ShantanuT01/DACTYL-Pretraining huggingface dataset:
Introduction Sylvia Plath is an important figure in the history of American literature mostly because she wrote in a critical time in the country’s history. Consequently, the literary icon is also noted as a pioneer figure in the feminist movement and issues of mental health. Plath was mainly a poet in the post-World War II America, and her genre was primarily confessional poetry. This makes it easy to explore Sylvia’s life through her works of literature. All indications are that Plath’s life was fairly normal, having been born in 1932 at Winthrop, Massachusetts. Her parents were Otto and Aurelia Plath, and they worked as a professor and a shorthand-teacher respectively. Plath’s life is dominated by the fact that she constantly suffered from depression in the course of her life. Her depression is aptly chronicled in her novel “The Bell Jar”, for which the author won a posthumous “Pulitzer Prize” after she committed suicide in 1963. This essay explores Sylvia Plath’s life and how it influenced her work on “The Bell Jar”. Analysis Sylvia Plath’s early life was centered in Boston, Massachusetts, in a standard family home. The poet’s early life was tumultuous as a result of various mental issues. Furthermore, the poet started writing at an early age, and her first poem was published in “The Boston Herald” when she was approximately eight years old (Alexander 54). Her literary induction was in the form of a journal that she kept as a young girl. Eventually, the young author won a scholarship to study literature at Smith College. She worked as a guest
Introduction The primary source of information for assessing financial health of a company is the company’s financial statements, which are divided into three parts, namely, the Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement. An Income Statement, also known as ‘Consolidated Statement of Operations’, shows trends in money growth. It will also show where the money is spent. A Balance Sheet shows the current state of assets and liabilities of the company. On a Balance Sheet, shareholders’ equity must equal total assets less liabilities. From Balance Sheet, one also learns whether the company has enough working capital on hand. A company is in serious difficulties if its shareholders equity is in negative- that its total liabilities outweigh its total assets. A statement of Cash Flow will tell how the company has been able to fund its activities and how it will continue to fund activities. Investors use financial statements to research potential investments; bankers base lending decisions on company’s financial statements; and valuation experts utilize financial statements to determine a company’s net worth. A routine scrutiny of financial statements helps management to improve company’s performance and ultimately its value. A comprehensive financial health review of a company involves company’s financial ratio analysis to measure its past and current operations and compare the results to its industry. Ratio analysis review offers insight into historical growth, profitability, debt capacity, and overall liqu
A set of personal goals in a teacher’s life is important because it acts as a guideline to ensure that it strengthens his or her career and also benefit the students. These goals can be divided into three major sections such as personal goals, organizational goals and lesson improvement goals. Personal Goals According to Goodlad and McMannon (2004), personal goals enables a teacher to remain healthy, physically and emotionally equipped in order to be able to face the challenges ahead. The first goal is to ensure that his or her appearance is professional. Secondly is enjoying teaching as a heart chosen career. Third is forming a better relationship with other staff members and fourth is staying positive no matter the challenges. Lastly is the improvement of teacher and parents’ relationship. How to Achieve Personal Goals Appearing like a professional means that one must have a well established educational background and is able to share his or her knowledge with the students and other teachers. Secondly is taking the teaching career as a hobby. It should be seen as something enjoyable. Interacting well with other staff members creates a strong understanding ground for everyone within the institution. Living a stress-free life is important because it helps someone in living a simple and healthy life. This enables one to remain focused in his or her daily activity. It is achieved through regular body exercise after long hours of working (Burke, 2002) Organizational Goals Being well organized enables a teacher to put up his or her plans well. Organizational goals include having a perfectly arranged filing cabinet, planning one week ahead in every subject, putting things in their respective places, keeping two different files for each student and a record for the lessons or units that have been covered is also important. Lastly is improvement of documentation files. How to Achieve Organizational Goals A well arranged file cabinet enables one to access easily on urgently required documents. This is achieved through frequent arrangement of files after visiting the cabinet. Planning for the subject ahead is also achieved by looking at the content of each topic and doing a thorough research on it. This enables one to have courage in standing before the students while teaching. Putting things in their respective areas is easy if made as a daily routine after the teaching. Having two files helps the teachers to understand their students’ performance in class and their behaviors. Documentation of files can be achieved by being updated every day. Lesson Improvement Goals A quality lesson given to students by their teacher produces good academic results and a well-behaved class of students. This goals include, minimization of time wastage, incorporating literature in other lessons, providing journals to students and creating more time on bui
