cl)/(0.0984 g sample) x 100% 57.57% Cl in unknown sample Note lead would have been another option for the analysis. However, if lead had been used, the calculation would have needed to account for the fact one mole of PbCl2 contains two moles of chloride. Also note, error would have been greater using lead because lead is not completely insoluble. A small quantity of chloride would have remained in solution instead of precipitating.

The Early Years Curriculum Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

The Early Years Curriculum - Research Paper Example Such childhood is viewed as necessary to provide the foundation for realizing children's abilities and talents as they grow up. The EYFS assures parents that their children achieve this goal. The EYFS undertakes several tasks in ensuring that the outcomes of Every Child Matters are achieved by setting the standards, providing for quality of opportunity, creating the framework for partnership working, improving quality and consistency, and laying a secure foundation for future learning (Statutory Framework 2008). Learning through EYFS is done through a principled approach which the following are embedded: a unique child, positive relationships, enabling environments, and learning and development. The observation on curriculum took place on Nov. 7, 2008 at Odessa Primary School while the other one was at Montessori Day Nursery which opened in 1998. It was noticed that both settings recognized the areas of learning and early learning goals of the EYFS which include personal, social, and emotional development, communication, language, and literacy, mathematics development, knowledge and understanding of the world, physical development, and creative development. However the delivery of these goals differed in the two observed settings, which will be mentioned in this paper. One of the underpinning policies of EYFS is "every child matters," which seemed to have been overlooked or neglected by the Montessori Day Nursery in t... y Nursery in that staff ignored other children who bullied others and threw objects on them, such as the incident in which one boy threw a metal car and hit another boy, to which a staff treated it as we don't hit our friends, which was contrary to her appeasement of the other child as it was an accident. Based on the observation, the Montessori Day Nursery did not seem to follow in practice the overarching aim of EYFS, which is to help young children achieve the five outcomes of Every Child Matters which include, staying safe. The bullied children seemed to experience lack of safety by the bullies, in which the staff tended to treat the situation lightly. Enjoying and achieving seems a lacking element in the setting, since there were plenty of distractions while the class teacher was reading a story, affecting the quality of the experience as well as other's desire on the activity. Most staff members ignored the children's bad behavior as if nothing happened, resulting in non-absorp tion and disturbance on the part of other children who were willing to listen and learn from the story. In fact, when the boy who hit another with a metal toy car was told we don't hit our friends, the teacher started to read the book again, in which the boy started to punch and push other children to which she did not pay attention and just carried on with the reading. When asked if she planned the activities in advance, the activity sheet shown did not match the actual activities conducted since according to the teacher, the activity sheet only served to guide her. The Montessori Day Nursery however heeded to the provision set by the EYFS in relation to housing young children of varying ages, from birth to the end of the academic years in which the child has his/her fifth birthday. The

Reflection on research interview schedule Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Reflection on research interview schedule - Essay Example I felt comfortable dealing with a semi-structured interview because it gives one freedom to modify questions to suit different contexts. In a structured interview, all respondents are strictly asked the same questions. Structured interviews are convenient when researching on highly professional research topics. The Gibbs reflection model was utilized to reflect on the interview (Van Audenhove, 2007). The research topic seemed to be very specific. The target population was limited to students pursuing the health promotion top-up degree. Proper preparation and implementation were essential for the successful conduction of this interview. Developing a good interview schedule was the main challenge. An appropriate manner was used in conducting the interview. Proper implementation of the interview was key to making the respondents comfortable. The use of prompts like ‘tell me more’ helped rip more information from the respondents. Interviewers projected a warm, kind and easy to talk to the character to the interviewees. Creating a conducive environment to conduct the interview contributed to the successful conduction of this interview (Seidman, 2012).   