Wednesday, January 29, 2020

Review of Parrot in the Oven Essay Example for Free

Review of Parrot in the Oven Essay Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida is a coming of age novel written in 1996, by Victor Martinez. The story is set in California and is told from the point-of-view of a fourteen year old, Mexican American boy. Manuel Hernandez, like many young men, struggles with identity. Manny’s life is hard. He has two older siblings and a baby sister. His mother does not work. His father is unemployed and an alcoholic. The main provider and only person in his house that can keep a steady job is his older sister. His older brother cannot hold a job long. As would be expected, Manny’s family lives in the projects. Project life brings its own problems. The Garcia boys live in Manny’s neighborhood. They constantly terrorize and beat him. Manny does not fight back. He realizes that he is outnumbered and too afraid to do anything. This could be one of the reasons Manny joins a boxing club in school, and later joins a gang. Family life is not much better for Manny. Throughout the story Manny deals with an alcoholic father and a borderline obsessive compulsive mother that have both become bitter and resentful. Manny’s brother is rarely home, but when he is he is often drunk. His older sister is resentful that she must carry the family. At one point in the story she gets pregnant and soon loses the baby. Chapter nine shines light on a key aspect of Manny’s character. As the title implies, Manny is naive. He lives in a predominantly Latino community where racial discrimination is non-existent. In this section of the book, Manny’s boss urges his daughter to invite Manny to her birthday party. She reluctantly agrees. Manny tells his brother, Nardo, about the party. Nardo and their sister try to explain to Manny that white people do not usually interact with Mexicans socially; he is most likely being used. Manny does not listen. He is in lust. Needless to say, the party ends badly. A terrible home life, hormones and identity issues lead Manny to gangs. He takes the beating, as a form of initiation, so that he can kiss a girl. He is not entirely sold on the gang culture but feels that he should hang out with the members. On his first run with Eddie, a gang member, he witnesses Eddie assault a woman and steal her purse. At that moment he recognizes that Eddie is the guy that knocked up his sister. Frozen in place, Manny realizes that gang-life is not for him. He goes home and watches his sisters sleep, knowing that although life at home is rough there is nowhere else he would rather be. Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida exposes many aspects familiar to first- and second-generation Mexican American families. Many young minorities might be able to relate to Manny’s struggles. Even though the book deals with ugly issues like abuse, alcoholism, racism, teen pregnancy and gangs, the book also provides a space for discussion around identity, self-esteem and pride. I would definitely recommend this book to students.

Monday, January 20, 2020

Communicaton between animals and humans Essay -- essays research paper

INTRODUCTION The importance of communication between animals cannot be underestimated. Through communication, animals are able to concentrate on finding food, avoiding their enemies, mating and caring for their young. The study of communication between animals and humans is a never ending fascination and a way to learn more about ourselves. The development of human communication is what makes us exclusive to any living thing on this planet. The ways in which we communicate with one another is uniquely important in our everyday lives. Without it’s presence, the world would have no development, holding the same appearance as one million years ago. We would be lacking a sense of society and most probably be still in the Stone Age. The mystery of the development of human language constitutes how we are uniquely human from other animals. Human beings have a daily working vocabulary of 1000 words, and with our knowledge on how to use grammatical rules is what makes our sense of communication more sophisticated than any animal. Verbal communication between humans is the central, most relevant factor in a sophisticated society. People have evolved into expressive and capable members of society. The human language has been around for five thousand years and it is apparent that language has been complex long before that. The human language is quite problematic as grammar and syntax play a major role in defining language. Animals have an extremely primitive way of communicating compared to humans, and the way in which we communicate. Animals cannot verbally speak like us humans and studies verify this. HUMAN AND ANIMAL COMMUNICATION It is the existence of human communication that has made the world the place it is today. Through communication, human beings have created skyscrapers, long bridges to complicated forms of transportation. We have also had the ability to start world destruction and encourage world peace. It is through learning how to communicate with other humans for almost five thousand years that a persons way of thinking has expanded and information has been passed on from generation to generation. Without a well-advanced language system, we would not be able to function as a successful society that is constantly making advanced and technological developments. The ways in which we communicate to each ... .... Humans have also been able to build a comfortable society and work at it from generation to generation. As far as we know, animals are still using the same forms of communication as hums did 5000 years ago. There have been no signs of advances in the ways in which they live or the ways they choose to communicate. I don’t underestimate animals as I think they can be intelligent in their own little ways. In conclusion, the only means of animal communication involves a basic information transfer from the sender to the receiver. However, no animal could come close to an affective communication system like the human language. They can however convoy their needs, desires and reactions to the environment via some sophisticated signalling of their own. BIBLEOGRAPHY (1)  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Harley T (1996) â€Å"The psychology of language from Data to Theory†. Psychology press publishers. (2)  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ting-Toomey. S and Korzenny. F (1989) â€Å"Language, Communication, and Culture†. Sage Publications Ltd (Volume X111) (3)  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Wardhaugh. R (1993) â€Å"Investigating Language†. Blackwell publishers.

