Electronic recycling in the us, why is it important to our future Research Paper

Electronic recycling in the us, why is it important to our future - Research Paper Example Data by the Consumer Electronics Association indicate that each American household own about 24 electronic products. As such, there is large volume of electronic waste, which poses serious dangers to the environment. It is for this reason that there have been increased efforts to recycle electronic products in the US. Environmental experts argue that continuing increase in the recycling rates in the US will help the country to pull out of the electronic garbage heap and minimize global warming emissions (Natural Resources Defense Council para 2). This paper will discuss electronic recycling in the US, as well as why it is important to the country’s future. The industry of electronic recycling has evolved to become an increasingly critical part of the environmental sustainability management program (Lee para 3). Individuals, corporations, and government agencies have enhanced their focus in addressing environmental and sustainability management issues. Electronic recycling has consequently, become a critical part of this trend. Recycling is a major step in a full loop of practices that will reduce the quantity of waste that goes to landfills and reduce greenhouse gas emissions (Natural Resources Defense Council para 3). Electronic recycling involves more than bundling up electronic materials. Manufacturers are required to use recycled materials in making their products. Similarly, consumers should purchase products made from post-consumer recycled materials. The more the demand for products made with recycled materials rather than virgin materials is increased, the more successful recycling will be at curbing global warming and saving natural resources. Electronic recycling not only extends the valuable products’ lives, but also prevents valuable materials from becoming wastes (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency para 2). The society now has many recycling options. Many manufacturers of electronic goods such as TV, computer and cell phones and ret ailers of these products sponsor recycling events and offer some form of take back program. It should be noted that nearly half of states in America presently have laws on recycling and disposal of electronics and a number of other states are considering passage of similar laws (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency para 2). Discarded electronics including broken cell phones, old computers, and obsolete TV sets form the fastest- growing element of the US waste stream. It is estimated that Americans threw away about 2 million tons of electronic trash in the year 2005 and recycled about 38,000 tons only (Natural Resources Defense Council para 8). This points out to the danger that US is faced with going to the future. The problem is further compounded by the fact that there is no national e-waste law. However, some individual states have put in place laws that require recycling of electronics waste, and for designing of more recyclable and less toxic gadgets. Electronic recycling has s ignificant benefits to the US society and enhancing of this program will present the country with more benefits. It helps to extend the lives of electronic products and therefore keeping them out of the waste stream for much longer time. In addition, it allows lower-income families, non-profit organizations, and schools to obtain equipment that they may not have been able to afford (U.S. Environment

Presenting Information Essay Example for Free

Presenting Information Essay As mentioned in Section 2, my leaflets are going to include some special details to make customers interested in reading them. Here I have typed up a number of stories about mooncakes (thanks to my parents and my old relatives who told me those stories when I was younger), mentioning where they came from and how they got famous in China. Hopefully this would also make foreign customers interested in trying the companys mooncakes. Here is the story: Section 5 Presenting Information Presenting Information Designing the Logo After having decided the style for my logo, I started designing my own logo with Adobe Illustrator 10. I used the softwares different paintbrush styles to draw the background of my logo, and different text layouts for displaying the name of the company. In my logo I have added a motto into my logo: where the taste of the East comes from: Survey Also, here is the list of ratings of different Chinese food that my classmates have given me: From the table above, it seems that mooncakes are the least favourite Chinese food of my classmates. They all told me that they have never tried one before. Maybe I should consider giving up mooncakes for my company, or maybe I should take a risk to introduce these delicious cakes that are very famous in an alien country. To make this decision, I went to Chinatown in London during half-term and asked for some information. I made a questionnaire for them to fill in. This questionnaire is designed for shops that sell traditional Chinese food package gifts and Chinese recipes, but the only shop I found which sold mooncakes was a small cafi called Far East Chinese Restaurant (even though it was not quite a restaurant). There I met the cafi s owner and asked him to fill in my questionnaire, and here are his replies: His answers showed that Chinese food and festivals are very popular amongst English people, and his reply for question number 3 tells me that there is no problem with introducing mooncakes in my promotional package. Promotional Packages I am using Microsoft(r) Publisher 2000 (at school) and 2002 (on my notebook) to make my leaflet, letterhead and business card. They all consist of the companys address, phone and facsimile number, website address and e-mail address, and, of course, its logo. They all have the similar layout, such as the background and the colour theme. Note that they are all using the desert colour theme provided in Publisher. I made 5 attempts on the leaflet, as it is the most important part of my project. I made many changes on the text size, font, background, layout and borders throughout those attempts. I also gave it to my guardian for proof-reading and she spotted out some minor errors (e. g. text overflowing in textboxes). Now I have come up with my final design of my leaflet. As for my business card, I made 3 designs. They differ in the word art and border. I showed them to my friends and they all chose design number 3, which they all thought was the most colourful and most attractive one, to be my final design. I made two attempts on the letterhead and the only changes I made were the background and some decoration around the header. Section 6 Advantages and Disadvantages of Using IT Advantages and Disadvantages of Using IT Advantages The advantages for using I. T. are you have the ability to make any changes on your documents easily to make them look neater, such as the layout of the documents, spelling mistakes, fonts, etc, and also you can have access to the internet where it is rich of sources, e. g. images, quotes, product information, news, etc. The sources can then be easily pasted onto your documents and can also be edited to make them appropriate for your needs. When it comes to storing, your documents can be saved onto your computer instead of adding a pile of paperwork into your drawers. Disadvantages One of the big disadvantages of using I. T. is that your computer may crash while youre working and may lose your work. Also, the floppy discs that have your work in them can be easily damaged if not looked after carefully, which again can lose your work easily if you didnt backup your work. The accessibility to the network may be limited due to the time limit set by the administrator, or maybe the computer rooms are locked. The sources on the Internet are only limited to text and images instead of actual objects. Section 7 Copyright and Confidentiality Copyright and Confidentiality Copyright Copying software is a theft as they all have copyrights, which means that without the programmers permission, copying of the software is not allowed. In my project I have used software that is brought by the school and me (software on my laptop) legally, so I dont have a problem with this. This issue also applies to other sources either I. T. or non-I. T. such as images and text contents. Normally they have a ? symbol on them to show that they own a copyright for their images or text content (see picture on the left), therefore when doing this project I have to look carefully if our sources are copyrighted. Confidentiality Keeping our documents confidential can prevent them being copied or changed. This can be done by keeping the documents on a floppy disk or a compact disc and keep them with you, which will ensure that so nobody will have access to your documents. Also, you can set a password to the document so nobody can open the document without permission from you. Section 8 Error Handling and Virus Protection Error Handling and Virus Protection Virus A virus is a programme that can get into your computer data and can either destroy your files or allow someone to hack into your private data. How can we prevent them? E-mailing is the most common way to spread a virus. The hacker attaches a virus onto e-mails, disguising it as a normal document and sends them to other people, and when the people open the attached document, the virus is downloaded onto the computer and starts to interrupt the data files. To prevent this happening we have to be aware of e-mails sent from someone who you dont know, i. e. junk mail. Downloads from the Internet is also a high risk from getting viruses; therefore we must be aware with them. The school has a firewall, which prevents viruses and hackers accessing to our school networking and destroying our documents, but making a backup can prevent your documents being affected by the virus. Errors and Prevention During the course of working on my project, I encountered a storage space problem. A message box appeared when I was trying to save my work onto my personal drive on the school network. It said: There is not enough storage space in your disk. This was caused by the large graphics file in my project and they had to be deleted in order to allow me to save my work. This problem can be solved by compressing the pictures before they are pasted onto my work. Another problem that I encountered was file version compatibility. During half-term I had to use Publisher 98 on my guardians computer to work on my promotional leaflet which have been already started using Publisher 2000 on school computers, and, of course, the file had to be then saved in the format of Publisher 98 *. pub file. This degraded the layout and the quality of the pictures in the file. Later I received my own copy of Publisher 2002, and I used it to open my leaflet file, and the layouts went horribly wrong. The pictures in the leaflet, which were supposed to be wrapped round by the text in the text boxes, covered the text up instead, and no matter how many times I attempted to use different ways to put them back in place, the pictures just stayed like that (see 2nd attempt), and the only things I could do was to start a new file in the format of Publisher 2002 file. What I could have done before everything went wrong was to make a backup of the file when it was still in the format of Publisher 2000 file, and then I could have waited until my software has arrived.

