psychology ESP course

END-OF-ESP COURSE SELF-ASSESEMENT

2008-12-01T04:55:00.000-08:00

WRITTING SKILLS:
SUMMARIES; This semester we haven't written a lot of summaries so actually I don't know how I'll perform in this task at the exam paper. Last semester we wrote a lot of summaries so I hope that I will remember everything and do all of my best.
ESP VOCABULARY TESTS; my performance was bad. I haven't done all of my best because usually I haven't read modules, only definitions. This semesters tests were much heavier than the last semesters'. That is because in the tests were not only definitions but also some information from text.
DICTATIONS; my performance in this task is better than last semester. Less mistakes and I understand everything what is said, so I can write it down.
SPEAKING SKILLS:
PARTICIPATIONS IN CLASS DISCUSSIONS; I haven't talked a lot. I know that I improved my speaking, pronunciation, but only because of that, that during summer I was in the USA.
PRESENTATIONS; this skill was worse than last term. Last year I wanted to show that I can make very good presentation and my theme was interesting and this semester I have chosen not so interesting theme so I didn't strived a lot.
LISTENING SKILLS:
LISTENING ACTIVITIES IN CLASS; This skill I improved. Last term it was awful and now it's one of my best skills. I improved it because I spent whole summer in the USA and I needed to speak and also to understand everything in English.
LISTENING TO PEERS' POWER POINT PRESENTATIONS; I think that my group mates have improved their speaking and pronunciation so this semester it was quite easy to listen and to follow what they were saying.
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Kleptomania

2008-11-09T11:48:00.000-08:00

I think that almost everybody knows that kleptomania is a compulsive stealing of objects unnecessary for personal use or monetary value and the main diagnostic features are:

The person repeatedly yields to the impulse to steal objects that are needed neither for personal use nor for their monetary worth.

Just before the theft, the patient experiences increasing tension.

At the time of theft, the patient feels gratification, pleasure or relief.

These thefts are committed neither out of anger or revenge nor in response to delusions or hallucinations. But does anybody know the psychological causes?

Most person's with this disorder seem to be women; their average age is about 35 and the duration of illness is roughly 16 years. Some individuals report the onset of kleptomania as early as age five. Psychological cause of kleptomania is still unknown but people think that it may have a genetic component and may be transmitted among first-degree relatives. There also seems to be a strong propensity for kleptomania to coexist with obsessive-compulsive disorder, bulimia nervosa, and clinical depression.

There are some kind of therapies that heal this disorder but there is still a little evidence concerning prevention. A healthy upbringing, positive intimate relationships, and management of acutely stressful situations may lower the incidence of kleptomania and coexisting disorders.

References: http://www.psychnet-uk.com/dsm_iv/kleptomania.htm http://www.article99.com/health-tips/alternative-and-holistic/article.php?art=63562

SELF-ASSESEMENT OF ESP LEARNING

2008-05-08T23:23:00.000-07:00

WRITTING SKILLS:

SUMMARIES; My performance in writting summarys was quite good. I am happy with that because I have never knew how to write without mistakes. And my summaries marks joy me.
ESP VOCABULARY TESTS; My performance was quite bad. I haven't done all of my best maybe because of my laziness.
SELF-DESIGNED TESTS; This task was interesting and my performance was much better than in vocabulary tests.
DICTATIONS; This task was not successful. My grammar skill is poor and it doesn't help to write dictattions without mistakes.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO WEBLOG; This task was interesting. But I don't know whether it was successful or no because I don't know my marks, so I don't know i have improved it or no.

SPEAKING SKILLS:

PARTICIPATIONS IN CLASS DISCUSSIONS; I have improved this skill. Last term I was afraid of my mistakes in speking so I tryed to be silent and not talk very much but know my anxiety has gone and I'm trying to say something of course if I have what to say.
PRESENTATIONS; This skill also was better than last term. This time I spend more time in doing presentation, tried not to read and I'm happy with my performance except bad pronunciation.
SPEAKING IN PAIRS; There is a lot of information that you want to say but you can't because of poor vocabulary. I think that in this skill I haven't improved myself.

LISTENING SKILLS:

LISTENING ACTIVITIES IN CLASS; This skill sometimes is better and sometimes worse. This is unnacountable thing. Of course sometimes the task ir harder and sometimes easier but maybe it depends on introversion and the quality of record.
LISTENING TO PODCASTS; Interesting task but the stories are sometimes very boring and when you are listening to them you feel asleep. but my performance in that was't bad and I'm happy.
LISTENING OUTSIDE CLASS IF ANY; Sometimes I whatch english chanels and try to understand what they are talking about. If the words aren't specific i can understand the mind. Although this term I had a lot of practise in speaking and listening because I went to USA embassy and I needed to have a conversation with USA embassy employee. Everything was good and I understood everything what they have said to me.

READING SKILLS:

HOME READING; this task is quite hard because you need to screw oneself to do this task. And sometimes it is very hard.
CLASS READING; This task maybe is harder than home reading task because when we all are trying to read we can't. Almost always we start to speak about our lectures and so on and the reading task became second thing which we don't do as good as we can.
READING COMPREHENSION EXERCISES; When you need just to understand the whole tekst mind it is easier than to translate each sentence.
COMPUTER TASKS; It is interesting task especially when we need to read an article. And than discuss about it. I'm happy with this tasks performance.

