À la française - French Expression

la franà §aise - French Expression Expression: la franà §aise Pronunciation: [a la fra(n) sehz] Meaning: French, French-style Literal meaning: in the French manner or fashion Register: normal Notes The French expression la franà §aise is an ellipsis of either la manià ¨re franà §aise or la mode franà §aise. Because the ellipted word is feminine in both of those expressions, franà §aise remains feminine in the shortened phrase, no matter the gender or number of the noun it modifies. Remember that franà §aise is an adjective here, so it cannot be capitalized. Examples​ Je ne comprends pas tout fait lhumour la franà §aise.I dont really understand French humor. Ah, le socialisme la franà §aise!Ah, French-style socialism! Special Uses le format la franà §aise - portrait (as opposed to landscape: format litalienne)un jardin la franà §aise - formal gardenle pain la franà §aise - French breadun parc la franà §aise - formal gardenun plafond la franà §aise - ceiling with exposed beams equal in width to the spaces between themune robe la franà §aise - sack-back gown (18th-century fashion)le service la franà §aise - several dishes served simultaneously (as opposed to sequentially: service la russe) Related Expressions The same ellipsis can be made with other nationalities and peoples: lamà ©ricaine - American-style langlaise - English-style langlo-saxonne - British-style la belge - Belgian-style la suisse - Swiss-style And with places: lafricaine - African-style la caraà ¯be - Caribbean-style la parisienne - Parisian-style la provenà §ale - Provenà §al-style la savoyarde - Savoyard-style

