Literacy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 2

Literacy - Essay Example Lake uses his son’s cultural literacy and the Indian traditional literacy standards to describe Wind’s state of grace, his power, and functionality within the Indian culture. He describes Wind’s literacy as a state-of-grace by identifying his excellence in learning what has culturally been expected of him. Lake applies traditional standards and succeeds in illustrating how the child’s literacy meets honorable standards by demonstrating his diversified knowledge. The description of the child’s scope of education that has been â€Å"colorful, complicated, sensitive, and diverse† identifies this state-of-grace because of the child’s tender age. The child has also learnt many things that different members of the society engage in. He has learnt from all social groups and this includes his father, mother, and people from both his generation and his parents’ generation. Wind’s literacy also identifies a state of grace because h e is able to apply the learnt concepts such as understanding indicators to natural phenomena (Lake n.p.). The writer also describes power in the child’s literacy by illustrating how the literacy captures the child’s attention to an extent that he can only focus on the knowledge when he identifies an associated phenomenon. When he identifies change in the atmosphere, Wind is carried away, and is captured by what he has learnt and his mind dreams of the things that his traditional literacy taught him that should be done at such times. This means that Wind’s literacy is not only powerful in its self, but is more powerful than the western literacy that has failed to capture Wind’s attention into focusing in class. Lake also uses developed conflict in the child to demonstrate the power in his literacy. When Wind learns that his literacy conflicts with the new form of education in school, the cultural conflict

Categorisation in Long-Term Memory Essay Example for Free

Categorisation in Long-Term Memory Essay The method used was a field experiment as it took part in a classroom. This method was chosen because the independent variable can be manipulated to find the effect on the dependent variable, which can draw conclusions about cause and effect. Doing this allows reasonable control of extraneous variables and where the experimenter has a significant amount of control. An independent groups design was most appropriate because it prevents order effects and demand characteristics to a certain extent. There will be two groups, a control group who will be shown a random list of words and an experiment group who will receive a categorised list. This enables me to compare the number of words each group can recall and therefore claim the cause and effect. Independent variable Whether participants are presented with an organised list of words or not. Dependant variable Memory as measured by the number of words the participant recall from the list of words. Participants It was an opportunity sample of International school students from 13 to 14 years old. 10 participants were allocated into each condition randomly (condition 1: control group who received a random list of words, condition 2: experiment group with an organised list of categorised words). Each condition had 5 females and 5 males. Anyone that was available was asked if they would take part in the experiment. None of the participants dropped out and only 2 students refused to take part, because they were not free at that moment. This sampling method was chosen because it was quick and convenient. By using independent designs, some extraneous variables were controlled. Order effects were prevented since different participants were allocated in different conditions. Having clear and concise standardised instructions reduced confusion. The procedures were standardised to reduce any experimenter effects. The room was kept in a constant temperature to reduce it from possibly affecting participants memory. Students were ranged from 13-14 years old. Other noise from outside the room may have distorted the results and therefore all windows and doors were closed so that as little noise as possible was allowed into the room. The group of participants who received the organised lists of words recalled more words than the participants with the randomly categorised list. It was distinctive from the graph that people given categorised words recalled more words than people who received a random list. The results support my hypothesis of better recall from students if words were categorised. The relationship between the independent and dependant variable was if the words were categorised, the higher the recall. Discussion Validity Validity is if the measuring apparatus measures what its meant to measure. By looking at the number of words remembered, its an indicator of memory as it is clear that the more words you recall the more words were remembered, this is called face validity and its purpose is to see if the experiment is testing what its supposed to measure. I chose 3 categories of words to use in my experiment and I think that they were the correct categories to use as they were all only 1 syllable and are generally used in everyday life. This is related to construct validity which is whether the method can be used to support the variable that is being measured. (If the experiment was replicated, we would see similar results) I think that I chose the words that best measure organisation and that my test was valid. Ecological validity is if the experiment measures a naturally occurring behaviour. This was a field experiment which has good ecological validity but its not usual for someone to be taken into a room and to participate in a test on a daily life setting. The participants were aware they were taking part in a psychology experiment so the results could have been affected by demand characteristics. Suggestions for improving validity Participants were aware they were talking part in a psychology experiment which could have created demand characteristics and possible experimenter bias. To obtain a higher ecological validity I could have applied my study to school/everyday life. For example, asking participants to recall a list of ingredients that they had used to bake a cake. This could prevent demand characteristics and experimenter bias as participants might not be aware this that it is a psychology experiment and could possibly make my results more valid. Doing this however, would make it harder to control any extraneous variables and the study would be more difficult to replicate and standardise. Reliability Reliability is whether the measuring method can measure consistently. If the experiment was repeated, similar results would appear. I have increased reliability using the same words in both lists. Two different lists of words decreases reliability as some words are easier to remember than others. Therefore using the same words will reduce this effect. In the list of organised words it was obvious that the experiment was testing memory which led to demand characteristics. The experiment were standardised which meant its easy to replicate. However, because participants were already told that they were taking part in a psychology experiment on memory, they knew what the experiment was about and could try harder to perform better on the test (demand characteristics). Improving reliability If I were to choose a different sampling method results would be much more representative, because my sample was an opportunity sample with only people who were free at that moment. I could have chosen a random sample to increase reliability since there are different levels of cognitive abilities in students and not only people who were free. This method could be done by picking 10 males and females randomly (picking out names from hat) from each year group. This means a total of 70 subjects would be used instead of just 20 and doing this would give me more reliable results and a much more representative sample of school students. Also, to reduce demand characteristics the purpose of the experiment shouldnt have been told to the participants until after the experiment, which is called debriefing. Implications of study Bousfield found that we have semantic organisation in our long-term memory. Bower et al found that organising words into a categorised hierarchy would help to improve recall. In this study I found that participants recalled more words when the words on this list were organised. This means that the findings of my experiment support both Bowers and Bousfields findings. This implies that there is in fact a short and long-term memory and that there is some kind of semantic organisation of the information in the long-term memory which can improve peoples re-call. Generalisation of findings Target population is the age and group of people an experimenter plans to generalise their findings on. In my experiment the target population was Island School students between the ages 13-14 years old. This was hard to generalise due to the sampling method. The method was biased because only students who were available and around at that time were asked to participate. This could be improved if a larger sample of students were used and not only people who were free to participate. My experiment only involved 20 people, which was too little to generalise a school of 1500 students. It was hard to generalise beyond the target population, as there are individual differences, psychological differences and cultural differences between much of the population. In addition my sample was too small to generalise beyond target population. Applications of everyday life It was found that an organised list of categorized words would be more efficient to remember than a randomly placed list of words. This can be applied to everyday life, for example when teachers teach children they have to teach in a systematical order so it is easier to recall the majority of information. As for a high school there is a syllabus which is organized by categorising the same type of information together. This is the most efficient way for remembering information and recalling it for exams.

