French Language Essays (Examples)

Old French Before and After the Oaths of Strasbourg

The Historical Background of Old French

The evolution of Old French language began in 52 Before Christ when Julius Cesar held the power over the continents of the Gaul. According to Columbian Encyclopedia, Gaul was under the Roman Empire in the first and second century. With the strong influence it brought, Latin spoken by the Romans gradually replaced the Gaelic, a Celtic language as the Gaul's mother tongue, for a long time. Latin became the national language, spoken widely among people and became the root of recently spoken languages through Europe, including English (Le Tacon).

Marnette in her lecture notes gives hints, that during the occupation, a settlement of Germanic tribes was recorded in the border of Gaul in the first century. This would be an important step onto political action affecting the regions of the Roman Empire. As the immigration…

Language Policy and Planning

Language planning refers to the efforts that are deliberately undertaken to influence how languages functions, are structured or acquired or the variety of languages in a given country. It is often a government responsibility by non-governmental organizations have also come to be involved in this. Grass-roots organizations and also individuals have been involved in this. The goal of language planning differs depending on the country. However, it generally includes planning, decision making and possible changes which benefit the communications system of the country. Language planning or efforts to improve the communication in a country can also bring about certain social changes such as shift of language, assimilation and therefore provide a motivation which plans the function, structure and acquisition of languages Woolard & Gahng, 1990()

Decision making in language planning

There are four dominant language ideologies which motivate the decisions that are made regarding language planning.…

Language Is Arbitrary

As you are reading these words, you are taking part in one of the wonders of the natural world," begins Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct. (Pinker, 3) In other words, it is a wonder that the human mind is able to create, from need and cognitive structure and instinct, a morphological structure of communication that can change over time from context to context, yet still be understood.

It is a wonder that is both natural yet arbitrary in its construction. For the syntax, or appearance and sound of a particular kind of piece of language is arbitrary, even though the semantics, or relational meaning of the language is not. Should you, the reader, doubt this proposition, consider that one solitary letter can mean the difference between an object being understood, in an English context, as a bat, a cat, or a hat respectively. One letter can be…

French associate their country with a geometrical shape.

Hexagon

Circle

Octagon

Square

Having read the section on geography and weather, which one of the following regions is best known or most typically known for this type of weather:

Hot summers and cold sometimes snowy winters

North and Western Coastal Regions

Vosges, Jura, Alps, Pyrenees

Central and Eastern France

The South (also known as the Midi)

Having read the section on geography and weather, which one of the following regions is best known or most typically known for this type of weather:

Hot summers and mild winters often made colder by the cold Mistral wind

North and Western Coastal Regions

2.

Vosges, Jura, Alps, Pyrenees

3.

Central and eastern France

4.

The south (the Midi)

Question 4

Having read the section on geography and weather, which one of the following regions is best known or most typically known for this type…

Clothing and Culture

Clothing, in the modern definition, is considered to be fiber or textiles that are worn on humans, and one of the anthropological features of human culture and society. The type (color, style, fit) of clothing is typically dependent upon a number of variables -- geography, weather, gender, status, physical state, work activities, and even status symbols. From a practical standpoint, clothing serves as protection from external weather, or for safety reasons (constructing, cooking, hiking, sports); it may protect the wearer from flora and fauna (nettles, bites, thorns); it may insulate against hot or cold conditions; and may even provide a hygienic barrier. Often, studying the aspects of clothing and society tells scholars a great deal about the particular culture -- not just in external appearance but in the technology of textile production, weaving, and adornment (oucher & Deslandres, 1989).

Evolution of Clothing Styles: Scholars are uncertain as…

If language is like food, then the ingredients are its words; the cooking process is its grammar; the nutritional value is its semantics. Some sentences are simple staples like rice and beans. Others are primarily aesthetic, finely crafted, and honed over time like a French sauce. Like the ingredients in any dish, the words of a language depend largely on geography. At the same time, we borrow words from other cultures just as we may borrow ingredients from other cuisines. Spanglish is like fusion food. Some cooking processes are rigid, time-consuming, and complex like proper grammar; others are looser and more flexible like everyday speech. There are some dishes you would serve your mother and others that are too spicy for her. Some language is long-winded and without substance; some is meaty; some is so packed with goodness that you return it again and again.

Ascription to the rules of…

Rather, language may be more apt to change the way we see the world, rather than vice versa, at least according to Chomsky.

Meaning thus varies and shifts, some would say as the world shifts, others would say as language itself grows and generates new meanings -- while almost all would agree that the drive to communicate and make consistent and coherent meanings endures in all segments of the species. hile a stroke may damage the ability of some human brains to convey language and different people may have different levels of ability in using language effectively, or learning foreign systems of communication, the innate, structured, yet dynamic nature of human language lives on. Language exists on a biological, linguistic, and cultural level, although the degree to which these factors produce and affect language and meaning remains controversial.

orks Cited

Luger, G.F. (1994). Chapter 13: Language representation and processing. In…

Consider the fact that the Iroquois are said not to have had a strong word for the singular "I," and that they subsequently developed what was arguably the longest lasting communal representative democracy the world has ever known. The Inuit, whose culture revolves around the arctic world, have dozens of words for snow - this sort of technical knowledge allows quick and accurate transmission of conditions and training in survival.