Personality and Its Assessment Essays

Personality and Its Assessment Essays Personality and Its Assessment Essay Personality and Its Assessment Essay Personality has different meanings for theologians, philosophers and sociologists, and within psychology it has been defined in many ways (Allport, 1937). The main reason that leads so many psychologists to explore the human personality is that by doing so, the opportunity to predict a person’s behaviour in a situation presents itself, even before a situation occurs. Knowing more about one’s personality also allows us to learn about his/her dominant traits, information that can be of use in many aspects of everyday life (e. . recruiting the right people for the right jobs, treating a patient with the most suitable therapy etc. ). Many psychologists today (Block, Weiss and Thorne, 1979) define personality as a â€Å"more or less stable, internal factors that make one person’s behaviour consistent from one time to another, and different from the behaviour other people would manifest in comparable situations† (Childe, 1968). This definition gives us a clear v iew of the four major assumptions in the concept of personality: stable, internal, consistent and different. From the constructivist view, personality is seen as the combination of three equally important components: the actor, the observer and the self-observer. The actor component refers to the characteristics that a person brings to the social situation in which personality is constructed. These include all the genetic factors that may have the influence on a person’s behaviour, what he/she is capable or incapable to perform, as well as the individual’s history and present goals. The observer component refers to the way the actor is perceived by other people. Observers use the actor’s behaviour to construct an impression of the actor’s personality by adding social significance and meaning to the presented behaviour. As a result of this, we categorize people’s behaviour into different groups (e. g. ‘friendly’, ‘obnoxious’). These categories, apart from telling us about directly observable information, also add inferred meanings. The self-observer component is the direct consequence of the human ability to be self-aware. We can observe ourselves as we can observe other people, and we can see ourselves as we think other people see us. Throughout time, researchers have constructed various tools, scales and tests to attempt assessing personalities. The four main assessment methods currently used are interviews, observation, objective tests and projective tests. Interviews can be of two kinds, the structured and the unstructured. In the structured interview the person would be given a set list of questions to answer. These would mostly refer to the way a person sees him/herself behaving in different situations, by choosing the most appropriate statement that would describe him/her most accurately. In the unstructured interview the person would be asked to talk about himself without any obligation to a specific order and without much direction from the assessor. The observation method is used by the psychologist to learn about a person’s personality, through observing a person’s action and behaviour in different situations. The objective and projective tests are designed to learn aspects of one’s personality. While the objective way uses self-inventories that involve paper and pencil test, the projective way is about deriving information while a person talk about ambiguous stimuli. I shall go into further detail on these two means of assessment and their validity. While looking into methods of assessment, the two main personality tests appeared in either a structured or in an unstructured form. Structured Personality Tests The first structured personality test (also known as ‘objective’) was introduced by the U. S Army, while recruiting soldiers for World War I. The purpose of this test was to identify emotionally disturbed recruits. The test consisted of a list of questions that dealt with different symptoms or problem (e. g. â€Å"do you wet your bed? †). If the recruit was reporting many such symptoms, he was sent to further psychiatric examination (Cronbach, 1970). More personality tests were later introduced; the 2 major ones were the MMPI (Hathaway and McKinley, 1940) and the CPI. The MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) assesses traits in comparison to psychiatric diseases, with the intention to make the test multiphasic, meaning diagnostic of a number of different kinds of psychopathology. This test was more concerned in finding abnormal behaviour that would indicate a psychiatric criterion (e. g. paranoia, depression, schizophrenia etc. . The CPI (California Psychological Inventory), unlike the MMPI, focuses on non-clinical behaviour and is more directed to high school and college students. This test investigates various personality traits such as sociability, dominance, responsibility etc. The validity of Structured Personality Tests The main problem with constructed personality tests is that most people taking i t are more or less aware of what the questions represent. Instead of giving an honest account of themselves they may try to manipulate their answers to avoid a stigma of a mental disorder or social stereotypes. Likewise, a person may wish to present him/herself in a bad light, in order to avoid undesirable object (e. g. being drafted). Even when precautions were taken by adding certain validity scales to the test, scales that were meant to make it easier to indicate when a lie was recorded, there was still no guarantee that patients weren’t lying to themselves and projecting their false interpretations when answering such tests. Furthermore, though personality tests can predict behaviour, their accuracy is doubtful. The correlation found between test scores and validity criteria are generally around +0. 0, indicating a low to moderate association (a perfect association between sets of scores produces a correlation of (+/-) 1. 00, whereas scores that are totally unrelated produce a correlation of 0) (Lasky et el. , 1959). Unstructured Personality Test The unstructured personality tests (also known as ‘projective’), introduced in the 1940’s and 1950’s, presen ted the examinee with unstructured tasks such as making up a story to fit a picture or describing what he/she sees in an inkblot. These tests were formed in such way that the examinee -instead of describing how he/she feels, acts or wishes- requires to do so regarding other stimuli. One example of such test is the Rorschach test (Rorschach, 1921). In this test, 10 symmetrical inkblots are presented to the individual; some are coloured and some black and white. The individual is required to describe what he/she sees. The method of interpretation regarding this test consist of various hypothesis, such as the one which claims that using the entire inkblot indicate integrative, conceptual thinking, whereas the use of the white space is supposed to be a sign of rebelliousness and negativism. Responses that are dominated by colour suggest emotionality and impulsivity. Another example is the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) (Murrey, 1948). This consisted of thirty pictures of various scenes and a blank card. In each the examinee is required to imagine his/her own scene; describing what is shown, what led up to it and what the outcome of the scene will be in his/her eyes. This outcome of the TAT was interpreted by considering the examinee’s desired end- product as a picture of his/her major motives and conflicts, achievements and aspirations. The validity of Unstructured Personality Tests By now there are over 11,000 published articles regarding the Rorschach and the TAT. According to some experts, these tests have a very limited validity (Holt, 1978; Klein, 1982; Rorer, 1990). These studies have shown that individual Rorschach measurements have little relation to external validity criteria. In its ability to predict psychiatric symptoms, TAT assessments proved no better than the Rorschach’s test. In a study initiated in 1950, TAT was administrated to over 100 males, some in psychiatric facilities and others in college. The TAT results showed no difference between the normal group and patients. It also lacked the ability to show differences within the psychiatric groups (Eron, 1950). Although the TAT was proved to have little value as a diagnostic assessment for psychiatric classification, studies have shown that the test has some validity for more limited purpose, in particularly regarding indications of personal motives. One group of investigators worked with examinees who had not eaten for various periods of time. When presented with TAT pictures, their stories were highly connected to food and hunger, in comparison to the participants of the control group. Similar findings have been obtained concerning various other motives such as aggression, sexual arousal and the need for achievements (Atkinson and McClelland, 1948). Personality tests, in both their structured and unstructured form, consist of many more formats and use a large quantity of assessment methods. Although both types of tests consist of certain flaws, and are not always reliable, their contribution to the understanding of personality is significant. The appearance of such tests in the early 40’s has raised the interest of many researchers, psychologists and psychiatrics, and gave way to further studies on the issue of personality and its construct. References: Gleitman, H. (1999) psychology 5th edition, Norton (chapters 16 and 17) Hampson, Sarah E. (1988) The construction of personality: an introduction. 2nd edition, London: Routledge