Current Situation Samsungs Position Marketing Essay

Current Situation Samsungs Position Marketing Essay Samsungs Position in 2003, was strong as compared to its current situation. Its stock was one of the most widely held amongst the companies emerging in the market as more than half of its shares were outside of Korea, its home country. In 2003, Business week ranked Samsung 25th most valuable brand from 34th position in 2002 and with a fast growing brand value compared to its competitor Sony. In the electronics Industry both Samsung and Sony are leading names and as the electronic industry requires heavy emphasis on research and development, transitions on market and to optimize supply chains. New innovations in technology runs the consumer electronic industry. Samsung uses its traditional in-house RD instead of outsourcing it from Business partners as outsourcing transfer capital investment has lower risk to other companies but has high cost, however the risk involved is lower. Samsung operates on the virtual integration model which has leveraged all the aspects of the manufacturing process from raw- materials to fully assembled products. Keeping the cost down from what it would be if being outsourced, Samsung reduced costs further by off-shoring efforts. As in off-shoring a firm uses its own assets and locates Business units in places such that it has lower costs of production, for this purpose Samsung has placed its plants in China and India. Out of the two core marketing groups of Samsung, one in Korea and the other one for rest of the world, Samsung consolidated to use a single ensure worldwide brand consistency in 2001. A percentage of the current sales of 2003 were set aside for marketing, reallocations were also made to market research to identify if marketing funds could be used to achieve high returns. SWOT: Strengths: Has a wide range of products such as mobile phones, camera, home appliance and other devices. Enjoys advantage over a few electronic items by introducing advanced features in LCD, refrigerator, Air Conditioner etc. Holds significant market share in many product Categories. Does RD to keep innovating its products and to be ahead from its competitors and to be first in the market with new range of products. Weakness: Caused product CANNIBALIZATION due to launch of series of smart phones. Lack of product software for which it has to depend on other companies. Competitors like SONY and APPLE who have their own products as well as software. Other Areas of business like Chemicals, Machinery Heavy Industry, financial Services unknown to the Public. Opportunities: Continue sponsoring major events like Olympics in order to spread brand equity and to increase sales and cut competition. Develop its own unique software in order to keep up with competitors and to make itself independent from other software oriented companies. Should increase its spending on advertising and market its products more. Threats: Recent tie up of Google and Motorola where Google has decided to sell its software only to Motorola, without its own software its very difficult for Samsung to survive in future competition. Increasing competition from APPLE and SONY. Amount of money spent in RD for product innovation and creation on new and unique products is huge, which other companies save by reverse engineering Samsungs products. Strategic Brand Management Brand Building in order to increase promotional costs and decrease revenues by sacrificing certain product lines and with the digital revolution going on a new opportunity window is there to dominate consumer electronics market. Doing so without proper precautions can cause the company some irreparable damage. The need for advertisement and promotion is a must for the company in order to increase the awareness among consumers. Though advertisement and promotion of Samsung depends on the activities done by it in the particular region. Activities carried out by the company can have both positive and negative impacts such as promotional materials intended and developed for one countrys market can limit its ability to develop promotional campaigns made specifically for another market. Samsungs competitive advantage led to unique breeding environment for innovation, RD and the production of new technology should be preserved therefore, all new products should be kept in a safe location e. g. in the Korean Headquaters. Recommendations: Moving away from the supplier mentality Samsung should de-emphasize the importance of new products, though innovation of products has brought Samsung great wealth, Samsung can still survive in the market by cutting costs spent in RD of new technology and let the market forces be the driving force in the development of new technology. Training of internal staff in making use of effective marketing as it is related to other areas of Business, especially development. First-hand knowledge of the development process should benefit the marketing team as they should know what a delay in research can mean to the project. Development of a career path in marketing and a formal structure for Samsung employees would demonstrate to the company a commitment to marketing, which would serve as a recruiter and developer to grow new marketing talent. Marketing professionals if retained within a structured environment would help Samsung further to continue build consistency with its brand identity. Use of interactive marketing such as making of online ad campaigns on frequently visited websites like Youtube, where the viewer should be able to interact with the help of annotation feature. Where multiple options should be given and if any of the options is chosen then each option should open a new video. Should move its product from price-driven stores to more focused retailers. Implementation: To make the selling of developed products easier the resources should be shifted from RD to marketing which would increase the return of RD spending. Samsung should know that branding is as important as the high quality of the products that Samsung supplies. Partnership with a Chinese firm can help reduce the labour costs related to production of legacy products without compromising on the valuable intellectual property. Samsung besides being in partnership with the Chinese, cannot forget that the Chinese can still prove as competitors which can harm their business. Therefore the company should keep a strong focus on maintaining its technological leadership by pursuing cutting-edge RD, especially towards future substitutes for DRAMS. One more way to reduce the chances of development of competition, though more risky and should be applied with care is to surpass new market entrants by lowering margins on low-end DRAMs. The profit will not be more but Samsungs name and the build quality of their products will push the competitors towards more or less operational losses, at the same time itll ensure that Samsung will still be able to earn on the other products from its wide range of portfolio.

French Revolution Lower Class :: essays research papers

Life from the Bottom Lower classes have always been treated the worst of any other people. I, being a peasant farmer during the French Revolution, have experienced this maltreatment in mankind. We made up the largest group within the Third Estate. We were forced to do things that were out of our control. The peasants, such as me, did not like being under the rule of Louis XVI and his spouse Marie Antoinette. We were already deprived of money to begin with, yet we still lost half of what we had due to taxes. We were expected to pay feudal dues to the nobles, tithes to the church, and royal taxes to the king’s agent. Also, aside from taxes in money, we owed the corvà ©e. The corvà ©e was a certain form of tax that was paid by work rather than money. We were expected to do this for a certain number of days out of every year. During the rule of the Old Regime, peasants’ rights were depleted and our power was oppressed.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  When the radicals tried Louis XVI for treason and demanded that he be executed, we peasants were relieved. We now gained more rights and felt freer. The Jacobins were now gaining more power. We didn’t like this at all. We were horrified by the beheading of the king. We knew that the beheadings could become a routine within our country. As many leaders were trying to gain power, one man slowly took control. His name was Maximilien Robespierre. His reign of power was known as the Reign of Terror. We were terrified of Robespierre’s power. We were all in danger of being guillotined. As many as 40,000 people were beheaded all together, and 80% of them were peasants. After awhile, the members of the National Convention knew none of them were safe from Robespierre. They finally turned against him and executed him on July 28, 1794. This execution ended the Reign of Terror. Everybody was relieved. If the European monarchies were able to squelch the revolutionary government of France, then Louis and Antoinette would not have ruled as long as they did. This would have meant, less tax paying for us peasants.

