HYPNOTHERAPY & NEURO LINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING Essay - 1

HYPNOTHERAPY & NEURO LINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING - Essay Example Therefore, all the suggestions are entered to the subconscious without conscious intervention. Once conscious faculties are sure that monotonous stimuli unlikely to endanger their subject, they become complacent and irresponsible. With attention gone there can be no conscious intervention which leads to the state of conscious suspension. Conscious faculties are alert and vigilant to check the security or any danger from external stimuli. Therefore, the conscious faculties intervene when suggestions are on their way to the subconscious. To produce monotony to the sense of feeling, the subject should be made very comfortable by reducing all possible external stimuli. The pressure on the subjects body should be released by avoiding any unpleasant sensation commonly known as pins and needles. The subject should be instructed to sit properly without the legs crossed. The room environment should be calm and temperature should be maintained at constant level. If the emotional force generated by thoughts or perceptions is not discharged through appropriate action, the pressure will build up and escape where it finds least barrier. If it is not discharged, building of such a force might lead to destructive level of pressure. Hypnotist displays posters before his performance which claims to possess mysterious hypnotic powers, the power to control minds, and the power to control the actions of others. At the actual show, special stage props, a carefully planned presentation, and the impressive appearance of the hypnotist, all play a part in contributing still further to building up emotion in the audience. In normal situations the emotion is discharged through appropriate action. The builded pressure escapes where it finds least barrier. When the asserting pressure is moderate, feelings such as satisfaction, dislikes etc. are released. It can render the conscious faculties inefficient and incapable of carrying out their normal duties. In our working model of the

Alcoholic in Teens Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Alcoholic in Teens - Research Paper Example Moreover, alcoholism is more than just a social weakness or problem as many would tend to think if the medical definition of it being a chronic illness is anything to go by. As a matter of fact, the National Institute on alcohol abuse and alcoholism in a report of a research recently conducted indicates that there is increased risk of post-traumatic stress disorder among alcoholics (Bryant, 2013). This is because alcoholism has been found to affect the brain so that the retention of trauma is higher than usual. Social workers should therefore be concerned with the identification of the factors that have made alcoholism among teens popular (Zarbock, 2008). In recognition of these surprising facts and statistics among other effects of this major problem in the American society especially with regards to teenagers, the study will be conducted to ascertain the extent of this problem among teenagers in the country. The research will be for the purposes of pointing out the extent of alcoholism among teenagers using the primary surveys and available secondary data on the subject. The study will involve a sample of participants across the country. The identified sample will be conducted with the help of about 60 teenagers who are currently within the states and territory of the United States. The age bracket under investigation that will also be considered for sampling will be boys and girls between the age of 12 to 15. Since there is the issue of legal consumption of alcohol, the identified age bracket is important for the examination of the effectiveness of the law in curbing this habit among the younger generation. The main sampling criteria employed will be intensity sampling. This is because there will be need for the identification of a fairly distributed and representative sample so that the objectives of this study is

Verbal Art Essay Example for Free

Verbal Art Essay â€Å"All literacy practices can be considered creative.† Discuss.(2000 words)Prior to any discussion on the topic, it is imperative that the definitions for the key terms are given so as to ensure complete clarity.Literacy practices refers to â€Å"people’s everyday practices of producing and interacting with texts.† (Papen and Tusting, p312) This can include basic and tedious practices such as filling in forms, to more interesting practices such as writing a newspaper article, or composing a song perhaps.Creativity refers to â€Å"making something which is new, which did not exist before the creative act,† or â€Å"making something which is original, which is unlike things that have been made before. † (ibid, p.315) While the term is particularly fluid and open to different interpretations, this definition will suffice here for the purpose of this assignment.Although there are various approaches to the study of creativity – Carter (2004, cited in Maybin, p. 414) coined the term inherency model for creativity relating to the â€Å"formal aspects of language as an abstract system of sounds, grammar and meaning† – for the purpose of this paper, Carter’s second identified approach to understanding creativity in language – the sociocultural model – will be utilised. In this model, creativity in language is seen as determined to a greater or lesser degree, by social, cultural and historical factors.Studying specified texts and drawing out elements of creativity, in for an example a poem, is a specific task with a specific purpose, and is generally something pupils may do in school, but the real creativity, as highlighted by Camitta (Papen and Tusting: Reading A), is the collaborated effort to create a poem, song or rap purely for personal reasons.In her case study over three years at a Philadelphia high school, Camitta studied varieties of literacy among students who believed that â€Å"writing is central to transacting social relationships,, to making meaning out of their lives, and that the act of writing signals that the truth is being told about them.