Harry Potter Movie Review Essay

Harry Potter is an average 11-year-old boy who has lived with the Dursley family ever since his parents died in a car crash. For some reason the family has always mistreated him. On his 11th birthday a giant man named Rubeus Hagrid hands him a letter telling him that he has been accepted as a student at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. * Harry soon learns that his parents were wizards and were killed by an evil wizard named Voldemort, a truth that was hidden from him all these years. He embarks for his new life as a student, gathering two good friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger along the way. They soon learn that something very valuable, called the sorcerers stone, is hidden somewhere deep inside the school and Voldemort is very anxious to lay his hands on it. Together they must use Hermione’s brilliant intellect, Ron’s joviality, and Harry’s bravery to stop Voldemort. In this epic action packed fantasy three friends learn the importance of friendship and that its power is unstoppable. * The attributes that play a vital role to this movie in being a box office success is the actors performance and the story itself. Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter, Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley, and Emma Watson as Hermione Granger are a great trio for this type of movie. Daniel Radcliffe has the perfect face for an innocent eleven-year old-boy while he does have the look of valor and bravery in his eyes. Rupert Grint has the mischievous look of a procrastinator and jovial boy who in the movie is perfect for the funny, always nervous, and *

Clinical Social Worker Essay

Clinical Social Worker Essay Clinical Social Worker Essay Characteristics and Skills Ronie Langley HSM/210 August 31, 2014 Professor Sheryl Characteristics and Skills When researching for a Human Service agency I came across one that is not far away from me in Pontiac, Michigan. The Department of Human Services (DHS) was one I was familiar with because of past financial issue with my father and having to visit the offices. The available job that was listed that I am interested in for my future career after my degree is finished is clinical social worker, you need the possession of your master’s degree in social work and no experience is needed. Some characteristics and skills that are needed are â€Å" Knowledge of basic sciences (psychology, sociology, and economics), the principles procedures, techniques, trends, and literature of clinical social work, characteristics and social aspects of mental and emotional disturbances and developmental disability†¦ continue at website michigan.gov/documents/ClinicalSocialWorker_12432_7.pdf † ("Michigan Civil Service Commission Job Specification Clinical Social Worker", n.d.). This job wil l require travels between schools, courts, police departments, and prisons. The employees accompanied to this job oversee professional work/assignments to provide treatment and casework to the residents in state faculties, assisted living homes/group homes, and to the state employees along with their families. Coming with this job there is four classifications, Clinical social worker 9 which is entry level, clinical social worker 10 intermediate level, clinical social worker P11 experienced level, clinical social worker 12 the advanced level. Each level requires experience from the previous level in order to move up in each classification. Some characteristics that can help be an effective helper with your client is â€Å"affection plus passion touched by the quality of

How to Solve an undefined local variable Ruby Error

How to Solve an undefined local variable Ruby Error In  Ruby, you dont have to declare variables, but you do have to assign something to them before they can be referred to. If youre referring to a local variable that doesnt yet exist, you may see one of two errors. Ruby NameError Messages NameError: undefined local variable or method a for # NameError: undefined local variable or method a for main:Object Note:  There might be various identifiers in place of  a  above. This is an example where the code will generate the Ruby NameError message since the variable  a  hasnt yet been assigned to anything: puts a How to Fix the Error Variables must be assigned before they can be used. So, using the example from above, fixing the error is as simple as doing this: a 10 puts a Why Youre Getting This Error The obvious answer is that youre referring to a variable that hasnt yet been created. This is most often due to a typo but may happen when refactoring code and renaming variables. You might also see the  NameError: undefined local variable Ruby error if you intended to enter a string. Strings are understood when they exist between quotes. If you didnt use quotes, Ruby will think you meant to reference a method or variable (that doesnt exist) and throw the error. So, look back over your code to see what this variable is supposed to be referring to, and fix it. You may also want to search for other instances of the same variable name in the same method - if its wrong in one place, it may be wrong in others.