Analysis of two speeches Obama and Bono

I have chosen to look at two speeches, one given by Barack Obama and another given by Bono. Both are very important leaders with their own kind of political influence. By choosing these speeches with a serious content (education and the third world) and both addressing the same kind of audience (students), I will be able to give an useful comparison in terms of leadership and emotional intelligence. Barack Obama's †Back to school† speech In his speech to the nation’s students (from kindergarten to 12th grade) President Barack Obama tries to stress the importance of getting an education and the responsibilities students have themselves.Addressing children ranging from 6 years to 18 years of age is a difficult task and Obama employs various strategies (both leadership and emotional) in order to get his message across to as many as possible. First of all, he talks directly to his listeners and makes sure they see him as a peer they can identify with and not only as th e President of the United States, which exemplifies his social skills. Secondly, he uses an informal style, a simple language, many repetitions, plenty of diverse concrete examples they can relate to, and he speaks to their patriotic feelings and their sense of responsibility.Obama’s main challenge with his target group is their size and diversity, and he therefore has to employ several strategies in order to reach as many as possible. In order to quickly get his listeners’ attention, he starts out by speaking directly to them, â€Å"Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? † A key element in getting the message across is that he gets the students’ attention, and that he then holds on to it. One way of doing this is by addressing them at eye level. He gets them to identify with him, respect him and deem him credible and then shows them that he genuinely cares about their situation (empathy).Obama does this by beginning the speech with a necdotes from his own life. He tells them how he was raised by a single mother, who could not afford to send him to the same schools as the other children, and how she homeschooled him at 4. 30 in the morning. He also tells them how he got into trouble and did things that he is not proud of. By sharing these rather personal stories of struggle and adversity, Obama uses his emotional intelligence in order to gain credibility in their eyes. Listening to someone who you respect and who you believe is credible makes it a lot easier to accept the messages and values that they speak of.After having established contact with his listeners, Obama starts conveying his message and values to the students. Obama’s main message of the speech comes in two parts. Firstly, he says that getting an education is the student’s own responsibility. Parents, teachers and the government also have a responsibility (he takes on the responsibility as a leader of the nation), but at the end of the day, â€Å"none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities†. In this argument, Obama tries to speak to the students’ conscience and sense of responsibility.He shows them how so many people already have done so much for them, and that it is now their turn to do something; namely to take responsibility for their own education. Secondly, Obama talks about the responsibility towards the US. Not only do the students have a responsibility towards themselves, they also have a responsibility towards their country. Here the political aspect of the speech appears. The United States cannot function or compete in the future if there are no qualified people to fill the many functions a society has, such as nurses, doctors, senators etc., â€Å"What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future. †This leadership argument speaks to the listeners’ patriotic feelings. Mos t Americans are raised to be patriotic, and this is something Obama takes advantage of on several occasions in his speech with great success. Every one of the students carry the responsibility towards their country, â€Å"We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect †¦ If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country† (leadership).At the center of the speech is the idea that education is paramount to getting a successful life and that everybody has the opportunity to succeed. Obama stresses that, â€Å"[e]very single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. † and with some hard work and dedication the sky is the limit according to Obama. It seems as if Obama is truly concerned about the students, but the politics are easy to spot. Obama needs strong students in order to succes sfully run the country.During this part of the speech Obama motivates and inspires his listeners by showing them some of the key values he believes in (motivation and self-awareness). Hard work and dedication is one value he stresses as most important. In this part he indirectly refers to the American dream that implies that if you work hard you can achieve anything. Here Obama uses the American cultural heritage of the American dream in his rhetoric, â€Å"Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.†To further build on this motivational argument he offers several concrete examples of people who have had poor conditions, and who still have made it, through hard work and dedication. The examples are himself and his wife, Michelle Obama, who have both had difficult odds, but made it anyhow, and three cases he has found for the occasion, Jazmin Perez, Andoni Schultz and Shantell Steve. These three people have all overcome difficult odds and are living proof of how the American dream is obtainable if only you are willing to work hard, set goals for yourself and not give up, â€Å"Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you.They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. † Obama uses rhetoric in order to get his political message across. By using a simple language, addressing the students at eye level, employing leadership and emotional arguments and using several concrete examples (i. e. that he has weaknesses himself (self-evaluation)) he is able to reach a broad audience and show them what values he perceives to be the most important and by that inspire and motivate them. Bono’s commencement speech at Harvard UniversityPaul David Hewson, mos tly known as Bono from U2, has given his life to music, but also to charity. This is expressed in his very personal speech at Harvard University. Bono approaches the students at the commencement at Harvard University, and asks for their help to make America a great country and to help people in need. Bono begins his speech by introducing himself. He actually starts to criticize people like himself. Bono is talking about rock stars and singers, and says that singers contain a very big ego. This statement is a little paradoxical, because Bono is a singer and a rock star himself (self-awareness).Afterwards he is making clear that he is not just a singer, but also a father and a friend of dogs. The problem or conflict Bono is bringing up through his speech is mostly about Africa and the poor (the third world). He mentions the conflict, which has taken place in connection with sending money to some of the poorest countries of the world. When money is send to a third world country, it is not necessarily the poorest and the sickest people who get the money, because of the countries’ great debts. Bono finds this extreme problematic, and is therefore asking the students for their help.He thinks that the smart people at Harvard are needed to work this problem out. His argumentation for the importance of this cause is its influence on world history. He appeals to them and tries to motivate them by telling the sad story of the third world (motivation). Many people in third world countries dies e. g. of AIDS and HIV, because they do not get the money there is sent as help. He is mentioning that this holocaust, as he says, in Africa will be remembered forever, along with the internet. This argumentation is the climax of the speech.He brings up subjects who are very frail, and this is the point during speech, in which the listeners are paying most attention. During the speech at Harvard University Bono is appealing to the listeners feelings. In that way he uses emotio nal intelligence a lot. Already from the beginning he is trying make like a personal bond between him and the audience. He is talking about is personal life, which makes the speech a little informal and tries to make the audience forget the pedestal that most of them have put him on. This makes the listeners feel comfortable in his presence, and let them met him at eye level (social skills).The subject he brings up is mostly including death and diseases. The third world conditions are in advance much discussed, and the discussions are typically very emotional. Bono is mentioning the conditions as an â€Å"African holocaust†. Even the word â€Å"holocaust† is enough to bring up bad memories and associations about World War II. To speak of the African problems by using a word like holocaust, both attracts people’s attention but also fills them with horror – again he is appealing to the emotions of his listeners. People are maybe finding the death in Africa hard to relate to.But when Bono is talking about holocaust every man and woman knows the grade of seriousness and importance of the cause. The message of his speech is about brotherly love, charity and helping people in need. Bono is saying himself that he wants to ask the people at Harvard University for help. Help to make life better for people in the third world. By this he as a leader encourage them to take responsibility. He tries to guide them in the direction he thinks they should be guided (leadership). Comparison of the two speeches Both speeches start of by trying to meet the audience at eye level in order to inspire and motivate the audience.Both Obama and Bono succeed in doing this by making a rather humoristic intro before turning to the reel content of the political messages in the speeches. If this connection was not established, the political message would never get across to the rather difficult audience. The ability to establish this connection with an audience, an employee or a client is a sign of both good leadership skills and good emotional intelligence. Both Obama and Bono are very assertive in their speeches, but in very different ways. It is obvious that Bono is a rock star (who by nature exudes assertiveness) and not a politician like Obama.The Bono speech is written without a lot of foreign and long words, the language is very common, he uses little rhetoric, when getting his political messages across, which is all in oppose to the Obama speech. Obama uses long and intellectual words to promote his trustworthiness. Bono also uses a kind of slang when he says: â€Å"I’ve seen great minds and prolific imaginations disappear up their own ass (†¦)†. No one, especially not the President of The United states of America, besides a famous rock star, would be expressing themselves like that.Bono attracts the listeners’ attention by doing this, and he gets away with it, because of the entertainer and person he is. But it is definitely not something that a reel company leader would do in order to get his employees to follow him and his ideas. Obama shows a great deal of his emotional skills by letting in on his own weaknesses. Obama is the situational leader who guides his audience on what they must do and how they should do it, which you need to be, when you are the President of the United States of America. Bono I would characterize as a transformational leader (charismatic and inspirational). Analysis of two speeches Obama and Bono I have chosen to look at two speeches, one given by Barack Obama and another given by Bono. Both are very important leaders with their own kind of political influence. By choosing these speeches with a serious content (education and the third world) and both addressing the same kind of audience (students), I will be able to give an useful comparison in terms of leadership and emotional intelligence. Barack Obama's †Back to school† speechIn his speech to the nation’s students (from kindergarten to 12th grade) President Barack Obama tries to stress the importance of getting an education and the responsibilities students have themselves. Addressing children ranging from 6 years to 18 years of age is a difficult task and Obama employs various strategies (both leadership and emotional) in order to get his message across to as many as possible. First of all, he talks directly to his listeners and makes sure they see him as a peer they can identify with and not only as th e President of the United States, which exemplifies his social skills.Secondly, he uses an informal style, a simple language, many repetitions, plenty of diverse concrete examples they can relate to, and he speaks to their patriotic feelings and their sense of responsibility. Obama’s main challenge with his target group is their size and diversity, and he therefore has to employ several strategies in order to reach as many as possible. In order to quickly get his listeners’ attention, he starts out by speaking directly to them, â€Å"Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today?†A key element in getting the message across is that he gets the students’ attention, and that he then holds on to it. One way of doing this is by addressing them at eye level. He gets them to identify with him, respect him and deem him credible and then shows them that he genuinely cares about their situation (empathy). Obama does this by beginning the speech with an ecdotes from his own life. He tells them how he was raised by a single mother, who could not afford to send him to the same schools as the other children, and how she homeschooled him at 4.30 in the morning.He also tells them how he got into trouble and did things that he is not proud of. By sharing these rather personal stories of struggle and adversity, Obama uses his emotional intelligence in order to gain credibility in their eyes. Listening to someone who you respect and who you believe is credible makes it a lot easier to accept the messages and values that they speak of. After having established contact with his listeners, Obama starts conveying his message and values to the students. Obama’s main message of the speech comes in two parts.Firstly, he says that getting an education is the student’s own responsibility. Parents, teachers and the government also have a responsibility (he takes on the responsibility as a leader of the nation), but at the end of the da y, â€Å"none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities†. In this argument, Obama tries to speak to the students’ conscience and sense of responsibility. He shows them how so many people already have done so much for them, and that it is now their turn to do something; namely to take responsibility for their own education.Secondly, Obama talks about the responsibility towards the US. Not only do the students have a responsibility towards themselves, they also have a responsibility towards their country. Here the political aspect of the speech appears. The United States cannot function or compete in the future if there are no qualified people to fill the many functions a society has, such as nurses, doctors, senators etc. , â€Å"What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future. † This leadership argument speaks to the listeners’ patriotic feelings.Most Americans are raised to be patriotic, and this is something Obama takes advantage of on several occasions in his speech with great success. Every one of the students carry the responsibility towards their country, â€Å"We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect †¦ If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country† (leadership). At the center of the speech is the idea that education is paramount to getting a successful life and that everybody has the opportunity to succeed.Obama stresses that, â€Å"[e]very single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. † and with some hard work and dedication the sky is the limit according to Obama. It seems as if Obama is truly concerned about the students, but the politics are easy to spot. Obama needs strong students in order to successf ully run the country. During this part of the speech Obama motivates and inspires his listeners by showing them some of the key values he believes in (motivation and self-awareness). Hard work and dedication is one value he stresses as most important.In this part he indirectly refers to the American dream that implies that if you work hard you can achieve anything. Here Obama uses the American cultural heritage of the American dream in his rhetoric, â€Å"Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future. † To further build on this motivational argument he offers several concrete examples of people who have had poor conditions, and who still have made it, through hard work and dedication.The examples are himself and his wife, Michelle Obama, who have both had difficult odds, but made it anyhow, and three cases he has found for the occasion, Jazmin Perez, Andoni Schultz and Shantell Steve. These three people have all overcome difficult odds and are living proof of how the American dream is obtainable if only you are willing to work hard, set goals for yourself and not give up, â€Å"Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up.They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. † Obama uses rhetoric in order to get his political message across. By using a simple language, addressing the students at eye level, employing leadership and emotional arguments and using several concrete examples (i. e. that he has weaknesses himself (self-evaluation)) he is able to reach a broad audience and show them what values he perceives to be the most important and by that inspire and motivate them. Bono’s commencement speech at Harvard UniversityPaul David Hewson, most ly known as Bono from U2, has given his life to music, but also to charity. This is expressed in his very personal speech at Harvard University. Bono approaches the students at the commencement at Harvard University, and asks for their help to make America a great country and to help people in need. Bono begins his speech by introducing himself. He actually starts to criticize people like himself. Bono is talking about rock stars and singers, and says that singers contain a very big ego.This statement is a little paradoxical, because Bono is a singer and a rock star himself (self-awareness). Afterwards he is making clear that he is not just a singer, but also a father and a friend of dogs. The problem or conflict Bono is bringing up through his speech is mostly about Africa and the poor (the third world). He mentions the conflict, which has taken place in connection with sending money to some of the poorest countries of the world. When money is send to a third world country, it is n ot necessarily the poorest and the sickest people who get the money, because of the countries’ great debts.Bono finds this extreme problematic, and is therefore asking the students for their help. He thinks that the smart people at Harvard are needed to work this problem out. His argumentation for the importance of this cause is its influence on world history. He appeals to them and tries to motivate them by telling the sad story of the third world (motivation). Many people in third world countries dies e. g. of AIDS and HIV, because they do not get the money there is sent as help. He is mentioning that this holocaust, as he says, in Africa will be remembered forever, along with the internet. This argumentation is the climax of the speech.He brings up subjects who are very frail, and this is the point during speech, in which the listeners are paying most attention. During the speech at Harvard University Bono is appealing to the listeners feelings. In that way he uses emotion al intelligence a lot. Already from the beginning he is trying make like a personal bond between him and the audience. He is talking about is personal life, which makes the speech a little informal and tries to make the audience forget the pedestal that most of them have put him on. This makes the listeners feel comfortable in his presence, and let them met him at eye level (social skills).The subject he brings up is mostly including death and diseases. The third world conditions are in advance much discussed, and the discussions are typically very emotional. Bono is mentioning the conditions as an â€Å"African holocaust†. Even the word â€Å"holocaust† is enough to bring up bad memories and associations about World War II. To speak of the African problems by using a word like holocaust, both attracts people’s attention but also fills them with horror – again he is appealing to the emotions of his listeners. People are maybe finding the death in Africa h ard to relate to.But when Bono is talking about holocaust every man and woman knows the grade of seriousness and importance of the cause. The message of his speech is about brotherly love, charity and helping people in need. Bono is saying himself that he wants to ask the people at Harvard University for help. Help to make life better for people in the third world. By this he as a leader encourage them to take responsibility. He tries to guide them in the direction he thinks they should be guided (leadership). Comparison of the two speeches Both speeches start of by trying to meet the audience at eye level in order to inspire and motivate the audience.Both Obama and Bono succeed in doing this by making a rather humoristic intro before turning to the reel content of the political messages in the speeches. If this connection was not established, the political message would never get across to the rather difficult audience. The ability to establish this connection with an audience, an employee or a client is a sign of both good leadership skills and good emotional intelligence. Both Obama and Bono are very assertive in their speeches, but in very different ways. It is obvious that Bono is a rock star (who by nature exudes assertiveness) and not a politician like Obama.The Bono speech is written without a lot of foreign and long words, the language is very common, he uses little rhetoric, when getting his political messages across, which is all in oppose to the Obama speech. Obama uses long and intellectual words to promote his trustworthiness. Bono also uses a kind of slang when he says: â€Å"I’ve seen great minds and prolific imaginations disappear up their own ass (†¦)†. No one, especially not the President of The United states of America, besides a famous rock star, would be expressing themselves like that.Bono attracts the listeners’ attention by doing this, and he gets away with it, because of the entertainer and person he is. But it is definitely not something that a reel company leader would do in order to get his employees to follow him and his ideas. Obama shows a great deal of his emotional skills by letting in on his own weaknesses. Obama is the situational leader who guides his audience on what they must do and how they should do it, which you need to be, when you are the President of the United States of America. Bono I would characterize as a transformational leader (charismatic and inspirational).