Creating the overall questions is the first step in designing an interview. The interviewer should ask him/herself, why am I doing this research? What are the students’ experiences on the health promotion top up degree? Then list the questions that cover the topic of study. After choosing the relevant questions, the interviewer can finally select an appropriate question format. When choosing a question format, it is important to ask open questions first. Starting an interview with personal questions can make the respondent feel uncomfortable and nervous. This way the respondent will not give accurate information (Carter and Mankoff, 2005). The results in terms of information derived from the respondents were

Ikea Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

Ikea - Research Paper Example According to a research made in 2008, the company has been considered as the largest furniture retailing firm in the world. Overtime, proportions of discretionary spending of consumers in most economies have increased with rise in per capita. Such changes in composition of consumers’ expenditure have helped to enhance revenues of comfort product producing companies like, IKEA (Peng, 2010). Even so, it is also true that since the global financial crisis, aggregate income generated from the retail sector in the international market has fallen due to recessionary trails in economies. A very strong rival of IKEA, MFI Group Limited (a furniture retailing firm in U.K.) was forced to shut down its business during such critical conditions. So, since 2008, IKEA is facing strategic issues in business. The aggregate sales of the firm were recorded as 20.9 billion in 2009 and annual growth was approximately 1.4% since then (IKEA Group, 2013c). Rather, due to financial crunches, IKEA had t o cut down almost 5000 jobs in 2009 (IKEA Group, 2013b). Thus, from the above analysis, it can be claimed that the company needs to frame appropriate productive strategies in business which will help it to expand the scope of business internationalization and increase revenue in the long run. The following context of the paper will study the strategic initiatives that are already undertaken by IKEA as well as suggest ways through which the company would be able to strategically grow in the long run (Twarowska and Kąkol, 2013). From the above context, it is evident that IKEA is facing problems since emergence of the financial crisis. The company lacks adequate manpower to enhance its overall productivity. Moreover, aggregate demand experienced in company’s domestic market has also fallen. This is evident from the annual report of the company. The gross revenue of IKEA was recorded as US$ 2583982 in 2012 and US$ 2406539 in 2011 (IKEA Group, 2013a). Even so, the liabilities in business

Charulatha Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Charulatha - Essay Example In the film, the heroine is portrayed as an intelligent woman who writes poetry. Her aesthetic sense of life is captured beautifully throughout the movie; but unfortunately, she becomes relegated to the life of a caged bird in her palatial house. In the opening sequence of the movie, we see Charulatha moves from one window to other to watch the activities of outside world, using opera glasses. The scene clearly shows how curious and keen she is to know the world beyond the walls of her house. This clearly marks a definite deviation from the concepts of upper-class women in the 19th century and the emergence of a modern woman. The utter lack of sensibility of the elite class towards their women is manifest throughout each thread of the masterly theme that weaves the plot of the story. Colonial India in the 19th century was trapped in a vicious hub enforced by religious superstitions and social obscurantism. A few Hindu priests, who had mean objectives, exercised an overwhelming influence on the minds of people. Idolatry and polytheism helped to reinforce their position. The British, who established their political control in India by the middle of the 18th century, were a bit reluctant to interfere in the religious and social affairs of the country due to political reasons as they feared antagonism. They estimated that a divided society would pose less threat to their domination. Still, the British influence on Indian society was tremendous. The trend, especially within the elite class, inclined towards an ardent drive for conforming to British norms.