Business Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 23

Business - Essay Example Means offunding the care cost was another factors and the following graph shows distribution of responses over private funding, social services funding, and an integration of the two. More than 52 of the respondents reported an all private funding while 30.4 percent reported an intergration of both public and private funding. Only 17.4 percent reported application of all social funding for the home care services. Annuity and insurance are unpopular methods for private funding of home care services, having been reported by a total of eight percent. Seventy five percent of the respondents who used private funding reported use of savings while 22 percent sold houses. In case the priimary resources run out, the the â€Å"means are tested† and â€Å"social service† identify secondary liability as the following graph shows. The results show that only 27 percent of relatives are willing to top up care cost if social service assumes the primary responsibility of funding the care. The remaining 72 percent of the relatives did not take the top up

Financial Upheavals. Financial crisis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Financial Upheavals. Financial crisis - Essay Example The aftermaths of any such business cycle may vary from being modest to remorseless hinging upon its magnitude and continuance. History show that the American economy has moved through periods of boom, recession and recovery. The years 1837, 1893 and 1929 help retrace the occurrence of three major depressions in United States (Calomiris 2010). The downturns of 1857, 1873, and 1907 are also referred in the history books (Rothbard 2002). The America of 1819 and the financial crisis its people went through was only the first of speculative cacoethes which is America's true national interest (Maloney 2009). But then again, the Great Recession of 2008 is the latest financial turmoil in the United States, the twinges of which are still being sensed. Both these financial upheavals resemble one another with respect to their causes and consequences. For instance, they headed to extended bank failures, loan foreclosures, high unemployment rates and a depression in manufacturing sector. The cau ses of the panic of 1819 can be assigned to the economic system of the United States (Rothbard 2002). The panic of 1819 ended the tremendous economic expansion that occurred after the War of 1812. Rampant inflation, debtors’ relief which was constantly associated with monetary strategies and a protective tariff on imports worked as a pivotal point in creating the situation of panic in the US at that time. Whereas, the oncoming of the Recession of 2008 can be assigned to complicated and interconnected constituents. Sub-prime loans, lax financial regulation, loose monetary policy and global instabilities collectively induced the latest financial upheaval that caused entire world staggering. This suggests that there were more than one element that sparked off the two financial upheavals discussed above. Among those major causal elements, monetary policy played a key role to trigger the financial turmoils. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast these two historic fi nancial upheavals; the earliest and the latest to have rocked the United States of America with special emphasis on the role of the monetary policy in each case. The Panic of 1819 The major causes of the panic of 1819 were delved within the US economy. Similar to so much of what is disastrous to civilized society, the Panic of 1819 had been produced in the violent agitation particularly of the War of 1812. The young American economy confronted many rapid breakdowns that were brought by the War of 1812 and its consequences. United States previously had been a big country with a thin population of around seven million which were mostly committed solely to agriculture. Many agricultural products such as wheat, cotton, and tobacco were exported across borders, although the residual of the agricultural products was mostly consumed by self-sustaining rural families. Public debt held by Americans during the war of 1812 induced the prices rise throughout the United States. At that time, the monetary system of the country was not advance or highly-developed. The American banks were restricted almost entirely to the cities and their tools and methods to run the economy inclined to be lax with insignificant Government control. The reality, that most banks and other institutions of that era had to acquire their position by exceptional legislative charter, tempted inquisitive and high-risk misuses through exerting force on the legislature. All this resulted in an inadequacy of uniformity in administering banks within and among states. The emergence of the First Bank of the United States had regulated the banks towards uniformity until the year 1811. Irresponsible and mismanaged banking system had played a crucial role in creating that panic. From 1811 to

Argument Response Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Argument Response - Essay Example The point of bilingual education in part is to ease the transition of students whose first language is not English into the school setting, and while it might accomplish this goal, it leaves the students with more difficulty in the long run. As Le points out, it leaves the students inept in both languages to a certain degree. Le’s main audience seems to be non-minority citizens who might be voting in regards to bilingual schooling. He seems to be of the opinion that the push for bilingual schooling comes just as much from these English speaking citizens who feel that they should attempt to preserve the culture of non-English speaking students in schools. Le is of the opinion that one should learn one’s native language and culture in home and not in school. There is also the difficulty of determining which second language should the subjects be taught in. Though the majority of non-English speaking students in the US might speak Spanish, there would still be some school districts where the majority of non-English speaking students might speak Chinese or some other language. The question then becomes how school districts can have any sort of regularity to them if they are all teaching in different languages. When all of the particular needs of every single group is attempted to be accommodate d for, nobody ends up with what they really need. As far as points that Le made that weren’t as strong, he first points out English as being a difficult subject to learn. First, this is a matter of opinion, and isn’t necessarily true. English does not have gendered nouns which make languages such as Spanish, French, and German difficult for English speakers. That doesn’t even begin to touch on the difficulty of learning a tone language such as Chinese. Secondly, it is not so much the language itself as it is the spelling system. English is in need of a spelling

