US Trip essays

US Trip essays In 11th grade I had the chance to apply for a 3-week-stay in the USA. There is a student exchange program between our high school and the Oak Ridge High School in Conroe Texas. It is a tradition that every year in spring a group of 11th graders visits Texas. I have always been interested in foreign languages and I like travelling to English-speaking countries to use the language and to get to know more about the inhabitants and their way of life. That is why I absolutely wanted to be one of the students to go to Texas that year. But it is always only a few students who get the opportunity to do that. I knew I had good conditions to take part because one of my main subjects was English and my teachers comminded me all the time. And my assumption was right. After a very short time I already got an e-mail from the daughter of my prospective host family. However the political situation in the U.S. was very complicated at this time. For that reason it was not certain if the exchange program could really take place. It seemed like my host family knew about the doubts my family had to allow me to go on that trip. So they sent a detailled letter to my parents to introduce themselves and to let them know that they could not identify with Bush's policy and that they would not support the war in Iraq. I was very glad to hear that because I would not have to think about how to react, if there were discussions about political topics. The letter they wrote made my parents feel relieved. My host family made avery positive impression on them. So they know I would be safe. And this was also the beginning of a friendship between our two families. Everyone of us started writing letters and e-mails and calling each other on the phone - me and my host sister (of course), my parents and her parents and even my brother and her sister. I could not wait to talk to my host family in person and when I got there they exceeded all of my expectations. They gav...

Naive and Naivety

Naive and Naivety Naive and Naivety Naive and Naivety By Maeve Maddox A reader asks about the use of the word naivety: I recently read this in a copy of Nature: â€Å"They challenge the naivety of the idea that science, proceeding openly and aloof from its sociopolitical environment, reaches incontrovertible truths by unassailable reason.† I do not recall ever seeing that use before. Pronunciation note naive [nye-EEV] naivety [nye-EEV-uh-tee] The adjective naive is a badly assimilated French borrowing. Ever since it entered the language as naà ¯ve in the seventeenth century, it never has managed to look like an English word, and it presents many English speakers with difficulty in pronunciation and spelling. No longer spelled with the two dots over the i, naive originally meant â€Å"natural and unaffected, artless, or innocent.† Additional meanings that have attached to the word are â€Å"showing a lack of experience, judgment, or wisdom; credulous, gullible.† The earliest citation for the noun naivety in the OED is dated 1709, but the word doesn’t show much life on the Ngram Viewer before the 1960s. In current usage, some political writers seem to use naive and naivety as euphemisms for ignorant and ignorance. Naivety is frequently used with the verb expose, as if to imply that being naive is something best concealed. Sports writers are fond of the words as well, but I’ve yet to figure out exactly what they mean by them. My best guess is overconfident or, perhaps, ill-advised. To me, naivety implies a belief in the good intentions of others. A judge handing down a sentence in the case of two people who stole from a ninety-year-old couple used the word in this sense: They allowed you access [to their home] in innocence and naivety andwere repaid by you in taking the only items of value which were on open display.- The Telegraph. Naive is an appropriate and neutral adjective to describe the innocence and inexperience of a young person. When applied to politicians and business leaders, it takes on a connotation of reproach, even contempt. Here is a random sampling of naive and naivety as used on the Web: Exposed: Ron Paul’s Foreign Policy Ignorance and Naivety Is Stuart Lancaster just a  naive coach  taking another high-risk gamble?   Manchester City Pay Heavy Price for First-Leg Naivety vs. Barcelona Is Social Media making Young People Naà ¯ve and Unhappy? (Some writers still use the dots.) For decades, senior executives have used  naivety  as an excuse when customer data has been stolen.   Was [Chamberlain] just hopelessly naive about Hitler’s Germany and too embroiled in domestic agendasto handle the run-up to war? Both naive and naivety are useful words to convey trusting innocence or idealistic expectations. It seems a shame to use them as insults. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Vocabulary category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:20 Types and Forms of Humor40 Synonyms for â€Å"Different†55 "House" Idioms

World Civilization II Unit 5 Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