Human Resource Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 6

Human Resource Management - Essay Example There is a whole list of factors that affect a further process of employees’ recruitment. (Ali 12) Current research indicates that the process of recruitment cannot be controlled by an organization. According to the recent research, the major factors that improve the performance of an organization include the following: The availability of manpower can affect the performance of an organization. If the company has a low supply of external sources, then it has to take time to prepare its own workforce. â€Å"This availability is present both within and outside the organization. Current research indicates that availability of the resources often serves to be an important factor of a successful recruitment process† (Rush 4). Labor Market often influences the recruiting work of the company. It means that if an excess of manpower exists, then an organization has the right to recruit additional notice boards. These boards are able to recruit additional applicants. There are frequent cases when the image of an employee can badly affect the performance of an organization. An employee’s bad image can also serve as a possible restriction for recruitment. It means that a company with a good representation has a greater chance to get and keep more workers than a company with a negative representation (Rush 23). Current research indicates that there is a whole list of various government regulations that prohibits discrimination. All these prohibitions have a direct impact on recruitment practices. Unions have an important role in the recruitment process. They often restrict management freedom of employees, thus affecting their performance within an organization. One of the aspects that matter is the accessibility of resources. This availability often influences the development of the economy. When the organization does not create new jobs, then it means that it has many

Charulatha Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Charulatha - Essay Example In the film, the heroine is portrayed as an intelligent woman who writes poetry. Her aesthetic sense of life is captured beautifully throughout the movie; but unfortunately, she becomes relegated to the life of a caged bird in her palatial house. In the opening sequence of the movie, we see Charulatha moves from one window to other to watch the activities of outside world, using opera glasses. The scene clearly shows how curious and keen she is to know the world beyond the walls of her house. This clearly marks a definite deviation from the concepts of upper-class women in the 19th century and the emergence of a modern woman. The utter lack of sensibility of the elite class towards their women is manifest throughout each thread of the masterly theme that weaves the plot of the story. Colonial India in the 19th century was trapped in a vicious hub enforced by religious superstitions and social obscurantism. A few Hindu priests, who had mean objectives, exercised an overwhelming influence on the minds of people. Idolatry and polytheism helped to reinforce their position. The British, who established their political control in India by the middle of the 18th century, were a bit reluctant to interfere in the religious and social affairs of the country due to political reasons as they feared antagonism. They estimated that a divided society would pose less threat to their domination. Still, the British influence on Indian society was tremendous. The trend, especially within the elite class, inclined towards an ardent drive for conforming to British norms.

Treatment Programs for Prison Inmates Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Treatment Programs for Prison Inmates - Essay Example The need for adequate treatment measures has been established. Finally various treatment measures that can be incorporated by authorities to ensure rehabilitation of inmates with addiction have been identified and evaluated. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-1V) refers to brain altering substances as 'substances' and to the related disorders as 'substance-related disorders'(1994, p174). The DSM - IV indicates that the term substance refers to a drug of abuse, a medication, or a toxin. The word substance is generally preferable to the word drug because the term drug refers to manufactured chemicals while many of the substances associated with abuse patterns occur naturally (opium) or are not meant for human consumption (phenyl). Here it is vital to differentiate between substance abuse and substance dependence. Substance dependence: This is loosely termed as addiction to alcohol as well as other addictive substances (such as opium, marijuana, cocaine etc). It is a reversible state and the person starts craving the substance under stress, life changes, or a low/depressed mood. Substance abuse: On the other hand, substance abuse is much more serious, wherein the individual becomes tolerant of the substance and needs an increasing amount to reach an inebriated state. An abuser will also face withdrawal symptoms in which state it becomes close to impossible to function normally in the absence of the substance. The life span of the typical addict is about 12 years shorter than the average citizen, and alcohol now ranks as the third major cause of death in the United States (Kaplan and Saddock, 1989, p. 391). Objectives This research has a two pronged objective: To study the link between criminal activity and substance abuse To examine the various treatment programs available for prison inmates with a history of alcohol and drug abuse Increasing crime rates, overpopulated prisons, and few measures taken towards the prevention of crime are major concerns over the world, particularly in countries such as the USA where the crime rate is significantly high. A large number of prison inmates are for the most part substance abusers and there is a close link between substance abuse and crime. In many instances, substance abuse can also be seen as the catalyst that triggers criminal activity. Keeping this in mind, controlling substance abuse in this group in an attempt to decrease crime rates would eventually bring about a significant social change. Identifying and implementing effective treatment programs for prison inmates is therefore a necessary and important step in the overall prevention of crime. Research design This is an exploratory study using an Ex-Post Facto Design. Literature Review Sarah Liriano and Malcolm Ramsay in 2000 attempted to measure prisoners' drug use prior to their prison term as a possible benchmark against which effectiveness of the Prison Service drugs strategy could be monitored. The data from the Criminality Survey showed that (73%) of respondents had used an illegal drug in the twelve months before