Theories In First Language Acquisition English Language Essay

Theories In First Language Acquisition English Language Essay Since, the second language is an additional language after we acquire the first language, the L2 learning process can be influenced by the L1 learning process This essay will demonstrate the similarities and differences in L1 and L2 acquisition by discussing various theories. Then, draw a conclusion based on the evidence provided and my own experience. Definition First Language Acquisition First Language Acquisition or also known as the Child Language Acquisition is a process whereby children from infancy through early school years acquire their first languages (Lightbown Spada, 2006). The term First Language Acquisition or FLA can be referred to the field that investigates the process by which children develop to use words and sentences in their first language, to communicate with other people (Dictionary of Sociolinguistics, 2004). Second Language Acquisition According to a Dictionary of Sociolinguistics (2004), the term Second Language Acquisition or SLA can be referred to the academic discipline that investigate the process of human when learning second language (L2) or additional languages other than the first language. It involves the ability of people to use and develop a complex system of sound, word, sentence structure, and meaning of any non-native language (Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, 2005). It also tries to understand factors such as environment, individual differences, and social aspect which can be crucial factors underlining the acquire of second language (Ortega, 2009). Theories in First Language Acquisition Various theories and approaches have been developed over the past years attempting to study and analyze how do children acquire their mother tongue. This essay will identify two main theories that explain the learning process of the childs first language: Behaviourism and Nativist or Innateness theory. Behaviourism The behaviorism theory assumes how do children speak that children imitate what they hear, and then continue with positive support, children learn language through conditioning and habit formation (Ellis, 2008). According to B.F. Skinner and his colleagues (Gass Larry, 2008), learning or a change of behaviour on the part of the learner, is brought about by a process known as operant conditioning which is the result of repeated training. Operant means voluntary behaviour which is the result of learners own free-will and is not forced by any outsider or thing (Ortega, 2009). The learner will demonstrate the new behaviour first as a response to a system of a reward or punishment, and finally it will become an automatic response. Behaviourists believe that learning a language is no different from learning anything else. It becomes a habit by the stimulus-response-reinforcement-repetition process (Cook, 2001). The behaviourists also claim that we learn by imitation and by association (Lightbown Spada, 2006). However, psycholinguists argue that imitation is not enough because it is not only the mechanical repetition but also natural exposure that children acquire language (Cook, 2001). Therefore, from the behaviourist approach, language acquisition can be seen as a stimulus-response process. Children learn language by immitation and analogy. The roles of imitation, repetition, reinforcement, and motivation are essential in learning the language. The First Language Acquisition is thus the result of nature which based on practicing. Nativist or Innateness theory Unlike the behaviourist approach that does not take into consideration the childs own cognitive processes, the Innateness Hypothesis proposed by linguist Noam Chomsky supports the idea that language acquisition has a biological foundation (Ortega, 2009). He claims that children learn their first languages through cognitive learning and acquires them by natural exposure (Ortega, 2009). That means both nature and nurture influence the acquisition of language in children. He hypothesized that children are born with a specific innate ability to discover for themselves the underlying rules of a language system on the basis of the samples of a natural language they are exposed to (Lightbown Spada, 2006). This innate endowment was seen as a sort of template, containing the principles that are universal to all human beings. This is called Universal Grammar (UG). As defined by Chomsky (1976, as cited by Cook, 2001 pp181-182) Universal Grammar is the system of principles, conditions, and rule s that are elements or properties of all human languages à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦ the essence of human language. According to Chomsky, there are principles, which allow or prevent a specific structure from occurring in all human languages, and parameters, which govern ways in which human languages differ, usually expressed as a limited choice between two options (Cook, 2001). These principles and parameters are built in the human mind. In other words, children have an innate faculty that instructs them while learning of language (Mitchell and Myles, 2004: 33). Chomsky also introduced the Language Acquisition Device or LAD to explain that there is some innate mental capacity which help the children to process all the languages they hear since they were born (Cook, 2001). Thus, from the innatist approach, language is an innate or in-born process. Children learn language by application. It argued that language learning is not a behavior but a specific mental process and emphasized on the important role of exposure to language. Theories in Second Language Acquisition Behaviourism Behaviourism gave birth to a stimulus-response (S-R) theory which sees language as a set of structures and acquisition as a matter of habit formation (Larsen-Freeman Long, 1991). By ignoring any internal mechanisms, it takes into account the linguistic environment and the stimuli it produces. It is suggested that learning is an observable behaviour which is automatically acquired by means of stimulus and response in the form of mechanical repetition. Thus, to acquire a language is to acquire automatic linguistic habits. According to Johnson (2004), [B]ehaviorism undermined the role of mental processes and viewed learning