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

Sensation and perception - Research Paper Example Sensation is passive whereas perception is an active phenomenon in that one does not consciously make an effort to sense the things while it is not possible to perceive things unconsciously. (AlleyDog.com, 2010). Since both are abstract terms, many people can not interpret the difference between the two as they know into words, despite being educated on the clear definition of both terms. Our way of life is based upon the way we perceive the world in which we live making use of the senses we are naturally blessed with. Sensation and perception have their own respective roles in composing our reactions to what we see and hear. One factor that particularly distinguishes sensation from perception is that sensation is common for everybody apart from those with disability, while perception varies from individual to individual. This is because sensation is an output of the natural senses that are invested in a human by nature. A person with a perfect body is naturally equipped with all the organs mentioned before that function rightly to produce their respective share of the sensations. Occasionally, people lack one or more of these organs or the organs’ ability to produce their sensation even if the body consists of them. This results in a temporary or permanent lack of sensation. However, the way a mind interprets the messages received from body organs has much to do with the many other personality traits that are not common among all people. Also, there is a big role of genes in the perception of sensation. Psychologists make use of the way an individual perceives a particular situation to tell wheth er the individual usually adopts an optimistic, pessimistic or neutral approach towards the matters of everyday life. Attainment of this information is fundamental to devising the most appropriate solution to a patient suffering from psychological disorders. Two children brought up in identical conditions sharing the same

American History - Final Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

American History - Final - Essay Example This paper will focus on the importance of the stated events and how these events changed the shape of the American society. Body The attack on Pearl Harbor On the day of 7th December 1941, the Pearl Harbor which happened to be an American port was heavily bombarded by Japanese forces (Kennedy 65). The attack on the American port of Pearl Harbor was a huge set back for the American population but it let to significant changes to the society of America. Firstly, Pearl Harbor did not guarantee Japanese a success during the future war. The war even had long term impacts on the society of America, these attacks assisted America in joining hands with the Pacific area of the world and the European nations and these two portions of the world ended up being allies of America. The main positive impact of the attack of Pearl Harbor was the expansion of the military forces of US and mobilization of American individuals within the military ranks even increased. Before the attack, US and the citi zens of US were not in favor of war and believed that peace can be maintained and achieved without war. After the attack, anti war sentiments were diminished and the population of US stood behind the government during the war. Another issue that occurred due to this attack was anti-Japanese sentiments among the people of US. They started viewing Japanese population of America as terrorists and attackers. Incident of 9/11 On the day of September 11, 2001, a two American plane was hijacked by terrorists of the group of Al-Qaeda and this hijacked plane was crashed in the World Trade Center which was located in the city of New York. Another plane was hijacked by the same terrorist group which crashed into the Pentagon and the fourth hijacked plane was crashed into the grounds located in the region of Shanksville. These attacks led to heavy losses of human lives in US, people from different ethnic background and different cultures experienced death. These individuals even included those who are regarded as American Arabs. But the responsibility of the attacks was only levied on the American Arabs. This day even marked the starting point and the underlining reason of war on terror due to which US decided to launch an attack over Afghanistan. These attacks made the American citizens realize that if they want to enjoy freedom to live, and pursue happiness then they will have to fight for it. These attacks have altered and impacted United States of America and the rest of the world. These attacks had major economic impacts on United States, right after the day of attacks, the stock exchange market in New York remained closed for public trading for six days and the day it opened, the stock exchange experienced a loss. The main impact was experienced by the hospitality industry of New York. The industry experienced heavy job losses as New York no longer seemed to be a secure place to visit for tourists. Even people living in New York shifted to other areas for security. The crash of Twin towers polluted the area of lower Manhattan and people who were located quite near to the Twin Towers experienced health issues. Due to the attacks, the American government as well as governments throughout the world accepted that the world is going to experience a great deal of threat at the hands of the terrorists and decided to counter terrorism. These attacks even