† (Camitta, cited in Papen and Tusting, p332) For them writing was an active form of self-expression, much similar to music, dance, and drawing. The types of texts they produced were vernacular – unofficial and closely related to culture, and as such, collaboration and performance were central processes to producing the texts. The author, in his/her free time, would read out or perform their text – be it rap, song, poem, letter – to an audience, who  would then collaborate and suggest changes. This highlights the author’s creativity in the first instance, but also the creativity of the audience. As is evident, this is quite different to the classroom setting, as these are texts that the collaborators can make suggestions about for changes which will actually lead to amendments, as opposed to commenting on set-in-stone texts. Context is an important factor in creating creative literacy practices. Camitta’s study focused on pupils who were constrained to a degree by the need to be in certain places at certain times, and hence had to fit their writing around that, but there are people who are much more constrained, and in that sense, their creativity is much more astounding. Wilson’s research focused on prisoners’ use of creativity. While the Philadelphia high school students used language as a form of self-expression, and also for play and innate creativity, Wilson states that â€Å"the vast majority of innovation in the prison setting is used not for play, humour or dalliance, but in order to â€Å"keep your mind† †¦ â€Å"and to encourage a sense of mental agility in a world designed to reduce everything and everyone to conformity and orthodoxy.† (Wilson Papen and Tusting, Reading B, p.341)Wilson goes on to highlight an important factor, that creativity and language are situated and contextualised by the environments, spaces, times and cultures in which they are located. In the case of the prisoners, their creativity was evident in the spatial and material forms as well. Spatially the prisoners formed a â€Å"third space† for themselves, which was separate from the prison and the â€Å"outside,† in which to â€Å"live† out their sentence. (Wilson, 1999, p.20) In terms of material creativity, Wilson gives examples of pressing mugs against heating pipes, using the toilet bowl for communication, hiding notes inside tennis balls, and â€Å"swinging lines.† (Wilson, Reading B, in Papen and Tusting, p.344) In terms of creativity in literacy practices, prisoners write letters, poems and raps, in a sense similar to the high school pupils. The difference here is that their literacy practices are a result of the â€Å"third space,† i.e. to retain a sense of individual identity and a â€Å"desire and need to maintain a sense of self agent and not just as subject to other people’s desires and rules.† (Papen and Tusting, p.322).â€Å"The possibilities associated with a setting do not determine what is created within any given context; but they do shape what is possible.† (Papen and Tusting, p.320) With this in mind, the reader’s  attention is not turned to a different type of affordances and constraints â₠¬â€œ that relating to new technologies.Bodomo and Lee (2002, cited in Papen and Tusting, p.323) claim that new forms of language and literacy emerge from the introduction of new communicative tools and media,† which in turn give way to the introduction of techno jargon, literary jargon and new types of digital literacies. The literacy practices associated with new technologies can be categorised into two concepts of creativity as outlined by Kress (2003, p.36). The first is the concept of ‘transformation’, which is the way â€Å"the producer of a text can alter and adapt the forms of signs within a mode in relation to their needs and interests† (Kress, cited in Papen and Tusting, p.323). This can be found in modern literacy practices such as emailing or texting. The use of emoticons is an altering and adapting of signs to create a new meaning in a situation where the texter/emailer is constrained by the symbols available to him via the keyboard/keypad, for example, when a colon and a closed bracket are put together thus: : ) they produce: ï Å  a smiley face.Kress’ second concept is that of ‘transduction’ which â€Å"refers to the moving of ‘semiotic material’ across modes, where meaning that was originally configured in one (or several) modes is moved across to a different one† (Kress, cited in Papen and Tusting, p.323). Papen and Tusting cite the example of the students in Reading A, who â€Å"performed† the poems they wrote, changing from the written to the oral mode. Another very clear example is that of online chatting. Friends usually make plans to meet up in the evening at the local McDonalds for example, but now via internet chat rooms and other forms of internet relay chat (e.g. MSN, Skype), friends can virtually meet up with each other while individually remaining in their own homes. Speech becomes writing, and in many cases still has the feeling of verbal communication, for example with the use of certain greeting words, acronyms, code switching, etc. The author’ has her own experiences of transduction as three of her brothers live abroad and her main communication with