Sunday, January 12, 2020

Assessment for Teacher Essay

The primary purpose of assessment is for the learner to provide evidence of learning by demonstrating the understanding of content and achievement of learning outcomes. This gives an insight of their strengths and areas of development. Whereas for teacher, it provides a moment to review their assessment strategies in terms of effectiveness and facilitate progression by giving constructive feedback. It also informs the curriculum board, managers, and relevant staff to evaluate learning programmes for any improvements. Learners are assessed through various stages of learning journey by using variety of methods and strategies. They are usually assessed formatively before or during the course and summatively near or the end of it. Formative assessment provides a continuous source of information about students’ progress, improvement and problems encountered in the learning process. It could be an â€Å"Initial Assessment† to determine prior knowledge or â€Å"Diagnostic Assessment† to find areas of development and strengths. Feedback is an integral part of it. (NCFOT, 1999) said it â€Å"occurs when teachers feed information back to the students in ways that enable the student to learn better, or when students can engage in a similar, self-reflective process†(Principle 4). It has also been supported by several educationists such as Scales (2008 p. 179), Black and William (1998: 17) and Reece and Walker (2007 p. 325). Formative assessments are not graded which allows flexibility to modify and adjust the teaching practices and reflect the needs and progress of learners as well as motivating them. However, formative assessment in its purist form is seldom used (Brookhart, 1999). I feel that teachers should be given training to as â€Å"how† and â€Å"when† to employ it successfully. There are variety of methods by which students are assessed formatively such as Accreditation of prior learning (APL), Observation, Oral Questioning, Discussion, Role play, Case study, Essays, Projects, Assignments, MCQs etc. which when used in combination has proven effective in measuring a variety of complex learning outcomes (Reece and Walker, 2007, p. 326) It is useful for development of â€Å"Cognitive†, â€Å"Psychomotor† and â€Å"Affective Domains† of learning as explained in Bloom’s Taxonomy and could assess higher order skills of these domains. Some teachers are predominantly concerned with cognitive learning with some use of psychomotor skills but affective learning can be a useful tool in changing attitudes i. e. gender, culture etc. even if it’s not a requirement of a course. Summative Assessment happens at the end of the course, unit etc. and is for grading and decision purpose. It is used for informing employers, institutions etc. about learner’s overall performance. It does not however, give information about detailed abilities of learner and there is no feedback so it is debated for its complete reliability and validity. (Scales, 2008 and Rust, 2002). Learners are assessed summatively mostly by Examination, Assignments, Portfolios, and Essays. They develop the skill levels of ‘cognitive and psychomotor domains’ depending on how effectively they are set out and the type of course. ‘MCQs’ and ‘Viva’ for instance can provide better coverage of syllabus as well as assessment of deeper knowledge whereas essays does not serve the same purpose but assess higher levels of cognitive domain i. e. synthesis and evaluation. Feedback is an important element of assessment and is directly related to motivation. In order to accelerate learning process it has to be timely, positive and constructive. â€Å"Maslow’s hierarchy makes us think about the total experience†¦.. From physiological factors†¦. to relationships (do we give positive regard and development feedback? ) to self-esteem needs (‘I’m no good †¦ ’), his hierarchy provides a useful device to help us understand learning and motivation(Scales, 2008 p. 72). We need to keep records to track and monitor the progress of our learners. They are many different types of internal, external and formal and informal records. Internal records include mark books, matrix, learner progress sheets/ reviews and results of mock tests. In ESOL, we keep records of Initial interview, Initial assessment, spiky profile, ILPs, Diagnostic assessment, Formative assessment, observation reports, feedback reports, peer/self assessments and Summative assessments to assess the progress of learners and efficacy of programme and teaching. The external records include all the evidence in form of written work or internal verification to sent to external bodies i. e. exam board, auditing bodies, other educational organisations, support staff, etc.

Saturday, January 4, 2020

Humes and Anscombes View on Causation - 1227 Words

In this paper I discuss both Hume’s and Anscombe’s view on causation. I begin with Hume and his regularity theory; then I move onto Anscombe where I provide a rebuttal of Hume’s regularity theory, and later I explain how Hume would respond to Anscombe’s objection to Hume’s regularity theory. Hume’s notion of causation is his regularity theory. Hume explains his regularity theory in two ways: (1) â€Å"we may define a cause to be an object, followed by another, and where all the objects similar to the first are followed by objects similar to the second† (2) â€Å"if the first object had not been, the second never had existed.† Hume defines causation in terms of natural necessity and explains natural necessity as follows: of two events, if event A†¦show more content†¦In this case Hume would argue that it is because it was event A’ and not event A, because if it were event A then event B would have happened, but b ecause event B’ happened then it must be that it was event A’. On the other hand, Anscombe disagrees with Hume, and believes that we can, and do observe causation. Anscombe uses examples of crushing, chewing, pushing, and such to illustrate that we do perceive causation. For example, if person A holds a sheet of paper in their hand, and then begins to crush the sheet of paper, and then later we see the sheet of paper crumbled; Anscombe argues that this is enough evidence to show that we do perceive causation, because we can see the causing of the sheet of paper to crumble. Another example is of person A cutting a sheet of paper; Anscombe would argue that it is evident that we observe the causing of the sheet of paper be divided. In addition, Ansombe add that we can perceive causation by tracing an effect to its cause. For example, of the cutting of a sheet of paper by person A, one can traced the effect (sheet of paper cut in half) to its cause (person A cutting the sh eet of paper). Therefore, Anscombe claims that we do perceive causation. Anscombe believes that this evidence is sufficient to prove that we not only perceive â€Å"contiguity† and â€Å"succession† of events, but the cause of events. From Hume’s regularity theory,