Rabies Essay -- Biology Medical Disease Rabies

Abstract Rabies is a highly infectious viral disease that can easily ruin and eventually end the lives of both humans and animals alike. Rabies comes in two forms for animals. It comes in the form of paralytic rabies, which is the kind that puts you in paralysis right from the beginning, skipping the symptoms of agitation and excitability. Rabies also appears in the form of furious rabies, which is completely different in the way that it makes the victim restless, vicious and agitated. When humans get rabies, their symptoms start out with simple headaches and fevers and later progresses to terrible things such as becoming hydrophobic because of painful throat spasms and paralysis. A definite diagnosis of rabies needs lab analysis of saliva and brain tissue to detect the virus. However, rabies cannot be diagnosed during the incubation period. This means that the definitive diagnosis is only possible late in the disease or after the victim’s death Symptoms Rabies is a viral disease that can be contracted through punctured skin by an infected entity. Not only can animals be infected by it, but humans can too. If it is not diagnosed in time, then the probability of mortality will be almost certain. However, if caught in the early stages, rabies can be treated. An animal exposed to the virus may not have symptoms for two weeks, or even months. The virus can be found in an animal’s saliva days before any other signs appear. In animals, rabies can come in two ways. One is furious rabies, which goes straight to the brain. The other is paralytic rabies, which severely affects your spinal cord. Both of these will kill you if not treated on time. They both show the same early symptoms. This includes simple things like loss of appetite. ... ...s is thirty to sixty days. A rock solid diagnosis is only possible late in the disease or after death. In conclusion, rabies is an infectious viral disease with usually fatal results. There’s no way of getting a diagnosis before it is too late. If a person ever suspects themselves of having rabies they should go to a doctor as soon as possible. 5 Works Cited Jackson, Alan, Wunner, William. Rabies. San Diego, CA: Academic, 2002. â€Å"Rabies.† eMedicineHealth.com. October 2005. Accessed July 19, 2006. http://www.emedicinehealth.com/rabies/page3_em.htm United States Department of Agriculture. â€Å"Rabies Symptoms.† 2006. Accessed July 19, 2006. http://www.michigan.gov/mda/0,1607,7-125-1566_2310_2326-11626--, 00.html â€Å"Neurological Symptoms and Diagnosis: Rabies.† July 2005. Accessed July 19, 2006. http://tjsamson.client.web-health.com/web-health/topics/GeneralHealth/Rabies