The HR Consultant Essay Example for Free

The HR Consultant Essay Introduction Texas Roadhouse is a chain restaurant throughout the United States. There are approximately 340 locations in over 46 states, and they are quickly expanding. Its menu specializes in steaks and ribs, as well as adding a western atmosphere for guests to enjoy. In the restaurant business, there are many different positions held by a variety of different people. There are cooks, dish washers, bus boys, hostesses, bartenders, servers, and also nightly management. On average each night, there are approximately 19 servers, 6 bus boys, 6 hostesses, 3 bartenders, and large amount of kitchen staff. All of these different positions are crucial in the nightly success of the company. Without any of these positions, the restaurant would not be able to run as smoothly. Objectives of The study In this report we are trying to find out the way to increase efficiency and effectiveness of the restaurant using five models:- 1) Self-Efficacy Model 2) LMX Model 3) Job Characteristics Model 4) Goal Setting Model Strategic Mapping Using Models Self-Efficacy Model The term self-efficacy is used to describe an individual’s perception of how competent they find themselves and their abilities to achieve complex tasks. People with strong self-efficacy are more likely to accept more responsibility and accept more challenging tasks. They also believe that no obstacles can get in the way from stopping them achieve their goals. Individuals with low self-efficacy are more apt to looking as difficult tasks as intimidating and do not believe they that are capable of achieving personal success. Overall, self-efficacy plays an important role in influencing the tasks that people perform and how well they perform them. The most important factor that is impacting through self-efficacy is persistence. This is found important because the higher the person perceives themselves on the scale, the more persistent that they will be with performing a complex task. Analysis and Recommendations as per Self Efficacy model Self-efficacy is something that is important in any organization. However, it is important at Texas Roadhouse to hire individuals who have a High level of self-efficacy so that employee perceives themselves capable of achieving many complex tasks. This could prove to be an issue within the organization because individuals could become bored or feel not challenged by the tasks designated in their position, which could lead to frustration for the employees and employer. Hence, Challenging tasks should be given to such individuals. 1) The individuals with moderate level of self-efficacy provides opportunity for the organization to designate tasks to that are challenging but also still attainable. It is good to hire large no. of employees in this category. There were three individuals who scored close to the lower end of the self-efficacy scale. 2) The individuals with low self-efficacy can pose a problem for Texas Roadhouse as they might hinder the productivity and success of the organization. Hence, in order to ensure more confident and driven individuals, Texas Roadhouse could moderately delegate more difficult tasks to these individuals in order to boost their confidence and the way they perceive themselves. Also, they could provide more positive feedback in their jobs and reinforce that the individual is doing well at their job. 2) Leader-Member Exchange The leader-member exchange (LMX) is a model that suggests that leaders develop different relationships with each of their subordinates through a series of work-related transactions. There are two important groups to consider that a subordinate may fall under depending on which phase they fit into. The in group is defined as a low number of subordinates with high LMX relationships. The second group is known as the out group in which the number of subordinates is large and contains relatively low level LMX relationships. Employees who find themselves in the out-group are likely to face high job turnover. This should be important to all management because high turnover is a very large investment for the organization. The level of LMX has a significant relationship to subordinates satisfaction with their manager. Employees with low-quality LMX are more likely to become dissatisfied, less motivated, and more prone to quitting. Whereas employees with high level LMX are likely to be satisfied with their work, more motivated, and committed to staying and contributing to the organization. LMX has three critical components which are mutual affection, contribution to work activities, and professional respect. When a subordinate has high mutual affection for a superior, the subordinate likes the superior as a person and will often come to the superior’s defense if attacked. High contribution to work activities comes into play when a subordinate goes above and beyond their job description to help the superior out. High Professional Respect is when the superior admires the subordinate’s knowledge and competence of the job. Analysis and Recommendation as per LMX 1) The Texas Roadhouse management does take steps to increase the mutual affection score of its staff else they will likely to enter the realm of the out group which could potentially lead to the employee leaving the organization because Why stay at an organization if you’re not happy with your manager? 