Statement of Purpose Essay

Studying for an MBA requires a certain determination and strength of character. In recent years, the business world has become rapidly integrated across once restricting borders, and anyone with high goals in the business world must have an international perspective and be aware of the realities of different international arenas. I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce from Delhi University, (New Delhi) , India in 2nd division. I attribute my excellent grades to my diligence and motivation . I participated in several events and competitions in the university. Furthermore, in my senior year,I was selected as a coordinator in management Department. I was responsible for assigning coursework to different team members and collecting and analyzing information. This role taught me to work systematically and helped strengthen my communication and interpersonal skills. But, from a young age, I developed interest in the field of management. After graduation, I began working with HDFC Bank as a Team mamber in tele sales of credit cards and assets, ,after that i worked with Net Ambit business processes in ICICI Prudenticial life insurances process for almost 2 years and from last 1 years I am working as a Business development manager in Daffodil software solutions expert in overseas software group where I learned about Marketing activities, Cold calling for making new business, finance related processes, customer relationship, handling different types of queries of clients. After more than seven years of experience in sales and Marketing Management, I am confident working in a fast-paced international business environment. However, despite this breadth of experience, I feel that it is necessary for me to pursue an MBA program in , in order to expand my career potential and provide me with greater opportunities for future success. After finishing the MBA program, I expect to have acquired substantial management and business administration expertise. In the future, I aspire to work as a Manager, a role which demands that I have an international education and develop a more globalized viewpoint along with excellent organizational planning, and communication skills. Your MBA program is a key step in adequately preparing for my future goals. The curriculum of your MBA program is much challenging and will allow me to develop my abilities further. I feel strongly that the MBA program offered by your institution is ideal for developing these skills.

Builders pf great Rome essays

Builders pf great Rome essays Builders of a Beautiful Kingdom The Ancient Roman culture had a direct impact on how we view art, literature, architecture, education and religion. Early Roman civilizations were very sophisticated and idealistic. They build great architectural buildings and performed famous playwrights at these ancient places. Romans were considered to most advanced civilization of their time. With beautiful statues, well designed buildings, and some of the greatest philosophers came from Rome. One of the most noticeable characteristics of Roman society and culture is the impact of the Greeks. Greek civilization played an increasing role in Roman culture. Greek ambassadors, merchants, and artists traveled to Rome and spread Greek thought and practices. After Romes conquest of the Hellenistic Kingdoms, Roman military commanders shipped Greek art and ancient manuscript back to Rome. Every area of Roman life, from literature and philosophy to religion and education, was influenced by Greek models. Greeks were in much deman d as tutors, musicians, doctors, and artists. Latin translations of Greek plays for presentation at public festivals introduced Romans to the world of Greek theater. The Romans wore Greek costumes and Greek masks. The Romans were also dependent on the Greeks for artistic inspiration. In the third and second centuries B.C. the Romans adopted many features of the Hellenistic style of art. The Romans excelled in achitecture and in beautiful are. They also built bridges and aqueducts, amphitheaters, and tenement buildings, the Romans also constructed a series of highways that traversed the Roman word and linked it all together. The Romans also developed a taste for Greek statures which they placed not only in public buildings, but in their private houses. Greek knowledge was a crucial ingredient in education, schools taught by professional teachers emerged to supply this need. The ...

Philosophies of the Mind Essay Example

Philosophies of the Mind Essay Example Philosophies of the Mind Essay Philosophies of the Mind Essay Name: Tutor: Course: Date: Philosophies of the Mind Analogy of the Cave Q1 Explain what the analogy of the cave means. Plato describes the Analogy of the Cave in his book, The Republic. The author illustrates the Analogy of the Cave’s concept through a conversation between Socrates and Glaucon. In Book VII of this publication, Plato describes how people live confined in a dark cave with chains around them. He describes the life of a prisoner in an attempt to explain his theory. In his book he writes, â€Å"Behold! Human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open toward the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks so that they cannot move† (Kessler 373). Moreover, the prisoners only have the ability to see what is in front of them due to their chained necks. Additionally, the conditions in the cave worsen due to the large fire at the rear of the cave. Plato also talks about a path bordering the fire and the prisoners. With nothing else to do, the prisoners observe the shadows of the people passing on the path cast in front of them. Furthermore, echoes from the passers-by fill the cave. In this analogy, Plato compares illusions to shadows. According to the author, the shadows and echoes are all that is familiar to the prisoners since they have never left the cave. The prisoners even compete in identifying the objects casting various shadows on the wall of the cave. Consequently, they perceive these illusions as the reality. Through their conversation, the two describe the possible outcomes of their release. In the analogy, the prisoners would not recognize the same objects that cast a shadow in the cave’s wall. Socrates asserts, â€Å"And you may further imagine that his instructor is pointing to the objects as they pass and requiring him to name them, – will he not be perplexed?† (Kessler 374). Additionally, he perceives that the released prisoner will believe the shadows and echoes as real as opposed to the physical objects causing these illusions. This is evident when he says, â€Å"will he not fancy that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than the objects which are now shown to him?â €  (Kessler 374). Moreover, he states how the fire light that was familiar to the prisoner while in prison would stress his eyes when he physically looks at it. He also describes how the light from the sun would make him uncomfortable. Nevertheless, the analogy indicates that the prisoner would assimilate reality, as opposed to illusions in a slow pace and after some time abandon all illusions. Moreover, he states that the prisoner will no longer have problems in viewing the sun light or the fire upon getting used to the outside world. Socrates states, â€Å"He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world. And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and stars and the spangled heaven, and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day?† (Kessler 374). He goes ahead to describe how he would appreciate his newfound reality and even pity those still imprisoned in the dark cave. The prisoner would regret the period he dwelt in the world of illusions. He would not comprehend how he felt comfortable in his previous state of mind. This is according to the analogy of the cave where Socrates affirms, â€Å"And when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the den and his fellow- prisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change, and pity them?† (Kessler 375). In this publication, Plato creates a picture of the possible events upon return of the free prisoner to the dark cave. He would no longer be able to identify the people an objects casting shadows on the cave’s wall. Furthermore, this ancient philosopher illustrates how hard it would be for the returned prisoner to participate in the cave dwellers’ competition of identifying shadows and echoes. In addition, the rest of the prisoners would view him as disadvantaged. Furthermore, they would view him as partially disabled. Upon seeing the state of the different prisoner, they would increase their hate for the outer world. This is evident where the author writes, â€Å"Men would say that up he went and down he came without his eyes, and that it is better not even to think of ascending; and if anyone tried to loose another and lead him to the light, let them only catch the offender, and they would put him to death† (Kessler, 375). The author of this book uses a prisoner to describe the famous analogy of the cave. This analogy argues that both realities and illusions are in one’s mind. Depending on the surrounding environment, one can decide to take certain illusions as the reality and stick to it. In order to shift from these illusions, the victim must go through an acclimatizing period.The author uses symbolism to explain the analogy of the cave. He uses objects that everyone can relate to in an attempt to analyze this theory. For example, he relates cave to the concept of vision and fire light to the sunlight. Moreover, he uses the upward journey to intellectual levels. This is clear in the portion where he indicates, â€Å"This entire allegory, I said, you may now append, dear Glaucon, to the previous argument; the prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellect ual world† (Kessler, 376). The Analogy of the Cave entails reality and illusions. Plato uses the story of the prisoner to contrast the two worlds. Moreover, he tries to convey his belief in the power of illusions. This renowned philosopher believes that the world of reality is created from illusions and forms. Additionally, Plato uses prisoners to illustrate the ignorance of individuals living in the world of illusion and their comfort in this situation. According to the author, the world of reality is relative to an individual. Moreover, the strong believer of the world of forms relates the reality and illusion worlds to the five senses in a person. This is according to his argument in the book, â€Å"Anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind’s eye† (Kessler 376). According to his theory, the real world is a rational form of the illusion version of an object. As such, the world of forms is crucial in creating the real world. It is through these illusions that make objects appear real. Moreover, the world of forms improves one’s intelligent through the five common senses. Additionally, this philosopher identifies one’s soul and mind as the forces behind the real world. The analogy states, â€Å"Whereas our argument shows that the power and capacity of learning exists in the soul already; and that just as the eye was unable to turn from darkness to light without the whole body, so too the instrument of knowledge can only by the movement of the whole soul be turned from the world of becoming into that of being† (Kessler 377). Q2 Why do you agree or disagree with the analogy of the cave? The Analogy of the Cave is one that achieves its objective of explaining the occurrence in our environment. It describes these occurrences in details in an attempt to eliminate people’s confusion on nature. The analogy makes it clear that our thoughts relates to one’s soul and mind. Moreover, the improvement of our intelligent levels relates to the mind and soul and can determine our personality. The author of this philosophic book states, â€Å"And whereas the other so-called virtues of the soul seems to be akin to bodily qualities, for even when they are not originally innate they can be implanted by habit and exercise, the virtue of wisdom more than anything else contains a divine element which always remains, and by this conversion is rendered useful and profitable† (Kessler 377). The Analogy of the Cave is, therefore, one that creates a sense on the human nature. It helps understand the different perspectives and views of people. In conclusion, the Analogy of the Cave is relevant in the explanation of human thinking. Rene’s First Principle Q1 Explain how Rene arrives at his 1st Principle The First Principle by Rene, according to Meditation I and II of Descartes, seeks to protect the fields of science and religion from irrational critics. This principle supports the non-questionability of theories in the two fields. According to Rene, one can only consider something as true or false upon gathering sufficient evidence to support the claims. This principle works against premature judgments on various ideas. Moreover, Rene campaigns for detailed analysis of ideas and concepts before making conclusions from them. Rene came up with this principle upon his dissatisfaction with the western philosophy that tried to connect science and religion. In his publication, â€Å"the western philosophy did not produce anything that was not in dispute and consequently doubtful† (Kessler 6). Being a staunch catholic as well as a scientist, the philosopher believed that the two fields were independent of each other. Moreover, he believed that the concepts in these fields needed sufficient proof in order to be termed as true or false. As such, this principle prevents review of these concepts based on one’s thoughts and opinions. His issue with science-based arguments was due to their concentration on the past’s ideologies while leaving no room for recent observations. Upon identifying the gaps in the existing philosophy, Rene decided to create a principle against this philosophy in order to eliminate prejudgments in these fields. He used his own self as a study tool to create a principle that controls criticisms on science and religion. In his book, â€Å"I eventually reached the decision to study my own self, and choose the right path† (Kessler 7). This detailed study gave rise to the famous ‘first principle’. Q2. After reaching the 1st Principle, Rene then asks what the â€Å"I† is. Rene goes through several possibilities, and concludes that he is a thinking thing. Explain how Rene arrives at this conclusion from the 1st Principle Rene used himself as a study tool to formulate his first principle. According to him, human beings use their minds to argue certain concepts and theories. He illustrates thinking capability as the main difference between human beings and other creatures. According to Rene’s principle, a human being’s mind is immortal as opposed to the body. He is of the idea that the mind control human beings. This explains his belief that the soul of a human being continues to exist even after one’s death. This belief in this concept relates to his strong catholic faith. The catholic denomination believes that the soul is the core of a human being. As a result, his religious history influenced the formulation of his first principle. In his principle, â€Å"our souls can exist without our bodies† (Kessler 10). This evidence satisfies the affirmation of Rene in his publication, â€Å"I think, therefore I am† (Kessler 12). Q3 Do you agree that humans are essentially minds or souls? According to Rene’s first principle, humans are mainly made of minds and souls. This principle describes the human body as physical. Because of this state, the body is mortal, and upon one’s death, it completes its functionalism. On the other hand, the soul and mind of an individual are intertwined and the force behind the functionalism of an individual. Moreover, the soul is non-physical and immortal. This makes it continue functioning even after the death of an individual. Rene argues that comprehension of events in one’s environment is the responsibility of the mind and not the body. By the use of the candle wax melting process as an example, Rene cancels out the idea that the five senses are responsible for articulation of events in the surrounding. He argues that these sensory organs are just vessels that direct information from the mind to the body. Q4 Rene asks: â€Å"Then what was there in the wax that I comprehended so distinctly?† Explain how Rene answers this questionIn the experiment of the wax, Rene analyses the concept behind his identification of the physical state of the wax. He says, â€Å"Then what was there in the wax that I comprehended distinctly† (Kessler 13). After his analysis, he concludes that the appearance and characteristics of the wax in its different forms appear due to the action of the mind as opposed to that of the five senses. Rene states, â€Å"What the wax is only with my mind† (Kessler 13). According to Rene’s answer, the mind is responsible for identification of physical objects. To give an explanation to his answer on the wax experiment, Rene divides human beings into the mind and body. Moreover, he explains his theory that minds are more powerful than the bodies due to their non-physical state. According to his line of thought, the mind can influence the body’ s actions although the vice versa is not true. However, this thought has drawn substantial argument from his critics due to his conclusion that the control of the body by the mind takes place in the pineal gland of the brain. This conclusion contradicts his thought that physical objects do not influence non-physical ones. Q5. Explain why you agree or disagree with Rene’s view of the mind and the body and his view of religion and science I agree with Rene’s theory that due to the evidence he uses to support his claims. The mind is a powerful and independent part of humans that control their actions. It aids in differentiating real objects from their shadows. As such, one is able to differentiate the real world from that of illusions with the help of our minds. This is evident from Rene’s first principle. Moreover, his principle aids in eliminating irrational criticism on the fields of religion and science. This is important as some aspects in these broad areas need no baseless criticism. Aspects such as God’s existence depend on one’s faith and relate to the mind. Moreover, his principle on science issues is valuable. People should not base certain concepts related to science on personal opinions due to their complex nature. This principle makes Rene’s thought relevant in the worlds of science and religion. Work Cited Kessler, Gary E. Voices of Wisdom: A Multicultural Philosophy Reader. Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth, 1992. Print.