In Western terms, one remembers that Jesus Christ was said to be "The Word," yet in the original Greek this indicates not only a spoken word but also the Logos - the root term for intellectual reason, for Meaning within context (be that the context of a sentence, a life, a history, or a universe); logos was rational order. The difference between saying that a religious figure is the Word (which at its most profound seem to indicate a kind…

Language and Literacy

Every workplace without exception relies on language as a primary means of communication. Therefore, all types of literacy are required in order for an organization to function properly. The different types of literacy range from multicultural awareness to written language to public speaking. For the purposes of this project, I examined and analyzed several different workplace environments for their usage of language and their different literacy demands. My personal workplace environment is a high-stress, hustle-and-bustle office. Phones are ringing constantly throughout the day, memos are being circulated on a near-daily basis, and most employees need to be familiar with company literature including quarterly financial reports. In addition to the rigors of interpersonal communication, which entails informal as well as formal conversations, we deal with inter-office communications with those who work at remote office locations, with offices located abroad, with clients, and with various others with which we…

Language Diversity and Education by Carlos J. Ovando, the author makes the point that the language diversity present in the United States has significant implications for all teachers and all students. He emphasizes the importance of both a person's first language and the dominant language in a culture. He notes the complexity of learning a second language: in addition to the cognitive mastery of vocabulary and grammar involved, fluency in a language involves discourse (structure of paragraphs and larger chunks of written language); appropriateness (adjusting language to the social setting); paralinguistics (body language, gestures, volume, pitch, etc.); and pragmatics (cultural norms involving language, subtle conversation skills). Even though ESL students may seem to be learning English rapidly, those language skills may be largely social and inadequate t the cognitive demands made on it in a classroom.

Ovando gave examples of true dialects in the United States -- creoles, or combinations…

The attendant rules for the words may, or may not be carried to the new language. For example, many French words carry their plurals into English, while some more recent additions adopt English rules for pluralization

So we create new words or meanings as needed, and we drop old ones as they become obsolete or lose their usefulness. Another way language changes is by attitude. Cultural influences make certain words taboo, so we develop euphemisms to replace the taboo word. When the euphemism becomes widely known, we change it. One example in English is the word for toilet: water closet->loo->lavatory->ladies' room-> rest room ad infinitum until finally, we stopped thinking of this particular place as taboo in western society, so now we use many of the previous euphemisms as our personal taste dictates, and most people understand us.

Language is so basically part of our culture that culture is probably…

Apparently this view has much in its favor.

When we compare modern English with some of those Indian languages which are most concrete in their formative expression, the contrast is striking. When we say "The eye is the organ of sight, the Indian may not be able to form the expression the eye, but may have to define that the eye of a person or of an animal is meant. Neither may the Indian be able to generalize readily the abstract idea of an eye as the representative of the whole class of objects... (p. 64).

It does not seem to occur to Boas anywhere in the Handbook that such a way of talking about the world might not arise because the mind of the American Indians that he is writing about is "primitive" but rather because he or she is seeing the world in a very different way.

Boas…

Symbolism first developed in poetry, where it spawned free verse. Forefathers included the poets Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Rimbaud; practitioners included Laforgue, Moreas, and Regnier. The Swiss artist Arnold Becklin is perhaps the most well-known Symbolist painter; his pictures are like allegories without keys, drenched in melancholy and mystery. Other artists working in this vein include Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau. The Surrealists drew heavily on the Symbolists later on.

Catalan Artists

Catalan masters played a major role in the development of 20th Century modern art in many fields. For example, modernism expressed by Gaudi, Rusinol, Gimeno, Camarasa, Picasso, Nonell or Miro epitomized the efforts of the Catalan people. Still, most of them expressed their talents outside Spain in Paris where many of them lived and worked before going home to continue their expression. Like anyone honing a craft, they needed a foundation of knowledge for their art and Paris offered…

watch first the French a Bout de Souffle, Luc Godard's film, released in 1960. I decided to pick this particular one from the list because I thought the image of Jean Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg in the street made me want to see the film. That image communicated not only eroticism, but also a special connection between the two that I wanted to explore. While watching the French film, I searched the Internet to find out more about the actress playing Patricia, the main female role. I found her femininity befitting the sensuality of her male counterpart, Paris in the sixties.

Next, I then found out that Jean Paul Belondo played his first major role in this film, one of the most successful films of the French New Wave (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000901/bio-ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm ).

After watching the French film, I realized that the main male character, his villainy aside, was quintessentially French.…

strong letter recommendation recommend a language professor seeking tenure promotion. In letter stress

It would be extremely difficult for me to fathom a better foreign language professor than Mrs. Groschupf (CHANGE THE NAME). Her presence, knowledge, enthusiasm, and interest in her students -- both individually and collectively -- made her French courses a pleasure to take, and one of my fondest memories of my graduate experience thus far. There are certain personalities which dominate a time period in one's life, which fuse a series of moments together and enrich one's life in the process. I unequivocally assert that Mrs. Groschupf is one such personality, and that her approach towards the subject matter -- genuine, personable, approachable -- has benefitted not only me but also most every other student who took her course last semester.

What I enjoyed most about Mrs. Groschupf's teaching methodology is the fact that she actually made…

French Quebec Nationalism

A major turning point in the history of Canada was the fall of Quebec which resulted in the transformation of a French colony into a ritish colony. Had it not happened, English would never have become the first language of the country. The battle of Quebec was one of the numerous wars fought between the ritish and the French over fur and land during the 18th century. The fall of Quebec ensured the control and domination of ritish in major parts of North America. New ideas were brought forward by new generations who came in power and redefined the political scenario of the province. The Quebec Act was drafted by the ritish government which motivated the growth of nationalism in Quebec and since then, the nationalist movement has remained powerful and dominated the politics of the province.