Advantages and Disadvantages of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) for Essay

Advantages and Disadvantages of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) for Germany 11101 - Essay Example For example the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD (2014) noted that global FDI flows increased by 4.5% in 2013. According to Radice (2012), even though the value does not represent a very highly anticipated growth, it still gives an indication that FDIs have been growing. IMF (2013) observed that even though FDIs are largely initiated by businesses and investors, the countries involved in these FDIs, whether they are home countries or host countries have ways in which the international investments through FDIs affect them. To get a better understanding of how FDI affects a country however, Frankel (2012) advised on the need to separate outward direct investment from inward investment. A preliminary search through literature has revealed that most researchers have focused their attention about FDI on how individual companies and investors benefit or loss out from FDI (Alguacil, 2002 and Imani, 2003). This leaves very little room for discussion about how countries as entities and stakeholders in international investments are impacted by FDIs. For the few available researches that put countries on the focus, they tend to concentrate on what the countries earn by way of acting as host countries to foreign companies that invest in those countries (Meier and Stiglitz, 2012). This makes knowledge very limited on how countries are impacted by FDI when these international investments take place with the countries acting as home countries. That is, when companies or investors from one country go to other countries to invest, there are both advantages and disadvantages to their countries of origin that needs to be researched into. As Germany is considered an important globa l player in the FDI engagements, it is important that research is performed on not just how Germany is benefits from the international

Why wood engraving is still being used today Dissertation

Why wood engraving is still being used today - Dissertation Example The print is made on a block of wood and portions of wood are carved to bring the image on it. It has enormous appeal and aesthetic value, which made it a distinctive art form to create and admire. Unlike copper and steel engraving, wood engraving had an organic element to it, which made it an art to be cherished the wood engraved art forms are known for its ornamental beauty and attraction and had its origin in the eighteenth century. Wood engraving is one of the important relief processes apart from wood cut and linocut and is used till today for its elegance and antiquity. Wood engraving is in essence only a form of wood cut, but in effect and appearance it is quiet different. Wood engraving is the art of creating figures on the wooden block and was a very valuable art form in the olden times. The wood engraving art was previously known to the ancient Egyptians and they used it on rings and stamps. 1 The custom of stamping bricks in this manner was very general both with the Egypt ians and ancient Babylonians. Even the Greeks and Romans also practiced this art before the introduction of book printing .Chinese men also had the history of wood engraving in early period of time. It is believed that this art form got introduced to Europe in the late thirteenth century by some travelers visited the place. 1Chatto, W.A. (2005). A history of wood-engraving. Retrieved from http://www.antiquemapsandprint s.com/a-history-of-wood-engraving.htm The History of Wood Engraving Wood engraving gave a golden chance to European countries to grow out of olden wood cutting tradition. It is very difficult and impossible to trace the real origin of wood engraving as reflection of this art can be seen in many civilizations. 2 No man or group of men has been able to trace definitely the origin of the ancient art wood engraving. It was in sixteenth and fifteenth century; this art has got prominence by producing art works of unique beauty and precision. The Chinese, Greeks and Romans i n ancient times used this art form to produce various images and figures. Before the arrival of mechanized printing the Chinese people used wood block printing which was a type of wood engraving work. The art of printing with wooden blocks were prevalent in China before 600 century and Europeans brought this art from Chinese land. The Chinese have wooden engraved wooden block which is used for their complex characters and symbols and were superior in quality than that of the European counterparts. Moreover, the Egyptians and Babylonians also used wooden engraving to make stamps on documents and impressions for the benefit of royal families. After the nineteenth century, the influence of the Gothic students on Spain brought about monograms and stamps made out of wooden engraving. This practice was mainly done to overcome the inefficiency and inaccuracy of hand writings. It is believed that around thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Italian and German officials used frequently wooden engraved stamps to affix their official documents. 2Furner, J.W. (2010). A history of wood engraving. Retrieved from http://typocurious.com/a-history-of wood-engraving/ However today‘s form of wooden engraving can be dedicated to Thomas Berwick who was the pioneer of wood engraving art. Thomas Bewick was born on August 12th in county of Northumber and his father name was John Bewick who was a land scale colliery by profession. Unfortunately, Thomas displayed a high skill in early years of his life and this can be contributed to his ability to observe natural objects and manifest them in his work.3Thomas was apprentice at the age of fourteen, to Mr. Ralph Beilbey of lived Newcastle. He was a respectable copper engraver, and had very much reputation in the