them, although previously was via face-to-face or telephone conversations, is now via computer-mediated-conversations. It becomes immediately apparent to her if one of their spouses is pretending to be a brothe r and is chatting to her from their use of language and the individual creativity inherent in it. Although the examples above highlight literacy practices that are constrained through the medium (for  example, the limited number of symbols on a keyboard/keypad), new technology also offers many affordances for the user. In the practice of ‘blogging,’ â€Å"blogs can include visual and other material, producing a kind of virtual scrapbook† (Maybin, p.266), thus drawing on the affordances offered by the Internet. Maybin comments on the dialogic nature of blogging (page 269); in the blog ‘The Story of an Aspiring Romance Writer’, the author’s posts are answered by other ‘bloggers’, who discuss the points raised and provide support and feedback for the author. One act of creativity present in this type of feedback and response is â€Å"the dialogic construction of the self† (Maybin, p.269), which is â€Å"the shaping of self in the course of responding to others† (ibid). Collaboration – discussed previously in the paper plays an important role in this particular literacy practice. Creativity also exists in the chosen medium of a literacy practice; for instance, advertising in Katutura is written on whatever material is to hand, whether it is wood, cardboard or on the wall of a house. Papen notes â€Å"creativity here has a material aspect† (p.352); this is clearly evident in Colour Figure 10, which is an example of heteroglossic diversity; this sign contains not only a multitude of voices, but also a multitude of genres. The phrase â€Å"Just find me here anytime†¦Ã¢â‚¬  is deliberately informal, even friendly in nature. It implies that the owner is an easygoing person, ready to help whenever is most convenient for his customer. This contrasts with the final line, â€Å"Thank you so much for your cooperation†, which adopts a typically business-like ‘official’ voice. Papen sees this sign as containing â€Å"a bricolage of genres and registers† (p.352) that is the result of â€Å"some careful thinking and creative approp riation of a new language† (ibid). There may be some parts of speech, or literacy practices, which are seen as creative â€Å"in the moment†, but perhaps not deemed creative later on, because there is no knowledge of what went before or after or the context. (Maybin, p.415). A poignant example of this is the author’s mother who came to England from India in her teens with very little knowledge of English, verbal or written. A very clear memory remains of shopping lists on the fridge door. In terms of â€Å"material creativity,† as discussed previously, the shopping list is not at all Indian in nature, and most people in India probably do not write them, but having come to England, the author’s mother was creative in that she adopted this simple practice for herself.  Furthermore, bearing in mind her little knowledge of English, instead of writing in her mother-tongue Gujarati, she would write in English, in her Indian scroll, spelling items the way she heard them: shugr, bred, weetbiks, e tc. The statement at the heart of this paper was: â€Å"All literacy practices can be considered creative.† The approach taken to explore this was the sociocultural model which allowed certain aspects to have a bearing on literacy practices, such as collaboration, performance, context, transformation, and transduction, highlighting that cultural and social change have caused creativity within literacy practices, but it would be a gross misjudgement here to fail to acknowledge that writing and literacy are also causal factors in the process of social change.Crystal distinguished between amateur and ‘professional’ users and uses of playful language. Amateur creativity is in the form of everyday language in riddles, jokes, limericks, playful uses of accents and dialects, nonce words in popular songs and sayings, while ‘professional’ creativity refers to language play in the work of headline and advertising copy-writers, professional collectors of ludic langu age, comedians and writers of humorous texts. (Crystal, in Carter, R. p.72) Regardless of which of these a literacy practice fits in to, as Papen and Tusting highlight: â€Å"There is an argument that all meaning-making processes have a creative element† (p.315). Furthermore, if one thinks about â€Å"language as [†¦] a system that is constantly created and re-created, changed and adapted, then creativity even at this level turns into a normal event.† (Papen and Tusting, p.324)Hence, as a final note, one may state, that every literacy practice, whether for personal pleasure, or for needs, in open and also restricted contexts, to more or lesser degrees are indeed creative.. Bibliography †¢ Carter, R. (2004), Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk, London Routledge.†¢ Kress, G. (2003), Literacy in the New Media Age, London and New York Routledge,†¢ Maybin, J. (2006) â€Å"Locating Creativity in texts and practices† in Maybin, J Swann, J. (eds) The Art of English: Everyday Creativity, Palgrave Macmillan, The Open University. †¢ Maybin, J. (2006), â€Å"Writing the self† in Maybin, J Swann, J. (eds) The Art of English: Everyday Creativity, Palgrave Macmillan, The Open University. †¢ Maybin, J. Swann, J. (eds) (2006), The Art of English: Everyday Creativity, Palgrave Macmillan, The Open University.†¢ Wilson, A. (1999), â€Å"Researching in the  third space – locating, claiming and valuing the research domain,† in S. Goodman, T. Lillis, J. Maybin and N. Mercer (eds), Language, Literacy and Education: A Reader, London, Trentham.