Introduction “ One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” (Beauvoir 295) The search for self and sex can assume a daunting reality when literary forms are intentionally mixed with non-conventional style and the perceived form of narrative is broken. The transgression from one style to the other, and through the process of breaking the convention Virginia Woolf, in her essay A Room of One’s Own and parodic novel Orlando: An Autobiography, reinstates for her theory of gender, identity, and sexuality. The question of gender identity and the writings of Virginia Woolf have been very closely associated with researchers. She has been instrumental in reassessing modernism in English literature in the early twentieth century. While reviewing Woolf’s works, Blanchard concedes: Woolf is a major writer. She is a political writer, one whose aesthetic decisions are also political and thus one whole fiction and criticism must be understood about each other. She is a writer who wanted to change not only the shape of modern fiction but also the shape of the modern world. She is a novelist we have had to learn to read are only beginning to learn to read. (Blanchard 95-6) Woolf may be considered as one of the keenest modernists who fought for a new method of writing fiction as well as a proponent for social change. Woolf was constantly drawn by the issues and inequalities of gender that found an outlet in her literary works and fiction. However, until the end of the twentieth century, the presence of Woolf was not felt in modernism, as it was gendered until then (Miracky 2). Woolf often demonstrated the Victorian ideal of ‘separate spheres’ in her writings and dealt with it to demonstrate the gulf dividing the present from the past. Thus, she experimented with Victorian mores and modernist ideals in her search for the true identity of women. In many ways, Woolf may be considered as the pioneer of the modernist discourse of gender identity and sexuality (Miracky 4). Therefore, in both A Room and Orlando , Woolf analyzes the relation between women writers and novels and vice versa to demonstrate the masculine ideals and values surrounding literary works. A Room was written in 1929, along with Orlando that was written at the same time and published in 1928. Probably that is the reason for similar themes in both the literary works, especially with their dealings with gender, identity, and the masculine literary institution. Therefore, A Room is a “theoretical investigation” and Orlando is a “practical example” that encompasses the patriarchal literary world’s attempt to provide a “definitive theory of the novel” (Thompson 306). Though both these books have been treated differently, both the books carry Woolf’s philosophy regarding gender identity and sexuality. Therefore, both the books are centered on the continuous struggle of the women of the ages that has been found through the penmanship of Wool
Introduction Code switching has been misunderstood even in the area of research, but there is evidence that it has provided important “insights” in the understanding of the skills utilized by children in acquiring more than one language (Troike 143). While some people posit that code switching is mere borrowing or loaning of words from one language into another, this paper shows that it involves more than mere loaning and borrowing of words between languages. The paper finds out that code switching is more complicated than sometimes thought to only involve loaning and borrowing of words from one language to another, explained by the fact that code switching involves psychological, grammatical and sociocultural factors and is done for various reasons. In addition, it relies on skills and experience of practice among the speakers. Research has found two kinds of code switching, namely, “intersentential” and “intrasentential” (Troike 143). This position regarding two forms of code switching is also held by Zentella. Intrasentential switching is where code switching is done inside single sentences or within sentences, while code switching between sentences is referred to as intersentential code switching. In the first kind (intersentential), the respective languages do not interact like in the second kind. Most research has explored intrasentential code switching than intersentential. In fact, intersentential code switching has been confusingly referred to as code mixing by several European researchers, while intrasentential code switching is recognized as “true” code switching. However, the difference between practicing the two types is due to fluency and experience of a code switcher has. Through skills acquired from practice, fluent bilinguals can and do practice intrasenential. Several bilinguals are unable to switch between languages within a sentence when they can effectively do so within discourses. Uriel Weinreich posits that ideal code switching should comply with the need for changing “speech situation” and not in unchanged speech situation or even code switching within a single sentence. This notion has, however, been