World Civilization II Unit 5 - Research Paper Example World War I also led to another revolution that brought Adolf Hitler to power. World War I also caused world instability that would not be enjoyed for thousands of years to come. The war also led to mass loss of millions of lives of civilians and soldiers. It is estimated that about 1.39 million soldiers died in which the British deaths were 800,000 (Haley, 2014). The war also led to signing of Treaty of Versailles that precipitated the rise of second major war (Grimshaw, 2008). The other major consequences were felt in Germany. It made Germany lose its territory and greatly affected the economy of German. The major of aim of the treaty was to make Germany a weak country (Haley, 2014). After Hitler had come to power, he knew that the only way to liberate his country from economic sabotage is through war. Additionally, the League of Nations failed to keep the peace (Haley, 2014). In this scenario, most countries abandoned the League of Nations resulting in its closure. Since there was no international body to prevent world wars, this lead to the outbreak of the second world war in 1939 (Haley, 2014). In conclusion, the First World War resulted in the long-term effects on the world. There was mass loss of life and property, and infrastructure was destroyed. An example of this defect includes children being born with abnormalities resulting from this war. The problems associated with WWI led to the outbreak of WW2. The Treaty of Versailles was a major contributor of the war because it directly had an economic sabotage on German (Grimshaw, 2008). It is clear that various effects of the war are evident in different parts of the world up to date. Haley, Kathleen. (2014). 100 Years after WWI: The Lasting Impacts of the Great War. Retrieved on 9 February 2015 from

Dan Brown Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Dan Brown - Research Paper Example The objective of this paper is to give the reader a thorough description about Dan Brown, details about his novels and accomplishments. Dan Brown tends to stay away from the limelight. Most of the times, the low-profile author is seen at fund-raising campaigns and seminars. A particular event that is worth quoting is the gala at his High School, Philips Exeter Academy, which he attended and announced a gift of $2.2 million to the school (Philips Exeter Academy, 2004). Despite being the author of so many bestselling novels, Dan Brown is still a friendly guy without any supernormal attitude towards others. He does not even seem to be the person who created the strange world of Da Vinci Code (Kaplan, 2009). Dan Brown, according to Kaplan, seems to be surprised that his novel started such a big controversy among the Catholic Group. He was a very religious person in his initial years of his life as he was raised an Episcopalian (Kaplan, 2009). He is much of a scientific guy and believes more in science rather than religion. He said â€Å"science makes much more sense to me†. After his graduation, Brown commenced his career in songwriting and singing. Dan Brown is 45 years of age at the moment with golden hair and blue eyes. The author wakes up early in the morning at around 4:00AM when there are no distractions and works on his novels. At this hour of the day, Dan feels more productive. He does most of his writing activities in his roof space and stops briefly after every hour to do push-ups and other exercises to stay efficient. Dan Brown’s interests in code-breaking from the early stages of his life influenced him to start writing novels which are related to underground government agencies. He graduated from the Amherst College and also studied at the Philips Exeter Academy. There he also worked as an English teacher in the day. His father was a Presidential Award winner for his book on mathematical concepts and he was also a