2) One way management can increase the mutual affection is to take a more active role and listen to the complaints of the employees and to take the time to establish supportive and trusting relationships with the employees. 3) Another suggestion might be to engage the staff in team building activities and icebreakers. We can conclude that the superiors and managers of Texas Roadhouse are not providing proper support to their staff and needs to make a drastic change soon because the organization as a whole could be affected. 4) Some possible solutions include taking the time to reassess what kind of support is needed for staff. One way to do this is anonymous comment cards. Have all the employees fill out comment cards anonymously and identify specific instances where an employee failed to receive support. This must be down anonymously by the employer because the employee might be unwilling to respond for fear of termination. 5) The manager may have a tendency to interact with other employees in an unprofessional manner. The manager can decrease this perception by keeping to policy or by adjusting his/her interactions in front of employees. 6) Management needs to do a better job of developing better relationships with its employees. Some improvement strategies include the use of assertive communication, appropriate communication openness, and constructive feedback with all of the subordinates. Job Characteristics Model The job characteristics model has to do with the idea of increasing the amounts of five job characteristics: skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback in a job. Skill variety can be defined as the degree to which a job requires an assortment of skills in order for an employee to carry out the task at hand. Task identity is the extent to which a job requires an employee to complete a task from beginning to end with a visible, tangible outcome. Task significance is the extent to which an employee perceives the job as having an impact on the lives of other individuals, if it makes a difference in society, within or outside of the organization. Autonomy is the level to which a job provides empowerment and discretion to an employee by choosing their own way to complete and schedule a task. Job feedback is the clear information about how effective an employee’s performance is. The different levels of these five job characteristics affect three important psychological states. The first, to experience meaningfulness of the tasks performed, second, to experience personal responsibility for results of the task at hand, and last is the knowledge of the results of task performance. If all three psychological states are positive, strong work motivation based on self-generated rewards is triggered. If they are in the negative zone, meaning the job is not meaningful, lacks responsibility or feedback, the job is incomplete, which does not strongly motivate an employee. This model can be related to Texas Roadhouse since it looks into how well an employee has the opportunity to be motivated to work in the restaurant. It highlights the areas that need work in the restaurant and what the employees enjoy or dislike about working there. It also demonstrates which employees are content with working there for a while and which view it as a stepping stone towards another opp ortunity that has not yet befallen upon them. Analysis and Recommendations as per Job Characteristic Model 1) The model demonstrates a need for change in the structure of Texas Roadhouse in order to increase their employee’s motivation to continue their work there. Generally, there are two main approaches recommended to superiors for designing/redesigning jobs which are vertical loading and the formation of natural work teams. Vertical loading is when tasks that were considered reserved for management level staff are delegated to all employees. It includes the power to set schedules, decide work methods, breaks, and seek solutions to their own problems. Natural work teams combines individual jobs into a unit which are logical and meaningful including geographic location, types of business, organizational, alphabetical or numerical, customer groups. If Texas Roadhouse implemented vertical loading into their structure and gave their employees the opportunity to decide their own breaks and more flexible schedules, it could aid in their desire to maintain their positions at the restaurant. Most of the employees are pretty satisfied with the way things are run at Texas Roadhouse, however, according to the data, one of the biggest issues the employees have with Texas Roadhouse is the lack of variety, out of twenty surveys; eleven scored less than a four on the scale. The employees also feel that they do not have the opportunity to see projects through to completion which affects their task identity characteristic. This can be fixed with a simple solution, which is to allow employees to complete a task before assigning them another. Goal Setting Model Goal setting is a very integral part of any job. Whether you are attempting to better yourself or complete a project, setting goals is one of the most helpful tools to assist you throughout the process. Goal setting can definitely help a business such as Texas Roadhouse in raising their standards for employees which will end up helping the bottom line. The goal setting model that we used for our survey seems to have a big impact on job performance. According to the model, if employees felt good about the goals they set, they were better at their jobs. Five essential pieces must come together in order for the managers to gain benefits of a goal setting program. The first piece is that the person must