Answer questions Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Answer questions - Coursework Example There are a number of bones that were analyzed so as to determine the cause of death and possible identity of the victim. The bones are as follows: (A)Chimpanzees do exhibit a social behavior in the sense that they interact in a group setting whereby there are certain activities conducted by different members, this in the long run tend to benefit the whole group. (B)Working in a group setting has an effect on all members as it is mutually beneficial, it lays upon each member a task to perform this can be seen during grooming. (C)The reason for the chimpanzee behaving in this manner is that it makes their lives easier through working as a community to achieve a set goal. (B) The environment in which the animals live in and get there food from forced them into establishing or use of the grip or hands when it comes to picking food, climbing trees, grooming or their involvement in any activities that require the use of

Chiropractor Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Chiropractor - Research Paper Example (Cited from BLS.gov) Chiropractors have a very routine job description which includes; performing a series f manual adjustments to the spine or other articulations of the body, in order to correct the musculoskeletal system, evaluating the functions of the neuromuscular skeletal system and the spine using systems of chiropractic diagnosis, diagnosing health problems by reviewing patients’ health and medical histories; questioning, observing and examine patients and interpreting x-rays. In addition, they are responsible for maintaining accurate case histories of patients’ medical histories, obtaining and recording patients’ medical histories. Furthermore, they are responsible for analyzing x-rays in order to locate the sources of patients’ difficulties and to rule out fractures or diseases as sources of problems, counseling patients about nutrition, exercise, sleeping habits, stress management and other matters and consult with and refer patients to appropr iate health practitioners when necessary. (Cited from Careerplanner.com) Students usually need two years of college before they can enroll in a chiropractic college, but some states and schools require four years. They should take courses in science and other subjects required by the chiropractic college that they want to attend. ... Chiropractors can practice only in States where they are licensed. Some States have agreements permitting chiropractors licensed in one State to obtain a license in another without further examination, provided that their educational, examination, and practice credentials meet State specifications. Most State licensing boards require at least 2 years of undergraduate education, but an increasing number are requiring a 4-year bachelor's degree. All boards require the completion of a 4-year program at an accredited chiropractic college leading to the Doctor of Chiropractic degree. For licensure, most State boards recognize either all or part of the four-part test administered by the National Board of Chiropractic Examiners. State examinations may supplement the National Board tests, depending on State requirements. All States except New Jersey require the completion of a specified number of hours of continuing education each year in order to maintain licensure. Chiropractic association s and accredited chiropractic programs and institutions offer continuing education programs. (Cited from BLS.gov) Median annual wages of salaried chiropractors were $66,490 in May 2008. The middle 50 percent earned between $45,540 and $96,700 a year. In 2009, the mean salary for chiropractors was $94,454 according to a survey conducted by Chiropractic Economics magazine. In chiropractic, as in other types of independent practice, earnings are relatively low in the beginning and increase as the practice grows. Geographic location and the characteristics and qualifications of the practitioner also may influence earnings. Salaried chiropractors

Woman and Social Oppression Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Woman and Social Oppression - Essay Example Even with laws to prevent this sort of treatment of women, we suffer from this deep-rooted system that allows for men to hold a dominant position. The God of Small Things also explores the oppression of women, but it is present in a much more flagrant manner in this novel. Ammu is not even given a chance to succeed in life, as she is not permitted to pursue an education and her only realistic goal in life is to marry someone and do what he wants. When Ammu divorces, she becomes an outcast and she spends the rest of her life waiting to die. These works show that women are oppressed in a variety of ways in different cultures and that gender constructs are causing this oppression. The essay â€Å"Oppression†, by Marilyn Frye, examines how women are oppressed in society. Often times, this oppression is not flagrant, but is rather a series of small privileges that are taken away from women in order to benefit other social groups. The author makes the claim that women live within a birdcage, where each of the individual wires is meaningless but when they are all put together, it is impossible for the bird to escape. The oppression of women has two main features, according to Frye. First of all, they are place in positions of power where they hold a great deal of responsibility, but they are not given enough power to effectively use this position. Also, women know that they are limited in these positions of power, so they make sure that they do not exceed the limits that society has placed upon them. The system is in place, according to Frye, to privilege men and oppress women. In Judith Lorber’s essay, entitled â€Å"The Social Construction of Gender†, the author agrees that the roles of each gender are defined by society and there is very little that can be done to alleviate these constructs. Lorber traces these constructs back to

Follow instruction Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Follow instruction - Essay Example The story The murder of Roger Ackroyd talks about the killing of a prominent person of the town, Mrs. Ferrars . However, the book ends with an unexpected plot twist where the murderer finally confessed of the murder. It is Dr. Sheppard who admits on committing the crime. The murderer tries to hid the guilt that he has on committing the crime and says, â€Å"I did what little had to be done† which is said at the situation where he hides the Dictaphone and shifts his chair. According to Dr. Sheppard he thought that he would finally be the one responsible for failing Roger Ackroyd and that the detective won’t be able to solve the case. Hence this serves as the confession as well as the suicide note by the murderer (Chritstie, 123). It is in this last chapter, that the murderer writes about how he committed his murder, mentioning every detail on how and what happened and what was his purpose behind it. It would have been better if the author could have divided each paragrap h into shorter ones instead of writing everything in two very big ones. The author has put more dialogues than actual actions which make it a bit tiresome to read. Also sometimes in the paragraph, the author has forgotten to put inverted commas which indicate the beginning of a dialogue, and since there aren’t any inverted commas the story becomes a little confusing to the readers. Apart from these, the paragraph is written well with not punctuation or grammatical errors. Similarly in the book The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, it is in the final chapter that the crime of the murder of the boy is finally solved after going through various locks and dead ends. The detective Jonathan Whicher, finally discovers that it was the half sister of the young boy who committed the crime. Contance Emilie Kent wrote a letter which served as her confession letter, she also agreed on letting the press know that she had killed Francis Saville Kent (Summerscale, 288). She explained her

Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 144

Assignment Example The ‘ice cold’ phrase mentioned on the product also helps in the attraction of the people to buy the coca cola product (Shimp &Terence 58). Additionally, it indicates that its product is a delightful and also heathful to both men and women. Convesely,it also includes the students indicating that it is cold enough for them during the athletics (Shimp &Terence 58). The presence of condoms is highly expanding in the contemporary culture for the youth. This makes their advert offensive due to its unethical presentation. This advertisement has really led many of the youths to sexual activities and various disease transmissions. Additionally, the display of the product on the advert is not pleasing to people and thus the product is not largely marketable. The company uses such an advert to attract customers but the advert also shifts the people’s cultural landscape. Again the company also displays nude people expressing sex action on a bed. This is an offensive advert because it encourages immorality in the society. It is contrary with the culture and thus people do not buy the product (Shimp &Terence

Assignment2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words - 3

Assignment2 - Essay Example IBM New York continued with its drastic expansion into Germany with the aim of developing machines a few weeks after Adolf Hitler ascended to power. In 1933, Hitler used statisticians as his intellectual soldiers. Census departments and statistical offices were among the clients of IBM. Nazi statistical professionals laid claim to what they presumed their developing technology was going to achieve. Their entire anticipation was based on the growing creativity of IBM tabulator technology and punch cards. Only IBM could create and implement systems to quantify, sort, and identify the German people from the other populations. The 1933 census, with tabulation services and design assistance given by IBM helped the Nazi achieve their purpose. In 1935, census data that was machine-tabulated significantly increased the approximated number of Jews through the identification of people with a few or a single Jewish ancestor. Over 2000 multi-machine sets were distributed all over Germany. Moreov er, card sorting systems were developed in all camps (Black, 2001). In 1939, another census was conducted to find out the complete number of the Jewish population. The census activities were closely linked with cards and technology supplied by IBM. In addition, Nazi concentration camps had a department which kept records of inmates by the use of the punch card technology. Every concentration camp contained a code number for the purpose of keeping records. In 1943, when prisoners arrived at the concentration camps, they would be assessed physically and for political activities and their information recorded on the punch cards (Black, 2001). Richard Wiggins came up with the idea of the Speak and Spell in 1976. This idea set the landmark for digital processors, being the first one to utilize linear predictive coding to carry out speech synthesis. In 1980, the initial stand-alone, comprehensive digital processors were developed. In 1983, digital processors continued to be more successfu l. These digital processors were developed on the basis of the Harvard architecture. They contained distinct data and instruction memory. These data processors contained a unique instruction set, with commands, for example, multiply and accumulate, and load and accumulate. Almost more than five years after this invention, a more advanced set of digital processors started to spread. This processor contained three memories for recording multiple operands at the same time and contained hardware to quicken tight loops. In addition, this processor also contained an addressing component with a capacity of loop-addressing. Finally, contemporary digital processors have a tremendous performance. This can be attributed to both architectural and technological developments, for example, a wider bus system, fast-access two-level cache, and lower design rules. In my view, these items are significant because they highlight significant events that highlight changes that have led to the development of digital processors. For instance, the Nazi used the punch card technology to record information during the census and in Nazi concentration camps, and the current processors contain tremendous qualities, for example, fast-access two-level cache. Question 2 Henry Edward Roberts was an American entrepreneur, engineer, and medical doctor. In 1975, he created the initial commercially profitable personal

Follow instruction Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Follow instruction - Essay Example The story The murder of Roger Ackroyd talks about the killing of a prominent person of the town, Mrs. Ferrars . However, the book ends with an unexpected plot twist where the murderer finally confessed of the murder. It is Dr. Sheppard who admits on committing the crime. The murderer tries to hid the guilt that he has on committing the crime and says, â€Å"I did what little had to be done† which is said at the situation where he hides the Dictaphone and shifts his chair. According to Dr. Sheppard he thought that he would finally be the one responsible for failing Roger Ackroyd and that the detective won’t be able to solve the case. Hence this serves as the confession as well as the suicide note by the murderer (Chritstie, 123). It is in this last chapter, that the murderer writes about how he committed his murder, mentioning every detail on how and what happened and what was his purpose behind it. It would have been better if the author could have divided each paragrap h into shorter ones instead of writing everything in two very big ones. The author has put more dialogues than actual actions which make it a bit tiresome to read. Also sometimes in the paragraph, the author has forgotten to put inverted commas which indicate the beginning of a dialogue, and since there aren’t any inverted commas the story becomes a little confusing to the readers. Apart from these, the paragraph is written well with not punctuation or grammatical errors. Similarly in the book The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, it is in the final chapter that the crime of the murder of the boy is finally solved after going through various locks and dead ends. The detective Jonathan Whicher, finally discovers that it was the half sister of the young boy who committed the crime. Contance Emilie Kent wrote a letter which served as her confession letter, she also agreed on letting the press know that she had killed Francis Saville Kent (Summerscale, 288). She explained her

Assignment2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words - 3

Assignment2 - Essay Example IBM New York continued with its drastic expansion into Germany with the aim of developing machines a few weeks after Adolf Hitler ascended to power. In 1933, Hitler used statisticians as his intellectual soldiers. Census departments and statistical offices were among the clients of IBM. Nazi statistical professionals laid claim to what they presumed their developing technology was going to achieve. Their entire anticipation was based on the growing creativity of IBM tabulator technology and punch cards. Only IBM could create and implement systems to quantify, sort, and identify the German people from the other populations. The 1933 census, with tabulation services and design assistance given by IBM helped the Nazi achieve their purpose. In 1935, census data that was machine-tabulated significantly increased the approximated number of Jews through the identification of people with a few or a single Jewish ancestor. Over 2000 multi-machine sets were distributed all over Germany. Moreov er, card sorting systems were developed in all camps (Black, 2001). In 1939, another census was conducted to find out the complete number of the Jewish population. The census activities were closely linked with cards and technology supplied by IBM. In addition, Nazi concentration camps had a department which kept records of inmates by the use of the punch card technology. Every concentration camp contained a code number for the purpose of keeping records. In 1943, when prisoners arrived at the concentration camps, they would be assessed physically and for political activities and their information recorded on the punch cards (Black, 2001). Richard Wiggins came up with the idea of the Speak and Spell in 1976. This idea set the landmark for digital processors, being the first one to utilize linear predictive coding to carry out speech synthesis. In 1980, the initial stand-alone, comprehensive digital processors were developed. In 1983, digital processors continued to be more successfu l. These digital processors were developed on the basis of the Harvard architecture. They contained distinct data and instruction memory. These data processors contained a unique instruction set, with commands, for example, multiply and accumulate, and load and accumulate. Almost more than five years after this invention, a more advanced set of digital processors started to spread. This processor contained three memories for recording multiple operands at the same time and contained hardware to quicken tight loops. In addition, this processor also contained an addressing component with a capacity of loop-addressing. Finally, contemporary digital processors have a tremendous performance. This can be attributed to both architectural and technological developments, for example, a wider bus system, fast-access two-level cache, and lower design rules. In my view, these items are significant because they highlight significant events that highlight changes that have led to the development of digital processors. For instance, the Nazi used the punch card technology to record information during the census and in Nazi concentration camps, and the current processors contain tremendous qualities, for example, fast-access two-level cache. Question 2 Henry Edward Roberts was an American entrepreneur, engineer, and medical doctor. In 1975, he created the initial commercially profitable personal