Troubles in Manitoba

In 1870, the ritish government introduced the…

French geography help to broaden and deepening your knowledge of France? Does learning geography help to change preconceived notions or stereotypes about France and the French people? What in your view is a good way to learn about a country's geography?

Have you ever stopped to wonder if your geographic origins have affected how you think about yourself?

For example, I have always noticed that I sound a lot like the people who grew up in my town, but if I go 100 mles south or north, I no longer quite fit in. If I go further than that, I sometimes sound foreign to people aoround me. In 1977, I went from my home town of York to Portsmouth on the south coast of England. I moved about 300 miles from the north to the south. During try-outs for the volleyball team, one of the coaches, hearing me speak, asked…

French literature? (Pick as many as you think are correct)

Detective stories

Songs sung by traveling minstrels (troubadours) and entertainers and jesters (jongleurs)

Oral histories evoking the exploits of saints and kings

Long verse poems telling the stories of heroes like Charlemagne, knights and ladies and their confrontations with giants, monsters, and the supernatural world

Gothic novels

The Renaissance - pick out which of the following elements characterize the changes and innovations of the Renaissance era in France - the late 15th century to the early 17th century.

An interest and celebration of the arts and thinking of ancient Greece and Rome

An attraction to humanism - a view of the world where individual choices direct one's actions more so than religious conviction

c.

Royal support for music, architecture, and art

d.

The bubonic plague

e.

The Hundred Years War

Question 4

Which of the following were important Renaissance writers?…

Formerly known as Zaire, the Democratic Republic of Congo gained its independence from Belgium in June of 1960. Education standards have risen since the nation became independent, but political strife and an ongoing civil war continue to plague the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is actually run as a dictatorship. Since 1998, civil war has caused poverty, disenfranchisement, and a general low standard of living. Hardest hit are the women in society, who have traditionally been subordinated to their male counterparts. Although suffrage is universal and women maintain certain political and economic rights, women are still viewed and treated as secondary citizens. One of the most notable manifestations of the gender gap is in the educational system. In the total population, 77.3% of people over the age of 15 are literate in one of the major languages (French, Lingala, Kingwana, or Tshiluba), but only 67.7% of females over the age…

Progression and Foundation of Language

Concept/topic

Learning of primary language complements skills development; this includes learning about language, as well as learning other subjects in the school curriculum via language. Language learning facilitates general literary skills and allows children to revert to, and strengthen skills and concepts studied through their first language (The National Strategies Primary, 2009).

Curriculum is enriched by language learning. Teachers as well as children find it fun and challenging, and display enthusiasm towards language; this leads to creation of interested learners and the development of positive attitudes towards learning languages, all throughout one's life. A natural link exists between language and other curricular areas, and this enriches the overall teaching-learning experience. Proficiencies, understanding, and information learned through language contribute greatly to literacy and oracy development in children, as well as to better understanding of one's own and others' cultures. Language is also integral to community and…

Language defines identity, and creates boundaries between self and other. In Borderlands: The New Mestiza, Gloria Anzaldua refers to the "broken" and "forked" tongues that represented the boundaries and intersections of social, cultural, racial, ethnic, and gender identities. The roots of sociolinguistic hypotheses of language suggest that at the very least, language impacts the social construction of reality, as well as psychic self-perception. According to Noam Chomsky, language use is a type of "organized behavior" that is both a cause and effect of reality (2). The study of language structure and function "can contribute to an understanding of human intelligence," (Chomsky xiv). Chomsky goes so far as to suggest that language precedes cognition in some cases, by stating that, "the study of language structure reveals properties of mind that underlie the exercise of human mental capacities in normal activities," including the use of language as a creative mechanism, form, and…

Language

American English is incredible malleable and diverse, and it would be a mistake to impose artificial rules. Not only would it be a mistake, it could even be construed as racist. The imaginary Correct English (whether Oxford or Webster-based prescriptive grammatical rules) is one that is clearly defined by the white upper-class hegemony in higher education. As Deresiewicz (2005) states, "there is no such thing as Correct English, and there never has been." Dialects and accents are a sign that the language is alive. Language reflects subculture and social identity, and can allow for the vivid expression of ideas that would be severely restricted if there were only one Correct English.

Language is a form of cultural capital. Therefore, "stigmatized forms" of language such as edneck or African-American speech, are "typically those used by social groups other than the educated middle classes -- professional people, including those in law,…

Language

Power and Language

The concept of power has been examined closely by many philosophers throughout human history. These philosophers have different ideas of what power is, but they all, in some way, believe that the concept of language is central to power. In On Violence, Hannah Arendt quotes several such definitions. She says that power may be "making others act as I choose," "to command and be obeyed," or "the instinct of domination" (36-7). All of these definitions have some basis in the reality of the concept, but the two philosophers who will be the focus of this essay, Arendt and Nietzsche, disagree with this basic premise and attempt to quantify power in different terms. They also make the case of the centrality of language to power. In other words, that there is a language to power, and the creation of power, that needs to be understood before the…

speaking in the target language is the expectation that a proficient speaker will sound like a native speaker. Is this an appropriate or realistic expectation?