Literary Genre Essay Example for Free

Literary Genre Essay What is Literature? Language Department IPGK Pendidikan Teknik Based on your experience learning literature, what is literature? What are the characteristics of literature? Do you need to learn literature? †¢? Traditionally, literature is â€Å"imaginative† writing. †¢? However, the distinction between â€Å"real† and â€Å"fake† or â€Å"fact† and â€Å"fiction† isn’t always a good distinction; many classical works were non-fiction. Literature is Subjective †¢? Since the 1980’s, the â€Å"literary canon† of works – a group of works â€Å"agreed upon† to be â€Å"the best† by well-known scholars and critics, has been disputed. Why do you think the â€Å"canon† was disputed? †¢? The â€Å"Canon† excluded most works that were not by white, European males. †¢? Works of literature by women, homosexuals, and works by individuals of varied races, classes and ethnicities were marginalised. How did this happen? †¢? There are many ways of â€Å"writing† – but those in power recognised only one, formal way of â€Å"writing†, and this was given the higher value. †¢? Thus, the literary â€Å"canon† is a construct; it was fashioned by particular people for particular reasons at a particular time. †¢? There is no literary work or tradition that has value in and of itself †¦ †¢? †¦. even Shakespeare! †¢? In his era, Shakespeare was regarded as a hack! †¢? Time and circumstance has offered the value to particular text; and this â€Å"value† is a transitive term – it will change as the people in power change and are altered, and according to the context of the reading of a particular text. 10 years ago †¦. †¢? BLOGS were stupid. †¢? NOW, Iraq War Veterans’ BLOGS are considered vital historic and â€Å"literary† documents! Revisioning the Canon: †¢? All â€Å"literary† works are unconsciously rewritten by the societies that read them. Context †¢? Readers interpret literary works in the  light of their own concerns. †¢? Readers interpret literary works in the light of a given circumstances. †¢? Readers interpret literary works in the light of a given time period. The Diary of Anne Frank: †¢? Literature? Or Not? I Have A Dream: †¢? Is this speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. Literature? Or Not? Literature and â€Å"value† †¢? Each of us is constructed by experiences and backgrounds and emotions and ideas and prejudices and knowledge and lack of knowledge †¦ †¢? How we each respond to a particular text is deeply entwined with our broader prejudices and belief systems. Basic Definition of Literature †¢? Latin – litterae (plural for letter) †¢? Literally means â€Å"acquaintance with letters† Why Do We Study Literature? †¢? To obtain a window of the world and other cultures. †¢? To understand ourselves (how? ). †¢? To gain insights into a character’s inner thoughts, con? icts, aspirations etc. †¢? To actively shape culture through the active and articulate constructions of sociocultural realities. So †¦ what is literature? †¢? What constitutes a â€Å"literary† text? †¢? What qualities will help me to determine the â€Å"literariness† of a text? †¢? Read â€Å"What is Literature† by Jim Meyer for our class discussion this Thursday.