Culture and disease Essay Example for Free

Culture and disease Essay Diabetes is a common chronic disease whereby blood glucose or sugar levels in the blood are too high. Glucose mainly comes from foods that are consumed and by the help of insulin hormone they can get into the body cells to provide energy. Diabetes is classified into two types whereby in type 1 diabetes the body is unable to produce insulin whereby with type two the body does not make insulin or use it well in the body. Therefore, when body lacks enough insulin to convert sugar into energy, the sugars stay in the blood and this leads to the disease condition of diabetes. The two common types of diabetes are type 1 and type II diabetes. The condition mainly affects the old people due to lack of exercise and poor eating habits. Within the Italian community, the most common condition presented is diabetes mellitus but unlike other places in Italy it affects children between the ages of 0-14. Diabetes mellitus occurs when the pancreases is not capable of producing enough insulin which is meant for converting sugar into energy. When the cells are not responding well to the insulin which is produced a disease condition can arise. This leads to lack of absorption of glucose into the cell of the body and therefore high levels of glucose are found in blood. The disease manifest itself in different symptoms such as frequent urination, leathery weigh loss, hunger and excessive thirst. The disease can be controlled by exercising regularly and eating well balanced diet and avoiding a lot of sugary meals. Condition can be treated by administration of insulin so as to convert the excess sugar in the blood to energy so that it can be utilized by the body cell. This condition in severe state it can cause renal failure, heart disease, blindness, and stroke or limb amputation. There is quite a high prevalence rate of diabetes in Italy which is about 3-4% of its population and it increases with age. Most of them have type II which is diabetes mellitus and it occurs mainly at the onset of adulthood. Agent or causative agent of diabetes mellitus in Italy and elsewhere are not known since the disease occurs when the body can not produce insulin properly. Type I mainly occurs in young people whereby islet of langerharn cells stops producing insulin completely. In the report by John (2002), diabetes can also arise as a result of auto immune problem whereby the body turns against its own cells thus damaging them and rendering important processes to take place. Type II mainly affects the old people but it’s also gaining roots in younger generation due to lifestyle i. e. As a result of poor diet and sedentary lifestyle. In this type, the body is unable to utilize insulin in converting blood glucose levels to energy. Other causes of diabetes includes:- Obesity- This mainly occurs as a result of metabolic syndrome. It occurs as a result of extra energy. Diabetes can also be caused by excessive chronic stress due to excessive utilization of thoughts. Therefore, the best way to overcome all these causes is by living a healthy lifestyle exercising regularly and being cautious on what you are eating. Diabetes mellitus can also result due to hereditary factor whereby the disease is passed through the generation on families. It can also result due to the environmental factors of the surrounding. In genetic diabetes, these individuals have a common genetic marker Type I can occur as a result of vital infection or other microorganism which damages the islet of langerharns cells in the pancreas. Type II is mainly associated with old age, obesity and genetic factors. Italian population is said to be more vulnerable to diabetes than the rest of the European countries. This is much contributed by their lifestyle and the diet they utilize. One thing in Italy is that almost half of its population are said to be overweight and they are clinically tested and proved to be obese. Obese is one of the factors that caused diabetes. Their stare of obese prevents them from working and living normal life due to the bulkiness of their bodies. Failure to work and live normal life hindered them from obtaining financial help from state to help them fight the condition. There state of obesity is also contributed by their diet since they mainly consume fatty foods which are rich in carbohydrates and therefore they end up accumulating a lot of energy which is not utilized in their bodies leading to obesity (James, Kelly, 2007) [PR] There are quite a number of environmental factors which contributes to diabetes. One major environmental cause of diabetes is persistence organic pollution in the environment and insulin resistance. Around 1940, Italian was quite persistent in the use of DDP pesticide which was quite dangerous to crops for consumption and also human. Even after it was banned it remained in the environment causing more harm to human. They slowly biodegrade and finally enter into the food chain which is finally consumed by human. Therefore, high levels of persistence organic pollutants cause types II diabetes. Environmental contaminant which mainly causes diabetes acts through estrogen receptors which results to disruption of endocrine by the chemicals which are incorporated in pollutants. Due to the industrial activities of Italy these pollutants are quite many within the environment and have resulted to diabetes type II since they hinder utilization of insulin by the cells. The mode of transmission of diabetes underlies some of difference in concordance rate. In Italy one of the major transmission modes is through genetic transmission which is mainly from substantial differences in preference rate of the disease which is mostly present in the same ethnic group and to those people who are under similar environmental burden. Apart from genetic transmission, diabetes can posses the mode of inherited transmission. This is also genetically connected whereby phenotype and pathophysiological levels indicates that genetic compounds are likely to be heterogeneous. Different mode of transmission of diabetes can be evidenced in discrete families and it can act as an overall mode of inheritance. Therefore, diabetes is mainly transmitted through genetic since it’s a hereditary disorder and can be passed from one generation to another within the same family (altha, Edgren, 2007) [PR]. There are quite a number of control methods which are used to control diabetes in Italy. These modes of control can be used to minimize the risk of infection in most prone areas of Italy. The first main control measure is by ensuring that the right diet is consumed foods with high energy context should be avoided such as consumption of a lot of carbohydrates in diet, sugary things, snacks fatty foods, potatoes and other meals which have a lot of energy. These foods can lead to obesity which is one of the major causes of diabetes. Therefore if they are avoided the risk of one being obese is reduced which consequently reduce the prevalence rate of acquiring diabetes. Another control measure which needs to be taken into account and which is less practiced in Italy is exercising regularly. Regular exercise helps to burn excess fats and energy which makes one’s body physically fit. In Italy due to most of the people being overweight they do not exercise regularly and this makes their bodies to retain a lot of energy and therefore they become prone to infection. Regular exercise therefore can be used as a control measure in preventing diabetes among the Italians. Exercising healthy lifestyles is also another thing that can help in the control of diabetes this is mostly encouraged in those families who have a life history of diabetes since by doing so they minimize the risks of inheriting disease from their relatives. Government of Italy can also come in to ensure that the danger posed to its citizens of acquitting diabetes as a result of harmful environmental effects like the use of DDP. Therefore, government should ban the use of such chemicals which are harmful to human life and also to ecosystem at large. The main treatment methods used for curing and maintaining diabetes at minimum are change in diet, administration of oral medicine, and in other cases daily injection or insulin or Byetta are mainly used to improve insulin concentration in the blood so that it can convert excess glucose in the blood to energy so that it can be utilized by the cells. Apart from these medicines in most of the routine hospitals in Italy they use acarbose and metform which are known to reduce the disease prevalence in the country by increasing the levels of insulin in the blood. They also use sulfonylurea and combination of different drugs in treating diabetes. These form of treatment resulted to different complication among those who were treated. These complications ranged from mild to severe complications such as diabetic retinopathy, diabetic neuropathy, coronary artery disease, and nephropathy and obstatic arteriopathy of lower limbs. This showed that the medication had vast adverse effect on the health of patient which did not cure the disease but brought about more complication to patients. In determining the social and cultural influences of diabetes in Italy, anthropological methodology was employed which signified that:- They came up with ways of breaking the social network providing support of young people and this contrasted greatly with the ideas of health cares that held conferences, meeting and social support networks. Diabetes patients were excluded at any age without minding about their development they were categorized by age and not individual ability and preference. People were encouraged to take care of themselves at an early age which ensured that they were separated from the family and peer. According to Italian population, they considered the type of treatment offered inconvenient and mostly since it was associated with so many side effects to most of the patient who treatment was administered to and acted well on a very small percentage of patients. Therefore, patients in Italy do not believe that there is effective medication for diabetes and hence they opt for just natural ways of curing the diseases i. e. by use of diet exercising. Therefore since statistics shows that there is quite high prevalence rate of diabetes in Italy as a result of poor diet and lack of exercise. The country need to come up with ways of minimizing this incidence rate since their treatment methods are not quite effective and they end up causing move harm to patients. Reference: Altha Robert, Edgren Ken R, (2007), The Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine, (vol 5) Jacqueline L. Longe Ed 3 Detroit, Gale on line update. Anne Dornhorst Gary Frost, Robert Mosses, (2003), Nutritional Management of Diabetes Mellitus, New York: John Willey and Son. James Enger, Kelly, (July-August 2007), Dangerous diabetes obesity connections on How to reduce your Risks now, ‘’vibrant life’’: 6-11.