Not a long while after the emergence of the subject of second language acquisition (SLA), which most of the scholars think came around the time of initial years of 1970s, there has been a need to develop ways by which to measure the development of the second language, aside from the usage of detailed homogeneous skill tests which were mostly appropriate to fulfill other objectives.

As per Freeman's (2009) information, the first declaration of this need was made by Kenji Hukuta (1976). Kenji Hakuta was concerned in knowing the path of his subject Ugusiu's English language development over a period of time. Besides the aforementioned practitioners, other L1 acquisition scholars had carried out for the pupils learning English as a national language. In the research…

com). Having English sound 'stressed' correctly is often a challenge for French speakers.

Compared with some other languages, French and English have fairly similar grammatical structures. Both languages, for example, have auxiliary verbs, participles, active/passive voice, past/present/future tenses. But "there are frequent occasions when French uses a different tense to convey a particular meaning than English. Some common examples are the following faulty sentences: I have played tennis yesterday. I can't play now. I do my homework. I live in London since last year. I will tell you as soon as I will know" (Vu 2008).

Difficulties in English dialects may also pose a challenge to French speakers who have learned English in a 'normalized' fashion, denuded of regional accents. "Variation in English presents considerable challenge to schools, grounded as they are in standard English norms" (Adger 2009). French speakers, who have heard English mostly from television and in school,…

S.A., are the various versions of signing based on a strict adherence to English grammar, i.e., Signing Exact English, Seeing Essential English, and others. LSM vocabulary, however, seems to have been developed with a very strong Spanish influence and has kept the initialization to this day. Initialization is not seen as a negative strategy, nor is it viewed as a characteristic of hearing signers (Faurot et al., p. 3).

Faurot et al., went on to discuss the Geographic distinctions that exist in LSM. Geographic distinctions do not seem to be as important as other differences. The greatest lexical variations seem to result from three factors: religious differences (for religious terminology), age distinctions, and levels of education. eligious terminology differs from church to church (and between denominations) and from city to city. If there are two variations of a sign, sometimes the Deaf would refuse to use the sign that more…

Finite and Non-Finite English Verbs

Verbs do much of the semantic labor in a language -- their use allows us to mean things that cannot be conveyed by mere nouns and adjectives. In our study of syntax, we can identify several important classes of verbs by their behavior and use, and the way in which they interact with negation: finite and non-finite verbs. These verb classes allow us to do a variety of things: distinguish perfect (i.e. finished) and imperfect (not yet complete) actions without the cumbersome use of case markers, use verbs as the core of an independent sentence (finite verbs only), and form the base for clauses that employ auxiliary verbs (nonfinite verb-based clauses). The acquisition of finite and non-finite verbs in English is interesting to many scholars (Theakston, Lieven, & Tomasello, 2003). These forms also respond to negation in distinctive ways compared to other verbs. Below, I…

Age and Learning a New Language

hat is the ideal age for a person to be able to learn a new language? hat are the dynamics (besides age) that contribute to SLA? This paper delves into those subjects using scholarly articles as resources.

The Literature on Learning a New Language and Age

"…Early beginners, through their longer exposure to L2, reach the necessary competence levels in their two languages sooner to allow transfer in both directions…" (Djigunovic, 2010).

hy are very young students especially gifted to pick up new languages quickly? The scholarship shows that younger learners "…have no awkwardness or inhibitions with the new language" and don't get too upset when they make mistakes (Cenoz, 2003, p. 77). As to whether or not younger learners "…soak up new languages" simply because the soak up information like a sponge soaks up water, Cenoz has his doubts. Indeed studies show younger…

Irony and Humor in French Literature

Delphine Perret's analysis of irony and humor is apparently well-founded and well-supported by famous literature. Due to obvious differences in the French and English notions of irony, Perret explored irony by returning to its roots. Starting "at square one" with definitions of "irony" from notable dictionaries, Perret then traces irony through historical eras and developments with the aid of such great thinkers as Socrates and Aristotle. Her exhaustive analysis results in clearly defined types of irony/humor, basic elements of the phenomenon and dimensions that are or should be present in that form of writing. The intelligence of Perret's examination is illustrated in two famous French plays of the 19th and 20th Century: "Ubu Roi" and "The ald Soprano." Though written by different playwrights in different centuries, both plays fully support Perret's analysis and findings regarding irony/humor.

ody

a. Perret's Applicable Points

Delphine Perret's "Irony"…

These different perspectives were based upon their language learning experiences from the past, their language proficiency, their current academic needs, and also their future career choices. To bridge the gap, the teachers engaged in dialogue with the students to determine the best ways to engage the students individually (Pazaver, and Wang 35).

In a study in the International Journal of English Studies, the authors used ELT materials in order build of a reliable instrument to help in the potential for the promotion of implicit and explicit components in ESL learning by students. The found that implicitness and explicitness were promoted equally by the ESL teaching units in three different textbooks (Criado Sanchez, Sanchez Perez, and Cantos Gomez 129). In an article in the journal of Applied Linguistics, .W. Schmidt analyzes issues that impact upon explicit learning modalities. He concludes that subliminal language learning is impossible. Also, he notes that it…

Braille, sign language, and pictograms all offer nonverbal means of effectively communicating ideas. Each of these nonverbal communications constitutes a type of language, and each has unique applications. It is important to realize that verbal and written languages are only a few of many different methods of communication. A nurse needs to understand the special functions of braille, sign language, and pictograms and be able to identify the different applications and potential uses of each one.