Affirmative Action, A Social Issue Essay -- Inequality Equality Minori

Affirmative Action, A Social Issue The black rights and women’s rights movements of the 1960’s fought against injustice and discrimination that had been suffered by minorities for years (Hudson). In response, President Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925 in 1961, creating a Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity and mandating that projects financed by federal funding would â€Å"take affirmative action† to ensure that hiring and employment practices were free of racial bias (Hudson). Two more executive orders in 1965 and 1968 prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, and gender, giving the federal government the power to enforce this prohibition (Hudson). However, in current times, affirmative action programs have suffered setbacks. Affirmative action in education has been abolished in Texas by court order, and in California and Washington it has been terminated by public referendum (Bybee). Currently, the main question concerning affirmative action is whether or not it is the best way to combat inequality. Also: What groups should or should not have affirmative action? When will the problem be â€Å"solved† and affirmative action no longer necessary? While the United States is divided between 49% of citizens supporting affirmative action programs and 43% opposing them, many Americans have a difficult time even defining what affirmative action is (Gallup 2003). The term ‘affirmative action’ includes laws, policies, and programs designed to reduce or eliminate inequality (Hudson). Inequality is also a difficult term to define, but the fact that significantly fewer women and minorities enjoy high paying jobs, attend prestigious universities, and reside in wealthy neighborhoods m... ... of Michigan Sees 23% Decline in Minority Applicants.† Black Issues in Higher Education. Reston: 11 Mar 2004. Vol. 21, Iss. 2, p. 10. {scholarly primary, print via internet, reputable} Yetman, Norman. â€Å"Race and Ethnicity.† Sociology: Social Foundations of Public Issues. Mc-Graw Hill: 2003. {scholarly primary, print, reputable} Gallup Poll. N=1,385 adults nationwide (MoE  ± 3), including, with oversamples, 821 non-Hispanic whites (MoE  ± 4), 241 blacks (MoE  ± 7), and 266 Hispanics (MoE  ± 7). Interviewing was June 12-15, 2003, for non-Hispanic whites, and June 12-18, 2003, for blacks and Hispanics. Associated Press poll. Feb. 28-March 4, 2003. N=1,013 adults nationwide. MoE  ± 3. Fieldwork by ICR. NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll conducted by the polling organizations of Peter Hart (D) and Robert Teeter (R). Jan. 19-21, 2003. N=500 adults nationwide. Affirmative Action, A Social Issue Essay -- Inequality Equality Minori Affirmative Action, A Social Issue The black rights and women’s rights movements of the 1960’s fought against injustice and discrimination that had been suffered by minorities for years (Hudson). In response, President Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925 in 1961, creating a Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity and mandating that projects financed by federal funding would â€Å"take affirmative action† to ensure that hiring and employment practices were free of racial bias (Hudson). Two more executive orders in 1965 and 1968 prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, and gender, giving the federal government the power to enforce this prohibition (Hudson). However, in current times, affirmative action programs have suffered setbacks. Affirmative action in education has been abolished in Texas by court order, and in California and Washington it has been terminated by public referendum (Bybee). Currently, the main question concerning affirmative action is whether or not it is the best way to combat inequality. Also: What groups should or should not have affirmative action? When will the problem be â€Å"solved† and affirmative action no longer necessary? While the United States is divided between 49% of citizens supporting affirmative action programs and 43% opposing them, many Americans have a difficult time even defining what affirmative action is (Gallup 2003). The term ‘affirmative action’ includes laws, policies, and programs designed to reduce or eliminate inequality (Hudson). Inequality is also a difficult term to define, but the fact that significantly fewer women and minorities enjoy high paying jobs, attend prestigious universities, and reside in wealthy neighborhoods m... ... of Michigan Sees 23% Decline in Minority Applicants.† Black Issues in Higher Education. Reston: 11 Mar 2004. Vol. 21, Iss. 2, p. 10. {scholarly primary, print via internet, reputable} Yetman, Norman. â€Å"Race and Ethnicity.† Sociology: Social Foundations of Public Issues. Mc-Graw Hill: 2003. {scholarly primary, print, reputable} Gallup Poll. N=1,385 adults nationwide (MoE  ± 3), including, with oversamples, 821 non-Hispanic whites (MoE  ± 4), 241 blacks (MoE  ± 7), and 266 Hispanics (MoE  ± 7). Interviewing was June 12-15, 2003, for non-Hispanic whites, and June 12-18, 2003, for blacks and Hispanics. Associated Press poll. Feb. 28-March 4, 2003. N=1,013 adults nationwide. MoE  ± 3. Fieldwork by ICR. NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll conducted by the polling organizations of Peter Hart (D) and Robert Teeter (R). Jan. 19-21, 2003. N=500 adults nationwide.