as the ability to inductively discover patterns of rule-governed behavior from the examples provided to the learner by his or her environment. Larsen-Freeman and Long (1991) consider that S-R models offer little promises as explanations of SLA, except for perhaps pronunciation and the rote-memorization of formulae. This view of language learning emerged research on contrastive analysis, especially error analysis (Ortega, 2009) . It has the main focus of which is the interference of ones first language in the target language. According to Ellis (2008), an important reaction to behaviourism was the interlanguage studies, as the simple comparison between first and second language neither explained nor described the language produced by L2 learners. In this essay, interlanguage studies will be excluded as the concern of the area has been mainly with the acquisition of grammatical morphemes or specific language structures. Universal grammar theory According to Cook (2001), as a counterpoint to the environmental perspective, Chomskys followers try to understand SLA in the light of his universal grammar (UG) theory, a human innate endowment. Chomsky is interested in the nature of language and sees language as a mirror of the mind (Gass Selinker, 2008). Although he is not concerned with SLA, his work has been influencing studies in this area. According to his theory, it can be seen that every human being is biologically endowed with the Language Acquisition Device (LAD), which is responsible for the initial state of language development. The UG theory considers that the input from the environment is insufficient to account for language acquisition. In the same perspective, White (2003:22) says that [I]f it turns out that the L2 learner acquires abstract properties that could not have been induced from the input, this is strongly indicative that principles of UG constrain interlanguage grammars, parallel to the situation of L1 ac quisition. As Mitchel and Myles (2004:94) remind us, The universal Grammar approach is only interested in the learner as a processor of a mind that contains language and not as a social being. Comprehension hypothesis Influenced by Chomskys assumptions on language as an innate faculty, Krashen developed an influential proposal to explain SLA which he first named as monitor model with emphasis on the contrast between learning and acquisition, then called it the input hypothesis (Krashen 1978, cited in Lightbown Spada, 2006). It focuses on the data which feed acquisition, and more recently, comprehension hypothesis emphasizing the mental process as responsible for acquisition (Ellis, 2008). According to Krashen (2004:1), [T]he Comprehension Hypothesis is closely related to other hypotheses. The Comprehension Hypothesis refers to subconscious acquisition, not conscious learning. The result of providing acquirers with comprehensible input is the emergence of grammatical structure in a predictable order. A strong affective filter, such as high anxiety, will prevent input from reaching those parts of the brain that promote language acquisition (Cook, 2001). According to Lightbown and Spada (2006), Kra shens model views acquisition in a linear perspective which not only establishes a cause and effect relationship between input and acquisition but also states that the grammatical structure is acquired in a predictable order. Nonetheless, like in the other theories discussed so far, his theory does not go beyond the acquisition of grammatical structures. Krashens model lacks research evidence. As Cook (2001) points out it makes sense in its own terms but is not verifiable. Interaction theory Other attempts to explain SLA are the different versions of the interaction hypothesis defended by Hatch (1978) and by Long (1981, 1996), who did not accept Krashens Input Hypothesis. Both Hatch and Long consider that input alone is not sufficient to explain SLA. Hatch disagrees that learners first learn structures and then use them in discourse. Hatch considers the reverse possibility. One learns how to do conversation, one learns how to interact verbally, and out of this interaction syntactic structures are developed (Harch, 1978 p. 404). Based on an empirical study, Long (1981) observed that in conversations between native and non-native speakers, there are more modifications in interaction than in the input provided by the native speakers. Long does not reject the positive role of modified input, but claims that modifications in interactions are consistently found in successful SLA. Long (1996) suggests that negotiation for meaning, especially negotiation work that triggers inter actional adjustments by the NS or more competent interlocutor, facilitates acquisition because it connects input, internal learner capacities, particularly selective attention, and output in productiveways. However, Larsen-Freeman and Long (1991) argue that the interactionist views are more powerful than other theories because they invoke both innate and environmental factors to explain language learning. Similarities and Differences between FLA and SLA Age: a key factor differentiate L1 from L2 Age can be regarded as another key factor displaying the differences between L1 and L2 acquisition. Since, in the L1 acquisition, children normally complete the process by four to six years old, while the age range in acquiring the L2 can be varied wildly (Ortega, 2009). Moreover, according to Ellis (2008), age is recognized as being important owing to the assumption that older learners tend to be less successful in regard to SLA than younger learners, which may be owing to the fact that target-language norms do not pose as much of a threat to younger learners identities. However, there are two issues that many theorists have been arguing about the relationship between age and L2 acquisition. That the age effect can be approached from biological explanations or from non-biological explanations (Ortega, 2009). From the biological perspective (Gass Selinker, 2008), there is the Critical Period Hypothesis in L2 learning which is proposed by Penfield and Roberts (1959) and Lenneberg (1967). On the other hand, from the non-biological perspective, some researchers have emphasized on the influence of socio-educational and affective-motivational forces (Ortega, 2009).