Developed by Louis Braille in the early nineteenth century, Braille is a textured writing system that allows the visually impaired to write and read texts. As with some written languages like Chinese, Braille symbols comprise both of an alphabet and words. Thus, the letter B. In Braille can also connote the word "but" in certain contexts. Braille can be adapted for any human language and is therefore especially important when dealing with people with…

Grammar Error Correction

Grammar Correction Best Practices

The art and science of grammar correction has seismic implications on native and new speakers to English alike. The ability to communicate in a clear and cohesive fashion, both verbally and in writing, whilst using the proper syntax, punctuation, sentence structure and spelling is vital for the message to be clear. Further, it is seen as a sign of intelligence or lack thereof for someone to use the obviously wrong words and sentence structure while communicating in writing or via speech. hile grammar and languages teachers are perhaps fighting a losing battle right now given the fairly sloppy nature of many people including supposed language professionals like writers and journalists, there are indeed some verifiable and known best practices that can and should be used to help combat the grammar failures that pervade the sphere of communication in the United States as well…

The connection between a national identity and a singular official language does not exist. India, with its 19 official languages (King, 1997), is more united as a country than Canada or Belgium (King, 1997). So clearly language has little to do with national identity. The author refers this unity in the absence of a single official language as "unique otherness." If a nation wants to be more united, then it needs to rely on the strength of its diversity, instead of forcing itself to adhere to a singular identity or culture than could potentially offend certain citizens looking to practice their own traditions. AS King points out, historically speaking there is no evidence that a government can successful control the languages of its citizens in order to create a more unified state. In fact, quite the contrary is true, as evidenced by countries like Canada, when the English speaking and…

Enlightenment on the French evolution

evolutionary changes in the leadership of 18th Century France did not occur overnight or with some sudden spark of defiance by citizens. The events and ideals which led to the French evolution were part of a gradual yet dramatic trend toward individualism, freedom, liberty, self-determination and self-reliance which had been evolving over years in Europe, and which would be called The Enlightenment. This paper examines and analyses the dynamics of The Enlightenment - and also, those individuals who contributed to the growth of The Enlightenment and to the ultimate demise of the Monarchy - in terms of what affect it had on the French evolution.

Introduction to the French evolution

When the legitimate question is raised as to what role, if any, The Enlightenment played in the French evolution, the best evidence from credible historic sources is that The Enlightenment did indeed play an important…

Alphaville

Analysis of Godard's Alphaville

French New ave cinema emerged during the 1950s and was inspired by the criticism of Andre Bazin and Jacques Donial-Valcroze who helped to found Cahiers du Cinema. The Cahiers du Cinema helped to establish two filmmaking philosophies that would help to guide New ave auteurs in the creation of their films. Additionally, New ave directors would also establish a set of guidelines that would help to classify their films as part of the New ave movement. Among the founders of the New ave movement was Jean-Luc Godard whose films not only adhere to the guidelines of the movement, but also push the boundaries and allow him to use his films to explore politics, genres, and cinematic styles. Alphaville, released in 1965, not only follows the guidelines that were established by the New ave movement, but also brings together the genres of film noir and science…

adaptation a french Novel Zazie dans le Metro

It is quite clear from even a cursory analysis of chapters of 18 and 19 of aymond Queneau's Zazie dans le Metro, described as one of the most laughable books originally written in French (Vincendeau, 2011), that the author is describing the events that take place in them in a humorous way. As such, the reader can infer that the actions described in these two chapters, and probably through the remainder of the novel, are not literal and are meant to poke fun at a greater concept. The author's humor is certainly understated, which is why these chapters read more like a satire than a straightforward novel to produce an overall "fun" effect (No author, 1999). It is highly important that in both chapters, a good deal of the humor revolves around women. A closer examination of the author's diction and tone…

Mandarin a Necessary Language to Learn

In many regards, learning Mandarin can be considered a necessary task for a host of reasons, not the least of which may be found in the ever-fickle and competitive job market of today and of the future. There are several indicators that demonstrate that this statement is true, not the least of which can be found in the British school systems. At certain schools in Britain, both teachers and students are actively taking this language in efforts to be able to communicate with the native culture which many predict to be the economic power of the future -- perhaps even more so than the United States. When one pauses to consider that the majority of the people who live in China, which just so happens to comprise about 20% of the world's population, accounting for approximately 1.2 billion people which is more than can…

post-revolutionary French art, and are titled; Nudity a La Grecque in 1799 and Colonization Gross's Plague-Stricken Jaffa share some fundamental commonalities. The similarities that these two articles share are their methodology, formal artistic analysis and their account and implicit description of the relationship between art and social history. Both of these articles also provide historical accounts of artistic criticism of post-Revolutionary history painting. Most significantly Grisby's articles provide a view of post-Revolutionary France where art, history and politics all combine to allow readers to more fully understand cultural and social issues of great importance of the time.

Darcy Grimaldo Grisby sets out to dispel commonly held notions and opinions regarding Gross's Plague-Stricken Jaffa. The most significant theory he seeks to dispel is one that claims the painting is simply a government commissioned propaganda piece created to enlarge the image of the then, soon to be emperor of France Napoleon Bonaparte…

Not only are many Chinese immigrants well assimilated into their host nations, but they also have established family businesses that preclude them from being interested in taking up a teaching position. Furthermore, many Chinese immigrants abroad speak dialects other than Mandarin.