Me, Myself and Madness Essay

What is madness? Madness cannot be categorized into one definition, nor can it be simplified into one specific action. In Hamlet, Hamlet, prince of Denmark, is consumed by madness and is alternately driven to his own death. Despite the fact that many people believe that Hamlet’s mad behavior was planned and controlled. It is arguable that his madness was not feigned, and he was actually insane. Hamlet was drove into madness by the demonic possession of the ghost of Hamlet, the deep grudge he had for his mother Gerturde, and the craving for revenge he had for the death of his father In act 1, scene 4, Hamlet, Horatio and Marcellus are confronted by the ghost that has been roaming around the outskirts of the castle. Hamlet sees, and recognizes that the ghost that has been haunting his home is none other than the spitting image of his father, the late king Hamlet, who was inconspicuously murdered by his own brother Claudius, who later becomes king of Denmark, instead of Hamlet. The ghost calls out for Hamlet to follow him alone into the woods. Hamlet’s perseverance led him to believe that the ghost of his father had the answers that he desperately needed, and for that, Hamlet decided to follow him alone. Horatio (warning Hamlet against following his father’s ghost) gravely warned Hamlet that if he follows the ghost, it might â€Å"deprive your soverereignty of reason and draw you into madness.† In other words, Hamlet’s madness began when he became possessed (both body and mind) by the ghost of his father to bring about his evil deeds. In this case, Hamlet lost his mind when he erased himself from his own brain and replaced it with his father’s commandments. In addition, Hamlet’s madness was also driven by a deep grudge he had for his mother Gerturde. After the death of Hamlet’s father, Gerturde remarried within a month, to his brother Claudius. Hamlet shows provocation at Gerturde for happily marrying so soon. And to add insult to injury, it was to his uncle, of all people. Hamlet questions the faithfulness his mother has towards him,  and later doubts the love Ophellia has for him. For this reason, Hamlet displays resentment, not only towards his mother, but to Ophellia, who was uninvolved in the tragic death of his father, and the sudden remarriage of his mother to his uncle. In act 3, scene 1, Hamlet and Ophellia are having an emotional conversation with each other. Hamlet screams to Ophellia â€Å"get thee to a nunn’ry, why would tho be a breeder of sinners.† For this reason, Hamlet yells â€Å"get thee to a nunn’ry† several times because he exhorts ophellia to become a nun, so that way, she may never breed sinners, like him. Even tho he offends Ophellia by saying this, the insult is more intentionally made for his mother Gerturde. The lack of faithfulness his mother has causes the vulgar behavior he has towards Ophellia, which henceforth progresses Hamlet’s madness.

Living on your own

Living on your own Free Online Research Papers As an adolescent growing up, I learned part of becoming a mature adult is learning how to be self independent. For example, one way to experience self independency is when you attend college away from home and you no longer have the guidance you did in high school. In college, you are no longer in the confinement of your parents’ rules or boundaries. For instance, when you lived at home and your parents might have repeatedly told you to come home by a certain time when you went out: when in college you can come and leave as you please without paying any consequences. Also, while living on a school campus, it is more convenient to get to your classes because you do not have to travel via bus or mass transit to get school to attend your classes. However, while living at home and going to college, commuting will take some time and may cause you to be late or absent for some of your classes. Living at home with your parents can also benefit you financially while going to college. At home, you maybe fortunate to have home cooked meals and your room is already provided for. While living on a college campus, you must pay for a dorm room which is in most cases costly. In addition, the cost of meals on campus in comparison to home is also much more expensive. Also, when living at home as a college freshman, your parents usually provide you with basic necessities on a daily basis and you do not have to pay for it. While this maybe true, when attending college you have the support of those at home but you are required to be more independent as you do not have the ones at home immediately available to provide for you. In conclusion, if you want to become a mature independent adult, you must first learn how to live on your own. College is the perfect experience to test your maturity. Research Papers on Living on your ownPersonal Experience with Teen PregnancyNever Been Kicked Out of a Place This NiceHip-Hop is ArtStandardized Testing19 Century Society: A Deeply Divided EraLifes What IfsThe Effects of Illegal ImmigrationThe Masque of the Red Death Room meaningsHarry Potter and the Deathly Hallows EssayTwilight of the UAW