Histo-Bio Reading of the Farming of Bones Essay Example for Free

Histo-Bio Reading of the Farming of Bones Essay â€Å"Our motherland is Spain; theirs is darkest Africa, you understand? They once came here only to cut sugarcane, but now there are more of them than there will ever be cane to cut, you understand? Our problem is one of dominion. Those of us who love our country are taking measures to keep it our own†. This statement was memorized by both the Haitian and Dominicans prisoners tortured by the soldiers during the â€Å"Parsley massacre†, which was a clear illustration of the xenophobia the Tyrannical leader, General Trujillo had. Thus, a wave of genocide which decimates the Haitian emigre population is justified (Brice-Finch, 1999). Farming of the Bones, a novel of Danticat, does not only vividly reveal a detailed, fictional narration of what happened to the Haitians before, during, and after the â€Å"El Corte† or provide us a glimpse of the author’s life as a Haitian. The novel, considered to be one of the literary records of history of Haitians, was able to captivate the lives of Haitians in a land they partly owned. The Farming of Bones is a stark reminder of the massacre as well as a tribute to the valor of those Haitians who escaped the terror (Brice-Finch 1999). At that particular time, Haiti was being colonized by the Americans. This event pushed some of the natives to go to Dominican Republic and find work to be able to help their families left in Haiti. Most of them became cane workers, housemaids, houseboys, etc. as expected, most of them were being oppressed by their employers in different ways. Some of them were overworked but underpaid and some are physically abused. However, amabelle did not suffer the same fate as a personal maid since she was adored, if not loved by her employers. Papi and Donya Valencia, her patroness, never failed to treat her right. However, when the tyrant General Trujillo felt that the number of Haitians is continuing to grow, he felt it was high time to â€Å"cleanse† their land. After hearing news of the killings, Amabelle then decided to leave her patrons and go back to Haiti with her lover Sebastien and his sister. However, when she was about to leave, the cutting in 1937— a part of General Trujillo’s dictatorial regime, Donya Valencia bled—an event that made her stay at the house a little bit longer. Because of the slight delay, Amabelle was not able to meet Sebastien and Mimi by the church—the meeting place for those who will cross the border with Doctor Javier. It was said, nonetheless, that all those who were to meet in church were arrested by the soldiers together with the doctor and the priests. Amabelle then decided to go and find Mimi and his brother. She journeyed with Yves, a good friend of Sebastien. While they were on their journey, there were several instances of them having themselves almost killed by the Dominicans. Their companions, whim they met on the way, also died one by one and Yves and Amabelle were the only ones to return to their homeland. There, they attempted to have normal lives so they kept themselves busy; however, no matter what they do, it was very clear that the ghosts of the past would haunt them until death.the border region. These instances from the novel clearly mirror the 1937 Parsley massacre and had shown a very precise documentary of the said horrifying event. Such instances are as follows: First, General Trujillo was really the name of the tyrannical leader of Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961, who ordered to kill all the Haitians so that, generally, they could have their country only for themselves. In the novel, him despising the Haitians was clearly shown in his actions. He was the sole mastermind of the â€Å"cleansing† of their border and he was also the one to pay very small amount of money to all the victims after the almost one-week bloodbath. Second, the narration of the Parsley Massacre was exactly how the event happened in 1937. The trucks containing the Haitians were real. The â€Å"killing spree†, where the peasants are to line by six and jump off a cliff if they were not able to say â€Å"perejil† (parsley) correctly, since the color of the Dominicans and Hatians are almost the same, also happened the same way it was in the novel. A quote from Senyora Valencia illustrates this point: â€Å"And in the parsley he said ‘pewegil’ for perejil. The Generalissimo had him in plain sight and could have shot him in the parsley, but he did not because the Generalissimo had a realization. Your people did not trill their r the way we do, or pronounce the jota. ‘You can never hide as long as there is parsley nearby,’ the Generalissi mo is believed to have said. On this island, you walk too far and people speak a different language. Their own words reveal who belongs on what side.† In this particular event, Dominican troops killed between 10,000 and 15,000 Haitians in approximately 2-6 days, particularly from October 2nd to October 4th 1937 (Upchurch, 1998). Third, the River of Massacre is really the name of the river at the borderline of Haiti and Dominican Republic. The Massacre River was named for a seventeeth century bloodbath, but as Danticat makes clear, it has continued to live up to its name. The river divides the small Caribbean island of Hispaniola into the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Because the countries are so close, their fates have historically been intertwined. The Farming of Bones begins in the Republic, during the regime of General Rafael Trujillo (Upchurch, 1998). Fourth and last in the significant similarities in events in history and the novel was that even though the Dominican leader taught its people to be cruel and to have no mercy for the Haitians, some of them chose to defy the General and helped hide several peasants during the mass killing. Senyora Valencia was a great example of such Dominicans: â€Å"Do you truly understand? During El Corte, though I was bleeding and nearly died, I hid many of your people. I hid a baby who is now a student at the medical school with Rosalinda and her husband. I hid Sylvie and two families in your old room. I hid some of Donya Sabine’s people before she and her husband escaped to Haiti. I did what I could in my situation.† In history, however, it is believed that although we must acknowledge that the Haitian-Dominican conflict stemmed from the occupation of the Dominican Republic by Haiti, it would be dangerous, and unfair to the Dominican people, to attribute Trujillo’s acts and ideology entirely to the same origin. Most of the Dominican people did not participate in Trujillo’s massacre of the Haitians. In fact, Many Haitians were saved by good-hearted Dominicans who could not imagine and could not accept the killings of thousands of innocents for petty reasons. The best example of this fact is the Dominican politician, Jose Maria Peza Gomez, who is believed to be of Haitian descent, and who escaped the massacre because a White Dominican family adopted him. As for the author’s relation to the characters, I found Amabelle most likely to share the life of Edwidge Danticat. There are few similarities in them but if you would compare Danticat’s life to that of other characters, it is most likely that you would find it difficult. For one, Danticat had always wanted to be a writer ever since she was a child. Her parents, on the other hand wanted her to be a doctor. In Amabelle’s case, she had always been veering away from her parents’ love for giving birth and chose to just sew clothes and at the same time serve Senyora Valencia. Another, I think, is the point in her life when her parents transferred to New York to work there. She was very young then and yet had to live without her parents with her. Amabelle experienced this when her parents drowned while crossing the river at the border. Both of them were forced to live without their parents at a time when they need guidance, love, and care from the person who brought them into this world. Third and last point is when Danticat transferred to Brooklyn to live with her real family. Adjustment to this new family was difficult, and to make it worse, she also had difficulty adjusting at school, because she spoke only Creole and did not know any English. Other students taunted her as a Haitian, a boat person, or a refugee. This time, it’s not only Amabelle who experienced the same treatment from other people but all the Haitians in the Dominicans part of the land. As evident in the novel, most of them suffered greatly because of their race, social status, and language. Obviously, it is very apparent that the novel Farming of the Bones was a literary record of what had happened to the 1937 massacre and a bit of the author’s life. In fact, the massacre, Danticat told Mallay Charters in Publishers Weekly, is not just a part of our history, as Haitians, but its also a part of the history of the world. Writing about it is an act of remembrance. References: Brice-Finch (1999) A review of The Farming of Bones, in World Literature Today, Vol. 73, No. 2, p. 373. Munro, M. (2006) Writing Disaster: Trauma, Memory, and History in Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones. London: Faber and Faber Upchurch, M. (1998) â€Å"No Room for the Living,† in New York Times Book Review. Lancer, J. The Conflict between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Retrieved from http://www.allempires.com/forum/ Wucker, M. (1998) The River Massacre: The Real and Imagined Borders of Hispaniola Retrieved from: http://windows.on.haiti-the.river.massacre.files.html (2005) Edwidge Danticat. Retrieved from http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Bios/entries/danticat_edwidge.html (2009) 70 Years Ago in the Dominican Republic! Retrieved from http://fowomouvriye.org/Bulletins/001/TheHopeAct.html (2012) The Farming of Bones: Author Biography. Retrieved from http://www.enotes.com/farming-bones (2012) Dominican Republic. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominica

Who are the People rating movies? Essays -- Essays Papers

Who are the People rating movies? Parents can determine if they want to allow their children to watch certain movies by using the film rating system. The film rating system went into effect on November 1, 1968. Even though the decision of whether or not to use the film rating system is voluntary, the vast majority of theaters in The United States enforce the Classification and Rating Administration’s guidelines. This was a voluntary system sponsored by the Motion Picture Association of America and the National Association of Theatre Owners. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) was founded in 1922 as membership-based business association of the American film industry. At first, the Motion Picture Association of America had the responsibility of combating the waves of criticism of American movies. In addition, the Association worked to reestablish a positive view from the public for the motion picture business. Since the 1920s, the Motion Picture Association of America has grown to reflect the change of the expanding industry. The film rating system was also sponsored by the National Association of Theatre Owners. This association is the largest exhibition trade organization in the world. It represents 26,000 movie screens in all 50 states and in more than 20 countries worldwide. The National Association of Theatre Owners’ purpose is â€Å"to preserve, enhance, and promote the magic of going to the movies.† The Film Rating Board of the Classification and Rating Administration are the individuals who rate films. They view each film and discuss how it should be rated. They attempt to rate a film according to how they believe parents would rate the movie. Written by Aaro... ...Entertainment Group. (2003). Who enforces the ratings? Movie Ratings Q&A. Retrieved February 10, 2004, http://www.regalcinemas. com/movies/ratings.html The Associated Press (2003, July 7). K.C. movie theater starts enforcing new age policies: Cinemark palace bans children younger than six. Retrieved February 20, 2004, from http://www.lawrence.com/news/ entertainment/story/123581 The birth of the ratings. (2000). Retrieved March 26, 2004, from http://www.mpaa.org The Classification & Rating Administration (2000). Reasons for movie ratings. Retrieved March 3, 2004, from http://www.filmratings.com Topher composite godzilla movie ratings. (1998-2000). Retrieved February 13, 2004, from www.lavasurfer.com/godzilla/topher-zilla-ratings.html What do ratings mean & who applies them. (2004). Retrieved February 13, 2004, from http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com

Linguistics Lecture Essay

Today’s Objective †¢ Begin to understand the fundamental ways of thinking in Linguistics. Some properties of grammar †¢ †¢ †¢ creativity generality parity Some properties of grammar: Parity ? all grammars are equally valid prescriptive grammar descriptive grammar ? ? Is this statement a scienti? c observation? A. Yes B. No People who live in East Hamilton often say â€Å"I seen him† where they should say â€Å"I saw him† Clicker frequency is BD. Is this statement a scienti?  c observation? A. Yes B. No In Finnish, prepositions come after nouns. Kissa on poydan alla cat is table under â€Å"The cat is under the table† Is this statement a scienti? c observation? A. Yes B. No If you end a sentence with a preposition you sound ignorant. Gymboree is one of the stores that I shop at. Gymboree is one of the stores at which I shop. Clicker frequency is BD. Clicker frequency is BD. Some properties of grammar: Universality ? ? ? ? all grammars share some universal properties phonological syntactic etc. Some properties of grammar: Mutability ? ? ? ? all grammars change over time sounds words & word forms sentence structures [w] not [hw] in Canada by age Some properties of grammar: Inaccessibility ? almost all grammatical knowledge is unconscious (a. k. a. implicit) How can we observe unconscious knowledge? Some properties of grammar ? ? ? ? ? ? creativity generality parity universality mutability inaccessibility.