My Personal Ethics and What They Mean to Me Essay Example for Free

My Personal Ethics and What They Mean to Me Essay Everyone has their own personal ethics, for me this means being honest to my self in everything I do. I use my personal ethics to help in making choices that affect every aspect of my life. Personal ethics for me mean that I choose to be who I am and don’t let others effect the way I think or behave. Ethics are what makes us who we are and how we react to situations. In school it is important to have personal ethics, this helps us to be honest, uphold the academic integrity, and be able to follow the rules that are set for us. When at work, home or while dealing with others your personal ethics come into play. People don’t even realize that they use these every day to make choices that will affect them. I always think before I say something and how it will affect the other person. There are some who do not do this however, and for them their personal ethics are different. I find it hard to understand those who do not have the same kind of personal ethics as myself. I know the reason why others do not think as I do, but it is hard to understand when someone is mean or dishonest and thinks nothing of it. I have always tried to be an honest and caring person. I take care of others and I am responsible for a lot of their personal items. I have to deal with small amounts of their money, cell phones, clothing, and jewelry every day. Without my ethics I would think nothing of taking things that didn’t belong to me. I know that I have had coworkers who have done this and I hate that it happened. They of course are no longer working here. It amazes me that people have bad personal ethics that they can even think about doing something to someone who has been placed in their care. I will as long as I live use my personal ethics to make me a better person to all I come in contact with.

Effects of Film on Driving Behaviour

Effects of Film on Driving Behaviour Mass Media Society Jeremy Philip Monteiro      Imbert Narumanan Sebastian Lim Jit Shern Contents page (Jump to) Introduction We conducted a study on college students here in Tunku Abdul Rahman University-College Penang to see if a movie could affect their driving behavior. We selected the movie, The Fast The Furious. The choice of movie is selected because the movie itself is involves high-speed chases and racing with vehicles that are modified to push itself to the limits. The movie itself is an action and also a thriller; it was released in 2001 and directed by Rob Cohen and distributed by Universal Pictures. The main cast of the movie are Vin Diesel and Paul Walker; Walker plays as an undercover cop who must stop a team of hijackers who are led by Diesel. Brian gets involve with the hijackers and falls in love with Diesel’s sister and must choose to be an accomplice in Diesel’s plan or blow it all over by arresting him and his crew. Throughout the movie there will be conflict, some family oriented scenes but its main focus are on the adrenaline-rushing fast cars. This research was done on college students, specifically in TARUC Penang. There were about 30 students who were asked to be interviewed using a prepared set of questions. The interview was conducted informally as it would make the interviewee more comfortable as well as to stimulate open ended answers rather than close ended. The idea is to see if these college students who have watched the movie affected in anyway in terms of driving. The title of our research is â€Å"Do movies affect students’ driving? A review on The Fast The Furious. Literature Review The theory that is used in this research is the Media Effects theory. Media Effect theory explains as how the media can affect the society and how the society can affect the media. The concept of this theory relies on both the media as well as the society. However there are several implications that are negative made of this theory which is saying that people try to follow exactly as to what they see. For instance, â€Å"copycat murder† that took place in 2004 when a boy was murdered by his best friend and the game ‘Manhunt’ was instantly banned due the style of murder was assume to be similar to the game. The theory defines moral panic in relation to representations of sex, violence and deviant behavior and its supposed effects on youth. Moral panic is the feeling that the situation is out of control in some way, and therefore represents a threat to the moral order. The media effects theory was firstly proposed by the Frankfurt School of social researchers in the 1920’s from people’s reaction to Nazi propaganda. The hypodermic model explains that the media is like a drug that society may be addicted to, stating that the audience are helpless to defend themselves against the media and just behave passively. This theory is quite similar to the Social Learning theory by Bandura where a studied made on 2 groups of children who are exposed to the violent content on television and the other group is exposed to the positive content. Later, both groups were given a doll and the group who were exposed to the violent content reacted violently towards the doll. This helps