be knowledgeable about the topic of the specified goal and have the sufficient capacity to attain the goal. The second step is that the person must be committed to the goal, especially if the goal is difficult. The third step is that people need feedback on their goals. According to the text, employees will raise their performance because they are afraid they will have past performance. The forth step is that complex tasks must be broken up into simpler more short term goals so that the goals can be attained. It is stated in the text that employees are more responsive when they know about their progress. The fifth and final piece is to have a situation constraint. One of the most important aspects of a leader is to ensure that employees have the resources to attain their goals and to help eliminate any troubles that may lie in the way. Now to discuss some of the benefits that goal setting can have on performance. One of the consequences of goal setting is that it motivates individuals to achieve high performance. Some of the benefits stem from developing difficult goals. When it comes to Texas Roadhouse, such goal setting can be setting goals for a certain dollar amount each table waited on per person. The benefits can be such as encouraging people to develop action plans to reach a goal, focusing people’s attention on goal-relevant action, and encouraging people to develop action plans to reach these goals. Having such goal setting systems in place, you will have to be able to adequately reward your employees. Such reward systems could be like the high-performance work system which is used to describe a well-established method of motivation with new technology that links pay and performance. This isn’t very easy to do, especially when considering the many factors. Such factors could ask questions such as, do you reward individually or as a team. Analysis and Recommendation as per Goal Setting Model Going through a few of the steps that go into goal setting and based on the results provided from the study, we have developed some recommendations for the restaurant. The first recommendation is to put groups of waiters and hostesses into teams in order to create an atmosphere of meritocracy. When there are teams, it’s easier to have tasks done and team members will have the mentality of â€Å"if I scratch your back you scratch mine.† Going along with more of the recommendations through the analysis of the process of effective goal setting, a proper high performance work reward system must be put into place in order to motivate employees. Our recommendation for the work reward system is a system that rewards waitresses on the amount of money per person that they serve. So for example if a team earns on average $15 per customer and another team earns $20 per customer, we reward the team with the $20 per customer with a bonus on top of their normal tips. To further develop their goals, we can get input for the teams on how they would like to improve the model because it is stated that the more input the employees feel like they are giving, the more they would buy into the program. To improve on that, we would also make the goals a little bit more challenging. For example we could expect a higher dollar amount per customer over last month. For example a ten percent increase could be viable. The last of our recommendations is to give each employee a step by step plan on how to achieve their goals and to give them a monthly review. These recommendations would help Texas Roadhouse by improving their trust between one another, their individual and team goals by giving them more input which leads to more buy-in and lastly, it helps them raise their revenue by setting higher goals for each customer. Works Cited Bernardin, H. John, Joyce E. A. Russell. Human Resource Management: An Experiential Approach. McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2013.

Benefits of Teaching Culture and Language

Benefits of Teaching Culture and Language Definition of culture Culture (from the Latin â€Å"cutura† stemming from colre meaning â€Å"to cultivate†) generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activities significance. â€Å"Farhang†, meaning culture, has always been the focal point of Iranian civilization. Values (the ideas about what in life seems important), norms (expectations of how people will behave in various situations), institutions (the structure of a society), and artifacts (things or aspects of material culture, which derive from values and norms) are four components of culture (Wikipedia, 2009). The culture of a people refers to all aspects of shared life in community. Children growing up in a social group learn ways of doing things, ways of expressing themselves, ways of looking at things, what things they should value and what things they should despise or avoid, what is expected of them and what they may expect of others. We can define culture from different points of view. But the most common definition of culture among several scholars is what Haddley (2003) have in his book â€Å"Teaching Language in Context†. She tries to classify aspects of culture into two groups. The first group is the best in human life. This is what is called Big-C culture. Literature, music, art, etc. fall into this category. The second group is everything in human life. This is called the small-c culture. This category includes the way people eat, dress, and behaves in their society. The importance of studying culture There are many benefits that people can obtain from studying culture. It is useful for understanding the people of other cultures and also one’s own culture (Kitao, 1991). It can also help us to be more tolerant (Saz as cited in De Gordon, 2007). Dominant thoughts in the societies during the history, the way people look at the world, living manners and different forms of socializing, enculturation and like that lead us to a better understanding and appreciation of economic affairs. According to various