Hanban is also a direct emissary for the Chinese government and as such, it can more directly spread Beijing-sponsored values and ideas. Creating and disseminating a uniform message about China is as important as spreading a standardized version of Mandarin. Teaching methods can also be universalized, standardized for quality and effectiveness by Hanban. The government of the United States has actively engaged in language exportation but in less formal ways. While no Hanban equivalent exists, English is disseminated regularly and systematically through the popular media and through international business enterprise.

eferences

Erard, Michael. "The Mandarin Offensive." Wired.com. retrieved Dec 1, 2006 at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/mandarin.html?pg=1&topic=mandarin&topic_set

sign language in public settings for people who are deaf.

Writing notes as a way to communicate with people who are deaf is convenient, for people with normal hearing, and recommended, by people with normal hearing. In the world of hearing people, recommendations for using note writing as a way to communicate with people who are deaf is common.

Communication at work. Employers are advised to supplement their communication with employees who are deaf by writing notes. For example, Equal Access Communication, an advocacy organization suggests that supervisors may wish to keep a white board or a chalk board by the work area of an employee who is deaf. The supervisor is reminded to keep the writing simple and concise, first establishing the subject to be discussed and then providing an explanation. Further, the supervisor is reminded that the person who is deaf may experience difficulties understanding idioms or double…

nhl.com/sm-reebok-washington-capitals-alexander-ovechkin-language-barrier-player-name-and -- pi-3070445.html

Here, we can see an innovative way of overcoming the inherent language barrier, or at least rendering it secondary to fan intrigue.

hina is another market context where challenges are specific and dominant due both to the dramatic distinction between the hinese language and Romantic or Latin-based tongues and due to hina's isolated and distinctly defined cultural nature. In both of these, we consider that there is a real and difficult obstruction for organizations seeking to establish a meaningful identity.

In consideration of the example of Foster's beer, for one, we are given a narrative detailing a long and difficult process by which the Australian beer distributor was eventually able to penetrate the market. For Foster's, one of the biggest problems was its prior strategic dependence on its name and Australian identity, which are easily and charmingly conveyed in advertisement in America. In a non-English speaking market,…

13166 require that public entities receiving federal funds must have all vital documents available in every language that their clients speak" (Schultz, 2011). Of course, it is worth noting that state laws and federal laws approach the idea of an official language differently. There are state laws that have made English the official language in just over half of the states in the United States. This may be appropriate because states are more likely to have homogenous groups than the nation as a whole. However it is critical to realize that Title VI applies even to those states that have declared English as an official language. In other words, states cannot overrule the federal government's protection for non-English speakers.

If the majority of the United States speaks English, one may wonder why anyone would worry about protecting the right to speak a different language. Having a single language would certainly…

American Revolution in 1776 inspired the French Revolution in 1789 by showing that the common people could overthrow the powerful political establishment. Both countries were ruled by absolute monarchies. The United States were then colonies of Great Britain, and were ruled unfairly. The early Americans became tired of "taxation without representation." In France, the common people and peasants were also not represented by their government. In both cases, only landowners could vote and there was little equality or justice. By taking up arms against Britain, the early American settlers took a stand against tyranny and this act then led to the French Revolution.

The American Revolution set an example to the people of France that it was possible to have democracy. By taking the first step in this process of change, the American settlers showed that democracy was possible, even if it meant going to war. After succeeding in the…

If they are a couple, they have no children together. Whereas Morisot focuses on the child in "The Basket Chair," Caillebotte accomplishes the opposite. Caillebotte's painting lacks emotional intensity, because his palette is far more retrained than that of Morisot. Morisot's garden is rendered in vivid greens and intensely saturated hues. Caillebotte's, on the other hand, is a more staid palette. Furthermore, unlike Morisot's fenced-off garden, Caillebotte's is a public park. Yet there are no other people in the park: which suggests that there are a disproportionate number of wealthy elite in Paris at the time of painting. In their own ways, the two Impressionists suggest that the bourgeois live in a world apart from the working class society. Beyond the boundaries of their respective gardens, scores of working class French men and women toil to feed the burgeoning capitalist enterprise that characterizes urbanization and industrialization. However, the subjects in…

Final results reveal far better efficiency in the worksheets for sessions wherein the robot gazed away from, when compared with the session it gazed in the direction of the child, because the child had been entering the worksheets. This had been the situation particularly for the much more tough worksheet elements. These results emphasize the require for cautious execution of social robot conducts to prevent disadvantageous outcomes. Based on Herberg, Feller, Yengin and Saerbeck (2015), outcomes recommend that raising a robot tutor’s interpersonal conducts doesn't inevitably improve children’s studying habits, however at times can in fact hinder children’s learning efficiency. Children success-rate worsened in worksheet words translation activities the moment the robot tutor got involved in watchful conducts, as opposed to when it gazed away. In the worksheets for Latin translation, this kind of watchful drawback impact tended to happen mainly on the more tough elements, with the simpler elements…

Linguistics 1 / Anthropology 104: Fall 2004

American Sign Language

Learning and using Sign Language will be pretty easy to do because there are so many books and web sites available that teaches it to anyone who wants to learn.