largely rejected (Zentella 213). Code Switching Practice and Theory Introduction Code switching is a major practice among growing children who do not understand the “differences” in the languages they are exposed to at young ages (Troike 146). Formal public contexts restricts the use of home languages in areas like the United States’ institutions, while in some areas students are free to develop heritage languages. Although it is difficult in practice, bilingual parents can encourage their children to distinguish among various languages and associate different languages with different speakers by adopting “one person, one language” strategy (Troike 146). Children can suffer “permanent cognitive impairment” where native heritage language may not be fully developed as a result of introduction of national languages in very early ages (Tro
Introduction Photojournalism plays a big role in providing evidence against many issues that were happening during the Iraq war. Photos had been taken of United States soldiers during the war that created a good image of patriotism. This was later tarnished by other images of torture done towards the Iraq prisoners that indicated very humiliating acts of inhumanity. Photojournalism played a big role in revealing the torture which would have continued to take place in secret. But later, there was visual evidence that was provided by the pictures and that was used to prosecute those involved. The Iraq War On 12 th May the year 2009, the front covers of the New York Times indicated a picture showing three soldiers from behind. The soldiers were in a rocky bush in the green valley of eastern Afghanistan and were carrying sandbags on their backs. They were found putting on helmets and flack jackets. In addition to that, they were holding their rifles ready to attack. The soldier on the left side was Zachary Boyd and wore a flip-flop, a red T-shirt, a pink shorts decorated with the logo ‘I ♥ NY’. The photograph was taken by David Guttenfelder when the United States attacks forced Zachary Boyd to come out of the bunk, scantly dressed to be in position to protect his post. (Lange, pp 2) . The photograph brings out a report of a clear and an immediate view of how the battle was heated. The photograph can also create an assurance of how the soldiers were devoted and prepared in the fight. The image of soldiers holding on their rifles was an indication of their readiness for the attack. The image also indicated the aspect of patriotism by focusing on the logo of the shorts worn by Zachary Boyd. From his picture, one can see that this is a soldier in the war, not dressed for it due to circumstances but the logo is an assurance that he is doing this due to patriotism. The bravery of Boyd was later praised by the US secretary of defense, Robert Gates, as he declared that he could only wonder about the impact that was to be caused on the Taliban. Guttenfelder was later on awarded a second place in the awards for ‘people in the news singles’ when the World Press Photo contest was year. His image also acted in place of front-page photographs that had not been seen in America during the period of the war between Afghanistan and Iraq. This was due to a ban on images of dead US soldiers or coffins bringing them back from the war. Guttenfelder’s photo was seen as positive since images of dead soldiers were highly criticized. The Associated Press released the photos of the wounded soldiers in September 2009. Gates seriously condemned (Lange, pp 7) . After much criticism of photography of the US soldiers during the war, another images emerged which fell outside the spectrum of the war. These were of Saddam’s hideouts that were taken by soldiers who stormed into it. Other photographs that brought controversies in America were those of coffins carrying soldiers that were being returned to America by a private contractor. These photos were taken by
Introduction Mass-media has a lot of influence on the audience in terms of the daily information for discussion. People talk about topics in the newspapers or in the radios. This is the basis for the agenda setting theory, brought forward by 1972 by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw 1 . The mass-media determines the information that is prioritized by the public, therefore directing their interests towards a particular media. The audience depends on the keenness given to various thoughts, concerns or matters by the media that make the topic more or less important. The media makes use of this aspect to raise the awareness of the public on relevant matters. This theory helps to explain what is regarded as vital by the people, as well as determines the key issues as seen by the public, based on the media that they are exposed to 2 . The role of the media is to report and the people then form their opinions based on the information provided. The agenda setting theory is both advantageous and disadvantageous. The merit is that it provides people with information, while the demerit is that this information is biased. The bias is because the media chooses for the people what is more vital, based on the prominence of the reports. The agenda setting function was observed to have a variety of components including: media agenda, which are the means of relaying information such as newspapers and the television; public agenda, which are issues considered by the public to be important and therefore raising discussions; policy agenda, which are the matters that are regarded as vital by policy makers such as the legislators; and