developments in the world we can say that although the content and form of culture may change, it never fade away. (Pahlavan, 2003). Culture has been studied under different sciences and fields of study and this can show the importance of culture by dealing with this phenomenon. Culture and language In this section we will come to a wider area and look at the culture with respect to the relation it may have to the concept of language. As usual in this section we will divide these relationships into different sections according to what different scholars believe. There are three kinds of relationship determined between culture and language. The structure of a language determines the way in which speakers of that language view the world. The culture of a people finds reflection in the language they employ. Cultural requirements certainly influence how a language used and perhaps determines why specific bits and pieces are the way they are. A neutral: there is little or no relationship between language and culture (Wardaugh, 1993) Culture and L2/FL Teaching and learning Although some teachers think that the present of culture in current writings is relative recent, a review of the L2/FL literature shows that this is clearly not the case. The early ages were the time people learned an L2/FL for the purpose of reading and studying its literature. Literature is categorized as the high culture or the best in human life (brook, 1975, as cited in Haddley 2003, p.361). The next stage of concerning with culture is the era of Audio-lingual. This is the era of communication goals in language teaching and the time the emphasis is on the â€Å"little c culture†. In 1970s, the communicative competence replaced the audio-lingual method. In this new paradigm a more natural integration of language and culture takes place through a communicative approach than a more grammatically base approach (Lessard-Clouston, 1997). Why teach culture In the previous section we saw that the relationship between language and culture is undeniable. Despite this certain fact we should think of the implication of this reality in a real situation. Therefore, we raise another question regarding the importance of teaching culture and why a teacher should teach culture in the classroom. In order to fully learn a foreign language, an individual needs to understand the culture that goes along with it. What follow are some of the reasons for teaching culture in the classroom. Giving the students a reason to study the target language. Help in teaching grammar: relating abstract sounds and forms of a language to real places and people. In achieving high motivation, culture classes does have a great role because learners like culturally based activities such as singing, dancing, role playing, doing research on countries and people, etc. It gives learners a liking for the native speakers of the target language. Culture studies have a humanizing and a motivating effect on the language learner and the learning process. They help learners observe similarities and differences among various cultural groups. Teaching culture (intercultural learning) Many people have shown their own contribution to the issue of relation between culture and L2/FL learning as well as the role of culture in learning/teaching a language in the classroom. Almost every book in the area of language learning has a chapter in teaching culture. Chastain (1987) maintains that language is used to convey meaning, but meaning is determined by culture. One of the major hurdles to the successful implementation of culture goals in language classes revolves around attitudes. Brown (2000) also has some points in this area: It is apparent that culture as an integrated set of behaviors and modes of perception, becomes highly important in the learning of an L2. The two are intricately interwoven so that one cannot separate the two without losing the significance of either language or culture. Dimitrios Thanasoulas (2001) says that the teaching of culture should become an integral part of foreign language instruction. Culture should be our message to students and language our medium. Teachers should present students with a true picture or representation of another culture and language. Baker (2003) believes that culture has become an increasingly integrated component of English language teaching in recent years. He argues that the root of integrating culture in language learning processes come from the theory of communicative competence delivered by Hymes (1972, as cited in Haddley, 2000, pp.3-5). In this theory communicative competence involves an understanding of the norms of social interaction of one socio-cultural community. This concept of communicative competence is called intercultural communicative competence. Central to the notion of intercultural communicative competence is cultural awareness. Culture and language teaching methods From the early stages of teaching language a lot of methods have been discovered by methodologists and researchers with different points of view towards second language teaching and learning. I’ll investigate several methodologies and their approach to culture and its relationship with language teaching and learning. Grammar-translation method: a fundamental purpose of learning a foreign language is to be able to read its literature. Direct method: culture consists of more than the fine arts (students study cultural values). Audio-lingual method: culture consists of the everyday behavior and lifestyle of the target language speakers. Language cannot be separated from culture. Silent Way method: they believe that culture, as reflected in students unique world view, is inseparable from their language. Suggestopedia: it says that the culture which students learn concerns the everyday life of people who speak the language. The use of fine arts (music, art and drama) enables suggestions to reach the subconscious. Community language learning: it believes in integrating the culture