In life, people usually take things for granted like the ability to speak and hear. For the last few weeks I have been hanging out with my friend named XXXX. Until I really got to know her, I know that I sure took the ability to listen for granted. I have always seen myself as a healthy individual and my parents have always been very supportive by telling me that I'm pretty smart. So why wouldn't I take those things for granted? Along comes XXXX who is deaf and needs to communicate with her friends and family by using sign language. As a bird sits in a tree near my…

HUMANITIES215 Discovering Humanities Sayre Pearson 2 9781256735007 1304A HUMA215-07 Please reference include sayre. DISCUSSION BOAD -2 in 12th century, literacy women increased. Though literacy Latin limited specific social classes, literacy local vernacular languages increasingly commo

Initial Post: Write 100 words within the Discussion Board responding to the following questions. Create a substantive and clear post expressing your research, thoughts, and ideas:

• Discuss common characteristics of romantic or courtly love poems.

• What are your reactions to these expressions of romantic love?

• Does the content of the poetry surprise you in any way?

omantic or courtly love poems expressed the devotion of a knight for his lord's lady. The love of the knight in the courtly love scenario was thus never likely to be consummated. It was supposed to be chaste and pure, much like the love a worshipper might feel for the Virgin Mary. The main audience of…

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Bovaryism came to mean a dream that is as self-serving to the reality it aims to replace and therefore the face of reality becomes diminished.

What does the term bovaryism mean when it is thought about? A few years after the publication of Gustave Flaubert's works known as Madame Bovary the term Bovaryism was adopted by the French language (Paper Guidelines). The 19th century novel's heroine defines herself through common cliches that the world looks at to this day. Bored housewife syndrome, romantic fantasy delusions, and adultery are just a few of those cliches (Paper Guidelines). Bovaryism came to mean a dream that is as self-serving to the reality it aims to replace and therefore the face of reality becomes diminished (Paper Guidelines).

The concept of ennui comes into play. Ennui in short simply means the idea of boredom which is seen constantly throughout the…

The protagonist's resistance is thus effective, psychologically in the sense that the fire-watcher has been given a gift that other members of society and the world might lack, a sense of his own personal ineffectuality, true, but also a sense of the ultimate transience of all human desires for boundaries and possession. This does not necessarily provide a solution to the problem of social marginalization, or of the historical conflicts presence in Israel and waged in the political sphere, but it does provide a certain ideological 'gift' to the marginalized man.

In contrast, Anita Desai's short story is more lighthearted in its analysis of cultural marginalization. In her story, the central protagonist travels to another city in India and establishes a career for herself, quite contrary to how she has been taught to live. The central, female protagonist does not fall into the conventional mode of simply marrying an acceptable…

2009). Othe studies had peviously concluded that English infants developed a pefeence fo tochaic wods, the dominant stess constuct of English wods, ove iambic stess pattens within the fist yea of life (Hohle et al. 2009). A compaison of Geman and Fecnh infants in fou distinct expeiments confims and even naows down the timefame in which this diffeentiation of pefeence occus, and also shows (though the Fench language expeiments) that the ability to distinguish the two opposing stess pattens does not necessaily esult in the development of pefeence, if the taget language itself lacks a dominant stess stuctue (Hohle et al. 2009). Even at six months, a specific language begins to mediate peception.

An ealie study suggests that the timing of stess and intonation pefeence development is even soone than six months. While citing evidence suggesting that language-independent phonetic contasts and melodic vaiations ae ecognized within the fist fou months…

344).

In his seminal work, Second-Language Acquisition in Childhood, McLaughlin (1985) reports that early research into language acquisition by preschool children suggested that interference between languages is not as inevitable or universal as was once believed. "Contrastive analysis, in its traditional form, was not able to account for the vast majority of errors that second-language learners made; in fact, learners from quite different language backgrounds appeared to make the same types of mistakes in the target language," he adds (McLaughlin, 1985, p. 14).

Since these early studies into language acquisition, other studies have shown that transfer from the first language does take place in the speech of children from certain first-language backgrounds and at certain times during the learning process. Therefore, McLaughlin cautions that, "It is an exaggeration to say that transfer from the first language is minimal and unimportant. The acquisition of phonological, syntactic, and morphological structures in a…

90, pp 51-89

In this particular study, Salvarder studied the eye movements of a number of participants while they heard sentences and saw four pictured objects on a computer screen. The study concluded that, "our major finding, however, is that listeners can use the subphonemic acoustic cues often associated with the production of monosyllabic words, such as segmental lengthening, to bias their lexical interpretation of an utterance." (Salvarder 2003-page 82).

orks Cited

Andrews, Sally, Davis Colin, (1999) Interactive Activation Accounts of Morphological Decomposition: Finding the Trap in Mousetrap?, Brain and Language, Vol. 68, pp. 355-361

Bowers, Jeffrey S., Davis, Collin J. And Hanley, Derek a., (2004) Automatic Semantic Activation of Embedded ords: Is there a hat in that?, Journal of Memory and Language, Vol. 52, pp 131-143.

Culter, Anne, (1992) Phonological Cues to Open and Closed-Class ords in the Processing of Spoken Sentences, Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, Vol. 22, Issue…

Constructivism in TESOL-1

ABEVIATIONS

EFL - The term is the main topic on which the paper is based upon (English as a foreign language). It does not refer to the student learning English language which is not his or her native language nor is it being spoken in their native country English is totally a foreign language.

ESL -- This refers to English as a second language. Students who learn English as a second language intend to use it in places where English is a native language and it ain't their first or native language..

ELF - The term does stand for English as a lingua franca

EAL - Stands for English as an additional language. The term (EAL) is only applicable to certain countries where English is just an extra language.