determine that children may behave according to what they see or exposed to. Research The purpose of this research is to find out if a movie such as The Fast The Furious may or may not be an affect or influence the driving in any way. In order to ensure that the information we use in this research is accurate and reliable, we decided to use a primary research method to obtain our results. Which is to interview our respondents face to face and gather their feedback. The idea of an interview is to obtain a qualitative research which is in hope to receive in-depth answers to the questions. The target audience were selected at random in college and most of them were from the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities. Based on the nature of the movie, we could assume that the producers of the franchise were targeting teenagers and young adults. Therefore we have decided to interview our fellow college-mates for this research. Moreover, most the students in TARUC have just gotten their driving license and are experiencing unsupervised driving for the first time. Our team has chosen 30 individuals within the campus grounds and approached them in the canteen, the library and the foyer. Below are the ten questions that were prepared for the interview: Have you watched The Fast and the Furious? Where did you watch the movie? What do you think of the movie? How many times have you watched the movie? Do you think the movie influences your driving style? In what way? After watching the movie, do you see yourself attempting to replicate the stunts you have seen? Which scene in the movie would you say made an impact on your driving? Do you think it is dangerous or safe to be mimicking the driving from the movie? After watching the movie would you say that your driving abilities have improved? Do you feel that the movie can play a role in how you drive? These ten questions are made specifically to understand how the student thinks or feel after watching the movie, especially to see if the movie has made a change on their driving abilities and if they are aware of it. We took note of what the 30 individuals had answered and evaluated them. Findings Based on the questions above, we have found that all 30 respondents have answered that they have watched the movie before. Since it being an old movie that was released in 2001, majority of students answered that they have watch the movie on television. However there were a minority that had answered cinema. Majority of students had answered that they think that the movie is a good and entertaining movie which falls as a positive review. However a minority of them had also answered that the movie comes off as an unrealistic and bad movie which implies as a negative review. To the question above, majority of students answered once and minority of them had answered twice. Based on the question above, all 30 students who have watched the movie claims that they are unaffected by the movie. To question 6, only 2 students answered â€Å"yes† where else majority of them answered that they will do not see themselves wanting to replicate the stunts they see in the movie. As to question 7, majority of students claimed the there is no scene applicable. However, a minority of 6% answered the racing scene made an impact on their driving. Based on the question, all 30 students have answered that it is dangerous to be mimicking the driving from the movie. According the chart above, minority of students claimed that their driving abilities have improved after watching the movie. However, majority of them said that the movie did not improve their driving abilities. Based on the final question, majority of students feel that the movie does not play a role in how they drive today and a minority of 23% said that it does. Conclusion We’ve learned that the conducting research isn’t an easy task and takes time to produce result. We also learn that most students find it hard to produce quality answers as they rather provide brief answers. From the findings above, we are able to deduce that the influence brought upon by a movie has not affected the driving style of college students in our campus. This is solely based on their answers of course; however we are unable to physically prove at the moment if it has taken an effect Most students found the movie to be fun and entertaining but however manage to realized that the movie is unrealistic and are aware of the dangers involve if they were to follow what they see in the movie. Despite having good overall reviews of the highly action packed scenes from the movie itself, students find that stunts coordinated in the movie is rather dangerous and definitely will not be attempted in their daily driving routine. In short, based on the majority of answers we gathered, after a watching the movie, The Fast The Furious, students at Tunku Abdul Rahman University-College are not affected by it. Bibliography/References Neal H.M (Producer), Rob Cohen (Director) (2001).The Fast and the Furious[Motion picture]. United States: Universal Pictures (Distributor). Martyn Shuttleworth(Jul 5, 2008). Survey Research Design. Retrieved Nov 22, 2014 from Explorable.com:https://explorable.com/survey-research-design