with language. Total Physical Response: says that culture is the life style of people who speak the target language natively. In Communicative Language Teaching: culture is the life style of people who use the language natively. The cultural-communicative learning paradigm: â€Å"learning a language is learning a culture. Intercultural competence Intercultural competence is an enormously popular concept nowadays, its content being discussed in a great variety of contexts. It is not possible to arrive at one particular definition of the concept it is always contextually determined, colored by the latest discourses on competence, culture, communication, language, etc (Risager, 2000). Looking for a comprehensive definition of this phrase, we encounter a lot of different ideas and various definitions. By Alvino E. Fantini (1997) a basic definition of intercultural competence includes: The fundamental acceptance of people who are different to oneself outside one’s own culture. The ability to interact with them in a genuinely constructive manner which is free of negative attitude (e.g. prejudice, defensiveness, apathy, aggression etc.) The ability to create a synthesis, something which is neither â€Å"mine† nor â€Å"yours†, but which is new and would not have been possible had we not combined our different background and approaches (www.kwintessential.co.uk, 2009). Penn State (2009) has also â€Å"A simple definition†: â€Å"the abilities to perform effectively and appropriately with members of another language-culture background on their terms. And finally, In essence intercultural competence can be summed up as the ability to work well across cultures. Culture in Foreign Language Curriculum A major goal of foreign language instruction is to increase students’ literacy in languages other than their own, thereby also increasing literacy in that culture. The concept of literacy encompasses the students ability to read with understanding, to write with clarity and accuracy, to understand what is heard, and to speak comprehensibly with accurate grammar and pronunciation. To communicate successfully in another language, students develop facility, with the language, familiarity with the culture that use the language, and awareness of the ways in which language and culture interact in society. Reaching this point is central to developing literacy in any language. Two aspects of culture appropriate to be included in the foreign language curriculum are: first, the society’s production of art, music, and literature, and second, the social conventions of that society’s members. Culture in the classroom Now it is the time to come to the classroom and investigate culture related to the requirements of the class: Foreign Language Teachers and Foreign Language Learners. Culture and language teachers Traditionally, language teachers have listed culture as one of the five principal objectives of second language study. Attaching the same value to culture as to each of the four language skills is no surprise because of its importance in the development of global awareness and international understanding, in being able to function in the second language society, and in stimulating and maintaining students’ interests and motivation. The primary goal and dominant focus of attention in most classes continues to be language, to the detriment of achieving desirable cultural objectives. As conclusion to this, the teacher ought to be able to describe and assess his or her own intercultural competence. A foreign language teacher should be able to: Understand the contributions and lifestyles of the various cultural groups Recognize and deal with dehumanizing biases, discrimination, and prejudices Create learning environments that contribute to the self-esteem of all persons and all positive interpersonal relations Respect human diversity and personal rights (Lafayette, 1979, p. 132). Some authors do recommend placing the greater emphasis on culture. What these authors are advocating is an organized, systematic presentation of the major characteristics of the second language culture that will lead students to an understanding and an appreciation of the culture. In many regards, culture is taught implicitly, imbedded in the linguistic forms that students are learning. To make students aware of the cultural features reflected in the language, teachers can make those cultural features an explicit topic of discussion in relation to the linguistic forms being studied. It is important for a language teacher as an influential figure in the class to be interculturally aware and responsive. Teachers should be aware of and sensitive to the cultural differences (Valdes, 1986), and its influences on students’ growth and learning. They should also be aware of their own cultural values and beliefs (Wang, 2006). Culture and language learners One of the principal reasons for stressing culture in language classes has to do with the students. They are extremely interested in the people who speak the language they are studying (Chastain, 1987). A program which seeks to develop systematic progress in cultural understanding side by side with growing mastery of the language will ensure that the language learners are able to communicate with the speakers of the language in the fullest sense of the word. Intercultural contact is both a means and an end in second language studies. It is impossible to identify the specific ethnic and cultural groups that represent native speakers of the language. As a result, in order to investigate the role of the intercultural contact in foreign language learning environments, we first need to explore what kind of contact students of foreign languages have with home and how frequently, what attitudes they display and how they see the role of contact in language learning. It appears that favorable contact leads to the discovery of cultural similarity and of our common humanity. Then, contact will improve attitudes (Piage R. M., et al., 1998).