EAP -- In this specific study means English for academic purposes

EIL - The abbreviation stands for English…

If anything, the more languages in which a book is published the better. This way there can be as much cross fertilization of ideas and solutions to pressing needs.

eferences

Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart. New York: Penguin, 2006.

____African Trilolgy. London: Picador, 2000

Ashcroft, Bill; Griffiths, Gareth and Tiffin, Helen (eds.). The Post Colonial Studies eader, London: outledge, (1995)

Bassnett-McGuire, Susan. Translation Studies. London: outledge, 1991.

Chevrier, Jacques. "Writing African books in the French Language L'Afrique littcraire et artistique 50 (1979): 49.

Janmohamed, a. Janmohamed, a. "Sophisticated Primitivism: The Syncretism of Oral and Literate Modes in Achebe, Chinua Things Fall Apart.." Ariel: A eview of International English Literature 15 (1984): 19-39.

Gikandi, Simon. "The Epistemology of Translation: Ngugi, Matigari, and the Politics of Language." esearch in African Literatures 22.4 (1991): 161-67.

Gyasi, Kwaku. Writing as Translation: African Literature and the Challenges of Translation.: esearch in African Literatures a.2. (1999).,…

Navies in American Revolution

For hundreds of years, maritime expansion represented the only way to reach distant shores, to attack enemies across channels of water, to explore uncharted territories, to make trade with regional neighbors and to connect the comprised empires. Leading directly into the 20th century, this was the chief mode of making war, maintaining occupations, colonizing lands and conducting the transport of goods acquired by trade or force. Peter Padfield theorized that ultimately, ritish maritime power was decisive in creating breathing space for liberal democracy in the world, as opposed to the autocratic states of continental Europe like Spain, France, Prussia and Russia. The Hapsburgs, the ourbons, Hitler and Stalin all failed to find a strategy that would defeat the maritime empires, which controlled the world's trade routes and raw materials. Successful maritime powers like ritain and, in the 20th Century, the United States, required coastlines with deep…

Conscription

From the beginning of the war, there had been some variation in the Canadian attitude toward the conflict. Canada never questioned the legitimacy of the war and did not question the need for Canadian participation. There were differences of opinion, though, concerning how extensive the Canadian contribution should be. These variations affected the response to calls for enlistment and divided the country as the towns were more willing than the countryside, the prairies more willing than the Atlantic seaboard, and "it was observed that the proportion of enlistments achieved by any social group appeared to vary almost inversely to the length of its connection with Canada. On the one hand, the ritish-born -- the new arrivals with a large proportion of unattached males of military age -- gave the highest percentage of their numbers to the armed services, and, on the other hand, the French Canadians unquestionably gave the…

Creoles

Professionals involved in therapy and counseling with members of the Creole culture of New Orleans and southern Louisiana should be aware of the history and traditions of this group that make it distinctive from all others in the United States, and indeed from the French-speaking Cajun communities in the same region. In Louisiana, Creoles are not simply the white descendants of the early French and Spanish colonists, although in the post-Civil War era of Jim Crow there was a major attempt to redefine them as 100% white. This was never the case in history since they are a mixed-race people descended from Europeans, Native Americans and African slaves during the 18th Century and occupied a special caste in pre-Civil War Louisiana. They spoke their own language known as Creole French, as do tens of thousands of their descendants today, and in appearance have often been able to 'pass' as…

, notes at that there has been a "paucity of studies" on the effectiveness of video in teaching culture through foreign-language programs. Herron investigated whether students retain more ("little c") cultural "practices" or ("big C") cultural "products" by watching video in a second-language program (Herron, 1999, p. 522). Thirty-eight students were given a pretest before watching the 10 videos that were part of the French-language curriculum. Immediately afterward they were given a post-test. Interestingly, in terms of their evolving understanding of French culture, in 8 of the 10 total post-video quizzes, the students gave higher scores to their "little c" (understanding cultural practices) than to "big C" (cultural products). And 84.2% of the 38 students believed that the 10 videos showed "a lot or a vast amount" of little c (cultural practices in France) presented and 42.1% believed that "a lot or a vast amount" of big C (cultural products…

The visits would also include the distribution of basic food items to help alleviate the food shortages and associated hunger in the area. The country is one that has a high reliance on agriculture and subsistence farming, but with the recent civil war the poverty is exacerbated with a need to recover. Recovery is needed for both production and the access to funds that may be realized from the sale of agricultural goods. This is an ongoing issue which one is constantly aware of when handing out food, knowing it is a short-term solution to a long-term problem. However other projects do exist which are seeking to address this issues.

The visits also involve medical checks, with doctors and healthcare workers visiting people in their homes to help with medical issues to carry out checks and to give advice. This was also a learning experience, seeing the range of medical…

Some Brazilian businesses might want to engage in joint arrangements to have workers going to do business or live abroad in English-speaking languages learn from these tapes, and there could be special discount agreements with such companies, to make use of these resources. Additionally, the national economy would greatly benefit from a more fluent population that was better able to engage in a variety of business endeavors in other nations. This would encourage the Brazilian government to not place any additional legal obstacles when engaging in negotiations regarding such an exporting arrangement.

There already a clear and strong desire to learn more about the United States, to do business with the United States, and to travel to the United States. Brazil was the ninth largest source of visitors to the United States in 2004 and has one of the fastest growing outbound travel markets in the world. "ith only 4…