Robson, C. (2002)Real world research: A resource for social scientists and practitioner-researchers, Oxford, Blackwell. Biagi, S. (2012). Media impact: an introduction to mass media (10th ed.). CA: Thomson/Wadsworth. Vivian, J. (2012). The media of mass communication (11th ed.). Singapore: Pearson. Burton, G. (2005). Media and society: Critical perspective. New York: Open University Press. Krish, S. J. (2006). Children, adolescents, and media violence: A critical look at the research. CA: Sage Publication. Appendix Survey 1 Have you watched the movie The Fast and the Furious before? Yes Where did you watched the movie? I watched it on TV, one of the Astro movie channels. What do you think about the movie? Very fast paced and entertaining action movie, But like all actions movies, it is filled with unrealistic action sequences, involving cars mostly, and violence. How many times have you watched the movie? Twice. Do you think the movie influences your driving style? In what ways? No, the move did not influence my driving style. After watching the movie, do see yourself attempting to replicate the stunts you’ve seen? No. What scene in the movie would you say made an impact the most on your driving? No scene in particular as I think the entire movie did not have any impact on my driving skills. Do you think it is dangerous or safe to be mimicking driving acts from the movie? It is dangerous of course, People have to know that Fast and Furious is a movie and the driving sequences are made to look unrealistic and dangerous to meet the criteria of an action movie. These sequences are mostly carried out by experienced stunt drivers. After watching the movie, would you say that your driving abilities have been improved? No, not at all. Watching the movie did not affect my driving skills at all. Do you agree that movies can play a role in how a person drives? Yes. Those who watch the movie and are into to automobiles might try to imitate the driving sequences done in the film, which depict illegal racing, speeding and reckless driving to be fun. Also, some people might get the idea that it is safe to do all those things and not get in trouble or get hurt as the characters in the movie remain unscathed and always get away with what they’re doing. Unfortunately, this does not apply in real life. Survey 2 Have you watched the movie The Fast and the Furious before? Yes. Where did you watched the movie? When it played on TV. What do you think about the movie? Good, quite entertaining. I thought it was very cool with the fast cars. How many times have you watched the movie? Once. Do you think the movie influences your driving style? In what ways? No. After watching the movie, do see yourself attempting to replicate the stunts you’ve seen? Nope, not at all. What scene in the movie would you say made an impact the most on your driving? No particular scene. Do you think it is dangerous or safe to be mimicking driving acts from the movie? Dangerous, of course. After watching the movie, would you say that your driving abilities have been improved? Nope, I was too young at the time when I first watched it. Do you agree that movies can play a role in how a person drives? Maybe. Sometime Maybe. Sometimes people will go too far and imitate their role models on screen without knowing the risks of actually doing so. Survey 3 Have you watched the movie The Fast and the Furious before? Yes. Where did you watched the movie? On the television. What do you think about the movie? Quite a cool movie. How many times have you watched the movie? Once but I watched it halfway through. Do you think the movie influences your driving style? In what ways? Nope. After watching the movie, do see yourself attempting to replicate the stunts you’ve seen? Not really, I wouldn’t dare. What scene in the movie would you say made an impact the most on your driving? No particular scene. Do you think it is dangerous or safe to be mimicking driving acts from the movie? Quite dangerous, After watching the movie, would you say that your driving abilities have been improved? No. Do you agree that movies can play a role in how a person drives? No. Survey 4 Have you watched the movie The Fast and the Furious before? Yes, unfortunately I have. Where did you watched the movie? It is quite an old movie, I think it was on TV. What do you think about the movie? It’s good but very unrealistic. How many times have you watched the movie? Once. Do you think the movie influences your driving style? In what ways? Absolutely not. After watching the movie, do see yourself attempting to replicate the stunts you’ve seen? No. What scene in the movie would you say made an impact the most on your driving? None in particular as I can barely even remember the movie. Do you think it is dangerous or safe to be mimicking driving acts from the movie? Very dangerous. After watching the movie, would you say that your driving abilities have been improved? Not at all. Do you agree that movies can play a role in how a person drives? Yes, there will always be some crazy sod out there who think they can pull of movie driving-stunts on an actual road an attempt to speed on the highway. Its ridiculous.