Reading Aloud: Challenges and Solutions

Reading Aloud: Challenges and Solutions This assignment is my guide to the final step of my dissertation. In this assignment, I will discuss in details about what I will do for my dissertation. First, I will discuss my topic and why I have chosen, it and I will indicate my research questions and sub-questions. Next, I will identify key areas I need to read about and I will summarize 11 books and articles that give useful theoretical background for my research. The topics I am interested include define reading, then the process, models, methods of teaching reading, strategies readers use and the miscue analysis in relation to reading strategies. This second section will help me build the literature review for my dissertation. Finally, I will describe my research procedure and research methods I am going to use. Section one: My topic and why I chose it My topic is about problems my pupils have in reading aloud and find ways of improving my pupils reading aloud. I have chosen this topic because in my experience as a teacher I faced and taught different kinds of pupils from different levels, I have found that most of them have problems in reading, particularly reading aloud. Some of them are good in reading aloud but have many do substitute other words, have omission of words or letter-sounds while reading. This could be due to lack of sight vocabulary, lack of phonic skills, lack of strategies for reading. Some of them cant produce a single word. I discovered that pupils were learning nothing if they could not read aloud. My pupils who cannot read aloud have general difficulty in decode any reading text successfully. I believe my research is important because reading aloud is very important for my pupils in grade 9, which is closer to the final school leaving examinations in grade 12. I hope it may able me and my colleges to find the diagnoses to help the participants and in future to help all my pupils with their reading problems . In my research I wil try to analyze and describe their miscues in reading aloud according to their levels good, average and week. That time I couldnt do any thing about it because I didnt have the experience to help them. After I joined the B.A course and studied EDUC 2031 TEYL, EDUC2033 Initial Literacy, EDUC2028 Language learning from these modules I realized the nature of young learners how do they learn, how do they acquire new language and how to teach reading to young learners. As I understood the older ways of teaching reading focused on letters and words and how to say them, all language books are concerning on that view only. The new researches showed a different view which rely on development of all language skills so, because reading in a second language is seen as a thinking exercise thats not only concerned on reading words, sentences and pages only but it is on developing language as a whole. Reading is the main reason to build the personality of a person as I mentioned before and it is the main thing that teaching and learning stands on because it is a communication way between the learner and the academic culture in the schools . I would like my pupils to be able to use reading for study, for pleasure , to understand and to interact with what they learning. My pupils are in grade 9 of general education school at the age of 14 years old with different ability levels. They have been studying English for five years only using Our World Through English. They started leaning English from grade 4. In addition, they are similar in many things such as pupils environment, strengths and weakness areas they have. I decided to do research for my dissertation where I will focus on finding the difficulties my pupils face in reading aloud and helping me find ways to improve my pupils in reading aloud. Although my research will focus on reading aloud, from my experience a pupil cannot read aloud well, he can have little or no comprehension when he read silently. My research question is: How can I develop the reading aloud abilities of my grade nine pupils?. My sub-questions will be: What miscues my good pupils and weak pupils make when reading aloud? Based on my miscue analysis, what reading strategies do my good pupils and my weak pupils use when reading aloud? What reading strategies can I encourage my pupils to develop to improve their reading? In my research the subjects will be six pupils from 2 of them are good , the other 2 are average and the last 2 are weak pupils) (785 words) Section 2 Summaries of relevant literature The key areas I will need to read about for my research are: reading process models of reading Methods of teaching reading. reading strategies miscue analysis How miscue analysis can be used to identify the reading strategies that pupils use and the errors they make. In this section I discuss 11 books / articles that I want to use for my dissertation because they will help me to develop my understanding of issues related to my research. The aspects that are relevant to my study are summarized below. Urquhart and Weir(1998) Urquhart and Weir discuss three models of reading and I will state them here : Bottom up approach. They say this analyses begin with the stimulus, i.e. the text, or bits of the text. They say that in Goughs (1972) model, the reader begins with letters, which are recognized by a scanner. The information thus gained is passed to decoder, which converts the string of letters into a string of systematic phonemes, then word, then sentence then text. So bottom-up models are sequential in that one stage is completed before another is begun. Top-down approaches. Since bottom-up models starts with the smallest text unit, either letters or letter features, we could expect, then, that top-down models begin with the largest unit, the whole text. According to Urquhart and Weir for top-down model of reading, readers first use their background knowledge to help them make a sense from the text. So for top-down approaches background knowledge is very important. Interactive approach. In interactive models (Urquhart and Weir refer to Rumelhart, 1977), there is no regular sequence from top to bottom or from bottom up. They quote Stanovich the best known proponent of interactive models, that in interactive models a pattern is synthesized based on information provided simultaneously from several source (1980:35). So in interactive approaches reader uses both small text units and background knowledge to make sense out of a text at the same time. Urquhart and Weir describes reading strategies to be a conscious response to difficulties in the text while reading action selected deliberately to achieve goals (Is this a Quotation?). Aebersold and Field (1997) Aebersold and Field also have sections on models of reading (bottom up , top down and interactive). They also focus on the readers experience in learning how to read and the ways reading fits into their lives. They give five common influential sources for information that affect reading development, particularly family, the community and the school influence. They mention that despite relatively small size, a family can foster a variety of experience that affects a childs reading development. They say that the community influence provides readers with a set of varied life experiences that also shape their individual knowledge. Thirdly the school can bring children into contact with communities other than their own or they can be homogeneous institution that reflect shared values. This is interesting because in Oman children learn English without much support from the family or the community and school does not bring child in contact to many other communities. Riley (1996) This article has a section on models of reading (bottom up , top down and interactive). The author discusses how schema theory describes the process by which readers combine their own background knowledge with the information in a text to help them comprehend that text. All readers carry different schemata (background information) and these are also often culture-specific. This is an important concept in ESL teaching, and many books have pre-reading tasks that are designed to build or activate the learners schemata. The author also highlights some of the limitations of the use of the schema-theory approach and points out the importance both of developing the learners vocabulary and of encouraging extensive reading. (This sounds as if it is copied. Beware plagiarism, Saif.) Wray and Medwell (1991) This article focuses on reading process , models of reading and approaches to teaching reading. In reading process, they mentioned that reading is a highly complicated process, and there are a number of insights and concepts that the successful reader must develop. In models of reading, they discuss bottom-up models, top-down models, and interactive models and they strongly criticize the bottom up model. They also have a section on teaching reading approaches look and say, phonic methods of teaching reading and language experience approach. I discuss these under Graton and Spratt (1998) below. Graton and Pratt (1998) This book have useful sections on methods of teaching reading (whole word , phonics , language experience ) the methods teachers can use to teach pupils how to read. Most teachers use these methods to help their student in reading , sometimes they chooses one of these methods but some teachers work on two or more because they think each method is completed by the other. The phonic method as widely used from the language teachers to teach reading and writing in the English for second language learners. It is relies on children being taught the alphabet first. Then they learn to pronounce the sounds of the letters . However it is difficult to depend only to phonics because English is not a regular spelling language. The second method is look and say or whole word method. Here pupils learn to recognize whole words or sentences rather than individual sounds. The pupils will look at a word which the teacher sound, often with a picture, and in turns will repeat the word. The problem is that it does not teach children to work out new words for themselves. The context support method can be used when the pupils are just learning to read and it is important to choose exercises or activities that really interest them. If the pupils like cars, choose an activity or exercises with pictures and simple words about cars. This will keep their interest and they will enjoy learning with the teach. OMalley and Valdez Pierce (2001) OMalley and Valdez Pierce give a useful part about miscue analysis (p 124-5). They say it involves listening to a student reading aloud and recording the miscues. In types of miscues, they mention repetitions, substitutions, insertions, omissions and self-corrections. They also recommend the teacher must get the student to answer reading comprehension questions. They say miscue analysis can provide information about (1) the readers ability to use language and the reading process (2) it can be used for assessing reading, the readers approaches to reading and reading comprehension (3) information for revising approaches to teaching reading, how it can be used by teachers effectively to improve their learners reading. This book has useful lists of reading strategies (p 121-123) and suggest how miscue analysis can be used to identify reading strategies readers are using. The authors talk about reading in the native language then reading in second language, which I am interested in. The writers said that learners who do have native language literacy skills might not know how to transfer their skills to the second language without specific strategy instruction. Carter and Nunan (Eds.) (2001) Carter and Nunan (Eds) (2001) define reading strategies as Ways of accessing text meaning which are employed flexibly and selectively in the course of reading. In teaching, attention is paid to the manner in which the reader is able to draw effectively on existing linguistic and background knowledge. They list the good reading strategies that learners use to help them read in a very efficient way, to get maximum benefit from their reading with minimum effort. These include drawing inferences, predicting and using information in the text such as pictures. They also discuss miscue analysis in relation to reading strategies: As they say, miscue analysis refers to the study of the text alterations conducted by the subject while the pupil reads the text and would be very impossible without reading aloud. Carter and Nunan (Eds) (2001) assert that for early readers miscue analysis can be used by teachers to assess the quality and quantity of learners errors in their processing of text. First, this is especially useful for L2 learners who because of their interlanguage system may show systemic syntactic and phonological departures from Standard English. In addition, they argue that miscues will be based on learners current interlanguage rather than because of misunderstanding the text. Wallace (2001) p26 in Carter and Nunan (2001) Wallace discusses miscue analysis and she focuses on how miscue analysis can be used for early readers to assess the quality and the quantity of learners errors. Beard (1987) Beard has a section on miscue analysis and methods of teaching reading (whole word , phonics , language experience). The author focuses on miscue analysis and gives some models of how to use miscue analysis to develop pupils reading and how miscue analysis can fulfill an important diagnostic function of a kind not readily offered by other more established means of reading assessment. Cameron (2001) The author has sections on reading strategies , models of reading (bottom up , top down and interactive) , methods of teaching reading(whole word , phonics , language experience ) and discusses how miscues can help the teacher identify the reading strategies a reader is using . The author gives an example from her experience of reading with a little Malaysian girl. The author mentioned that she had introduced her to the strategies such as: With the word bar, I pointed to the first letter , the sound of which she knew, and then she managed to sound out the word. With the word rather I just told her the word and did not spend any time on it , because it was not crucial to the meaning of the story and is not a particularly useful word to learn at her stage. ith the word meals I told her the word and then explained the meaning as the story progressed and the heroine moved from break fast to tea. When she came to watching TV she said washing . From this miscue I could see that she was making a good attempt at the word and had noticed the initial consonant and the final rime. www.mindtools.com/pages/articals/ According to www.mindtools.com/pages/articals/ miscue analysis refers to the study of text alterations made by the subject while s/he reads the text aloud. They summarise the research of Clay, Goodman and Weber (Davies 1995, p13) and they give a useful list of types of miscues. They say that the alterations often made by a reader are: Substitution (another word is pronounced instead of the printed word) Self-correction (the reader realizes his/her mistake and corrects by him/herself.) Repetition (the printed word is repeated orally) Omission (a word is missed from the text) Insertion (a word not in the text is added by the reader) Reversal (the word order gets changed or inverted) Hesitation (the reader pauses or makes a sound indicating hesitation) A long pause. The article also relates the miscues to approaches. It says that if a reader shows more hesitations, long pauses and self-correction, this shows a bottom up approach with the reader giving most attention to pronouncing the printed words. If a reader shows more miscues such as omission, insertion, reversal and substitution, this shows a more top-down approach where the reader is paying attention to the meaning of the whole text, not reading word by word. (Check this is not plagiarized. Can you give authors?) (1,910 words) How I will investigate my research question As discussed above, my research question will be How can I develop the reading aloud abilities of my grade nine pupils ? My Approach: For my approach and method, I read Blaxter, Hughes, Tight, (2000), Cohen, Manion, Morrison (2000), Nunan (1992). For my research approach, I will use an action research approach enabling me to investigate my own pupils over a period. Action research grows from the idea that a good teacher is one who reflects on what happens in the classroom à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" possibly with a view to changing it. (EDUC3079 session3). My Method For my research I will plan to use miscue analysis and interviews. The miscue analysis will provide quantitative data and the interviews will provide qualitative data. I will select a text from the course book which is not familiar to my pupils , I will let them each to read aloud this text , I will record them while reading , then I will use miscue analyses to help me analyse their mistakes. Finally I will interview each pupil, I will ask questions to to assess their comprehension of the text, to get them to tel me what strategies they used to work out the meanings of some words and to try to find out why they failed to read certain words correctly. The research Procedure My research will include an unknown reading text from the OWTE course book that the six pupils will read it in order to have effective and organized results for my research question. This text from the course book OWTE that I think will be not familiar for the pupils because I gave it to them for the first time (See the appendix). First I will use pre-reading questions to prepare each pupil for the reading. Pre-reading is a way of sampling where the students are familiar to the content that you are going to give them. It is a useful strategy for beginning with a class, especially when classes contain students with mixed abilities coming from a diversity of backgrounds. Then each pupil will read the text and I record it. Then I will note down all the miscues. Finally I will interview them to examine their understanding, to assess their comprehension of the text, to get them to tel me what strategies they used to work out the meanings of some words and to try to find out why they faile d to read certain words correctly. My Expectations: I expect some problems, and here I discuss how I will overcome them: Miscue analysis, I cannot assume that any two pupils will have the same miscues. In addition, anxiety may cause artificial results. To overcome these problems, I will choose six pupils from different levels. I will try to get them relaxed, so I will tell them about the reason for my research, and I will do the recording in a quiet place, so we are undisturbed. Pupils may feel boring from doing reading every time, so I must prepare a good situation for them to feel comfortable. The main problem I think it is the time. These kinds of studies should not used in a short period because the researcher need to try many ways to investigate his pupils and his study in order to collect a valid, reliable data. Conclusion: The EDUC 3079 helped me a lot on finding solutions for many problems that I will face in future in my life as a teacher to help my pupils to reach the successes in their life as students. I learned how to read a lot and how to use the linguistics theories to help my pupils and to learn and discover the problems. The use of miscue analysis is a very useful way to solve pupils weaknesses in reading because it is allows me to focus on the problem it self , and how to deal with each problem individually.