corporate agenda, which are the matters regarded as vital by big businesses. The agenda setting effect is observed to be predictable, based on the characteristics of the media, the problems and the people 3 . Impact of the media on the public policy process The first step in influencing an audience is getting their attention on a particular issue. The media does this by increasing the prominence of a particular topic on their reports. The media also affects the understanding of the issues presented, and creates a viewpoint in the audience, which contributes to the public opinion. Every issue is observed to have many objects, which in turn have attributes. The emphasis of the media on various attributes is what determines the public perception and attention on a particular issue. In the analysis conducted by McComb and Shaw during the 1968 presidential campaign, they observed the various issues raised by various media, and studied the responses provided by the candidates with regard to those issues 4 . The forms of media used in the study included the television and print media. The attention given by the media via the television was based on the time spent on reporting the issue, as well as the position of the story, in terms of leading. The priority of issues in the newspapers and magazines were based on the space allocated, as well as the position of the story. The issues raised in the media were observed to be key campaign topics for the v
The premise of the 2001 film Donnie Darko was, and to some extent still is, mysterious and intriguing. It begins during the presidential election of 1988, during which Donnie Darko , a teenager, sleepwalks out of his house. He is faced with a scary rabbit named Frank who warns him that the world will end in twenty eight days. Following this, Donnie avoids a crashing jet engine that destroys his bedroom. The film is made complicated by the introduction of a number of psychological themes, time travel, wormholes, and Donnie’s eventual death. Though it is considered a cult classic now, it was a box-office flop and otherwise disregarded at the time of its release. However, it is due to this that the importance of the film cannot be understated. While it is a coming of age story, it also relies on elements of horror and science fiction. Though those elements could seem overwhelming when telling a story about a teenager, they do not take away from the humanity of the characters. The cast of Donnie Darko is exceptionally realistic, with teenagers being presented as awkward, troubled, sometimes even unlikeable but not polished and archetypical. This can be seen in Donnie’s behavior, in which he refuses to accept a teacher’s belief system that every emotion is balanced on a spectrum of love and fear (Cheang, 2018). Donnie finds this too simple, and it is the fact that the film was discussed and reviewed as being complicated and m
Question and Key Argument Recent spur in economic development of the UAE was followed by a rapid increase in the rates of cultural diversity within the state; Though affecting the local culture negatively, cultural diversity allows for a positive change in the UAE society due to enhancement of cultural understanding and improved social ideas, concepts and values. Question : Can the diversity observed in the UAE be used as a positive factor in developing the state’s economy and relationships with other states? Because of the increasing amount of job opportunities and a comparatively high standard of living in the state, the UAE have recently witnessed a major increase in immigration rates. According to the nationwide statistics, only 11% of the UAE residents are native, whereas the rest belong to other cultures. Demographic Imbalance   * UAE Vision 2021: creating a business hub and a tourist destination by using natural resources (oil) as the key financial asset;   * Increase in foreign workers is going to exacerbate the cultural issue;   * Foreign labor increase affects job opportunities for the local people. Table 1: Native-Born and Foreign-Born Populations in GCC Countries Year  Number      Share        Annual growth       Total       Native born  Foreign born   Native born  Foreign born  Native born  Foreign born 1975  9,731,259   8,790,223    941,036        90.3%        9.7%          3.2%         14.5%        1990  22,522,620  14,201,239   8,241,381      63.4%        36.6%         3.3%         5.0%         2010  41,093,624  23,536,409   17,557,409     57.3%        42.7%                                    The increase in the number of foreign workers affects the UAE economy rather negatively. Because of the availability of cheap labor, the local entrepreneurs are not interested in the native labor market. Thus, unemployment rates among the local population are likely to increase with the rise in immigration to the UAE. Security Issues   * Human rights abuses are a frequent occurrence among the UAE migrant workers;   * Threats of terrorism are increased with the rise in migrant labor;   * Demographic imbalance leads to demise of the UAE cultural traditions;   * Popular culture is altered to satisfy the tastes of migrant workers. As the chart above says, the integration of multicultural elements into the realm of the relatively homogenous UAE setting has triggered major security issues. Moreover, crime rates seem to have grown significantly over the past few decades in the state. Therefore, there is a necessity to manage the changes that immigrant labor brings to the UAE. Foreign Workers in UAE Positive Impacts