Gender Differences In Students Academic Performance :: essays research papers

Gender Differences in Students' Academic Performance Students with urban and suburban backgrounds consistently outperformed students from rural and small-town areas. Parental education levels correlated with academic success. Considering the background of the study's female participants one could reasonably expect women to outperform men. However, in spite of the higher indicators of success possessed by women, this expectation was not fulfilled. Data and background predictions did not match up with what actually occurred. Men received better grades, retained more of their self-confidence, and more men stayed in chemical engineering than women. When students run into math difficulties, men are more likely to credit math difficulties to challenges inherent in the subject, while women are more likely to explain away failure by lack of ability. This is the first of many discrepancies in men and women's perception of their own performance. Regarding general academic performance, women are more likely to attribute it to lack of ability while men more often attribute it to lack of hard work or unfair treatment. If students do well, women will more likely chalk it up to outside help while men see it as a reinforcement of their own ability. Regarding course performance, women were asked to indicate what grade would satisfy them and what grade they actually expected to receive in a course. The women's expectations decreased as the term progressed; they downrated their ability and ended up underestimating themselves. Courses involving group work were included in this study. Although group work was found to be generally positive and well-received by students, the findings inspired the authors to caution educators about potential reactions of students to group work.

Shakespeare And Anti-Semitism In The Merchant Of Venice Essay -- Merch

Anti-Semitism and the desecration of the Jewish population have been in existence for nearly five thousand years. In the Elizabethan era, a question of anti-Semitism invariably arises. In William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, we find that one of the characters is the embodiment and expression of anti-Semitic attitude that is pervasive in Elizabethan society. "Anti-Semitism was an intricate part in Shakespeare's years. Jews were considered vile and scorned upon. Shakespeare presents Judaism as an 'unchangeable trait'" (Bloom 37). Shakespeare's age based their anti-Semitism on religious grounds because the Elizabethans inherited the fiction, fabricated by the early Church, that the Jews murdered Christ and were therefore in league with the devil and were actively working to subvert spread of Christianity. The religious grounds of this anti-Semitism means that if a Jew converted to Christianity, as Shylock is forced to do in The Merchant of Venice, then all will be forgiven as the repentant Jew is embraced by the arms of the all merciful Christian God of love. In fact, some Christian believed--as do some fundamentalist sects today--that the coming of the Kingdom of God was aided by converting the Jews to Christianity. Anti-Semitism in Shakespeare's time is portrayed in his masterpiece The Merchant of Venice. "Shylock the Jew, one of William Shakespeare's profoundly ambivalent villains, is strangely isolated" (Bloom 24). He is portrayed as a usurer: A leader of money on interest rather than a receiver of stolen goods. This concept will prove to the audience that the Jews are in fact "cheap" and have a frugal sense for possessions. It is an intriguing idea to think that even in Shakespeare's time, stereotyping was a mundane part of their lives. Shakespeare's anti-Semitism seems harsh, but shows that not all Jews are vile like most people believed in his time. Shylock is shown to be hard working (Goddard 5). Believe it or not, there is some compassion for the desecration of the Jews in Shakespeare's play. Antonio recognizes the futility of opposing Shylock's passion with reason. "He seems the depository of the vengeance of his race" (Goddard 11). Antonio consequently appears as a charitable Christian who lends money freely, in contrast to the miserly an... ...an something like Marlowe's Barabas. But at the same time, it seems clear (to me, at least) that Shakespeare creates Shylock against an historical and cultural backdrop that was intensely hostile to Jews. Given this social context and historical tradition, it should come as no surprise if some of this hostility against Jews should infiltrate Shakespeare's work. Shakespeare was, after all, a commercial dramatist and many commercial dramatists make their livings by pandering to, rather than working against, conventional social mores. To make the claim that Shakespeare creates Shylock within an anti-Semitic culture, and therefore invests Shylock with biased anti-Semitic attributes, does not impugn the artistry of the drama. Nor does such a claim implicate Shakespeare himself as a monstrous anti-Semite. All this claim suggests is that Shakespeare, like most of the rest of his society, was hostile toward Jewry for religious and cultural reasons, and that hostility is revealed most clearly in Shylock. What these pages have tried to trace is the possible, or perhaps the probable, relationship between what was happening in Shakespeare's day and what is happening in Shakespeare's play.