Dinosaur Intelligence, and How Its Measured

Dinosaur Intelligence, and How It's Measured Gary Larson framed the issue best in a famous Far Side cartoon. A Stegosaurus behind a podium addresses an audience of his fellow dinosaurs: The pictures pretty bleak, gentlemen. ..the worlds climates are changing, the mammals are taking over, and we all have a brain about the size of a walnut. (See a slideshow of the 10 smartest dinosaurs.) For over a century, that quote has pretty much summed up popular (and even professional) opinions about dinosaur intelligence. It didnt help that one of the earliest dinosaurs to be discovered and classified (the above-named Stegosaurus, in 1877) possessed an unusually small brain, about the size of, yes, a walnut (its brain was so small, in fact, that paleontologists once speculated that Stegosaurus had a supplementary brain in its butt). It also didnt help that dinosaurs are long extinct; wiped out by the famine and freezing temperatures in the wake of the K/T Extinction 65 million years ago. If only theyd been smarter, we like to think, some of them might have found a way to survive! One Measure of Dinosaur Intelligence: EQ Since theres no way to travel back in time and give an Iguanodon an IQ test, naturalists have developed an indirect means of evaluating the intelligence of extinct (as well as living) animals. The Encephalization Quotient, or EQ, measures the size of a creatures brain against the size of the rest of its body, and compares this ratio to that of other species of roughly the same size. Part of what makes us human beings smart is the enormous size of our brains compared to our bodies; our EQ measures a hefty 5. That may not seem like such a big number, so lets look at the EQs of some other mammals: on this scale, wildebeests weigh in at .68, African elephants at .63, and opossums at .39. As you might expect, monkeys have higher EQs: 1.5 for a red colobus, 2.5 for a capuchin. Dolphins are the only animals on the planet with EQs even close to those of humans; the bottlenose comes in at 3.6. (By the way, EQ scales vary considerably; some authorities set the average human EQ at about 8, with the EQ of other creatures scaled up proportionally.) As you might expect, the EQs of dinosaurs (based on the analysis of their fossil remains) are spread across the lower end of the spectrum. Triceratops weighs in at a scant .11 on the EQ scale, and it was the class valedictorian compared to lumbering sauropods like Brachiosaurus, which dont even come close to hitting the .1 mark. However, some of the swift, two-legged, feathered dinosaurs of the Mesozoic Era posted relatively high EQ scores- not quite as smart as modern wildebeests, but not that much dumber, either. How Smart Were Carnivorous Dinosaurs? One of the trickiest aspects of animal intelligence is that, as a rule, a creature only has to be smart enough to prosper in its given ecosystem and avoid being eaten. Since plant-eating sauropods and titanosaurs were so massively dumb, the predators that fed on them only needed to be marginally smarter- and most of the relative increase in the brain size of these carnivores can be attributed to their need for better smell, vision and muscular coordination, their tools for the hunt. (For that matter, one can argue that the reason sauropods were so dumb is because they only had to be marginally smarter than the giant ferns they munched on!) However, its possible to swing the pendulum too far in the other direction and exaggerate the intelligence of carnivorous dinosaurs. For example, the doorknob-turning, pack-hunting Velociraptors of Jurassic Park and Jurassic World are a complete fantasy- if you met a live Velociraptor today, it would probably strike you as slightly dumber (though a lot more dangerous) than a chicken. You certainly wouldnt be able to teach it tricks, since its EQ would be an order of magnitude below that of a dog or cat. (This is part of the reason why dinosaurs, as a general rule, dont make very good pets.) Could Dinosaurs Have Evolved Intelligence? Its easy, from our present-day perspective, to poke fun at the walnut-brained dinosaurs that lived tens of millions of years ago. However, you should bear in mind that the proto-humans of five or six million years ago werent exactly Einsteins, either- even though, as stated above, they were significantly smarter than the other mammals in their savannah ecosystems. In other words, if you managed to time-transport a five-year-old Neanderthal into the present day, she probably wouldnt do very well in kindergarten! This raises the question: what if at least some dinosaurs had survived the K/T Extinction 65 million years ago? Dale Russell, the one-time curator of vertebrate fossils at the National Museum of Canada, once caused a stir with his speculation that Troodon - a human-sized theropod dinosaur about as smart as an opossum- might eventually have evolved a human-sized level of intelligence if it had been left to evolve for another few million years. It should be noted, however, that Russell didnt propose this as a serious theory, which will come as a disappointment to those who still believe intelligent reptoids live among us.