Artificial intelligence

2008-04-30T05:40:00.000-07:00

Artificial intelligences` history started in literature with Marry Shelley’s Frankenstein. It was just a book, but not a simple book. It rose important questions such as if machine could have intelligence than maybe it could also feel. If can feel than maybe has rights such as human have. But artificial intelligence came into the real world only in the 20th century after some groundbreaking discoveries in neurology and new mathematical theory of information.

Nowadays artificial intelligence is both the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science which aims to create it but researchers call it a young science, which is a fragmented collection of subfields (neurology, mathematics, informatics, cybernetics, digital mechanisms and others). Researchers try to investigate such artificial intelligence which could represent wide sphere and include objects, properties, categories and relations between objects, situations, events, states and time, causes and effects and many other, less well researched domains.

To conclude I want to say Edward Fredkin words said in the 1980s "Artificial intelligence is the next stage in evolution".

Body language

2008-03-21T02:32:00.000-07:00

Body language is a paralanguage, which describes all forms of human communication that are not verbal language. It includes body movements or gestures and facial expressions that are not aware like winking or movements of the eyebrow.
Many people send and receive non-verbal signals all the time. Actually people often make little of body language but unnecessarily because it can say a lot about peoples’ conversation, for example:
· When person crosses his or her arms on the chest it means that that person is thinking deeply about what was discussed or person puts up an unconscious barrier;
· Consistent eye contact can indicate that that person is thinking positively of what the speaker says or doesn’t trust him;
· Eyestrain or itchiness shows disbelief;
· Head tilting to one side means that person is bored or he just has a sore neck J
· Unfocused eyes shows boredom also or ocular problems in the listener…

Man and women also have differences in this language. One gesture has one meaning for men’s and the other women’s. Body language it’s like an art, which different people understand differently.

Chimps beat humans in memory test (restatement summary)

2007-12-11T00:49:00.000-08:00

It was thought, that chimps can't match humans irn any mental skills.

It was made a test with three pairs of chimpanzees mother and baby against university students. Chimps were taught to count from one to nine. During the experiment on the monitor were shown numbers then they were hidden with squares. The test subject should remember right numbers place. Results showed that young chimps were fastiest.

After this experiment researchers started to think that young chimps have a photographic memory.

A person who makes an influence on me

2007-11-29T06:38:00.000-08:00

I’m going to talk about a person who makes an influence on me. Well, this person is my best friend Aiste.

We meet when we were about 4 or 5 years old. The meeting was in our yard. Me introduced to her my brother. He’s older that me so I always tagged along him. So my brother decided to offload me. His plan was successful. After that meeting I always played with Aiste so we grew up together. If she didn’t go somewhere than I also stay at home. If she was upset my mood also wasn’t very good. People said that we look almost the same because we are sisters. Even my classmates said so although they knew that I have only an older brother.
Now we spent less time together than in the past because we live in different cities. Her influence on me and mine on her decreased but still survived. I can’t think about life without her because she made my life funnier and more exciting.

Phobias

2007-11-20T09:12:00.000-08:00

A phobia is an excessive or unreasonable fear of a specific object or situation. If person is exposed to the thing he’s afraid of, he become overwhelmed with extreme with extreme feelings of anxiety, fear and even panic.

There are five types of phobias:

animal (fear of snakes, of spiders);
natural environment (fear of heoghts, of storms);
situational (fear of flying, of dentist);
blood-injection-injury (fear of blood, of injury);
other phobias (includes all phobias that don't fall into one of the first four (f.e. fear of illness, of clown, of death).

I want to write more about Aerophobia and Nomatophobia.

Aerophobia - a fear of flying. Many famous people suffer from this phobia such as Whoopi Goldberg, Billy Bob Thornton, Mahammad Ali, Jennifer Aniston, Michael Jackson and others. The cause could be that in peoples past there was likely a bad event or emotional trauma.

Nomatophobia - a fear of names. I haven't found a famous person, which suffers from such phobia. Causes are likely the same as aerophobias. Symptoms typicall include shortness of breathe, irregular heartbeat, sweeting, nausea, overall feeling of dread, also everyone experiences in their own way and have different symptoms.

Also I want to say about my phobia. It called brantophobia - a fear of lightning and thunder. When I was little my family had a grange near the forest. We spent there our weekends. One day was thunder with lightening. Whole family hid in the house but suddenly through the chimney flyed in a globe-lightnening. After this adventure I fear of thunders with lightnening and when they start I hide in my bed. It's not sa save place but under a wrap you can't see anything what is happening around.

P.S. Of the different types of anxiety disorders, phobias are the most common. The American Psychiatric Association reports that each year about 8% of American adults suffer from as phobia. In fact, phobias are the most common psychological disorder among women and the second most common disorder among men over 25.

Psychology of color

2007-10-01T10:06:00.001-07:00

Why people wear colorful clothes? Because from ancient ages colors have had its own meaning and the most important colors were blue, red, green, yellow, orange and indigo.
In ancient cultures colors were used to heal and it called chromo therapy. It was thought that red color stimulates the body and mind and increases circulation. Yellow was thought to stimulate nerves and purify the body. Orange was used to heal the lungs and to increase energy levels. Blue was believed to soothe illnesses and treat pain. Indigo shades were thought to alleviate shin problems.
Nowadays it is still thinking that colors may have influence in healing. Red evokes strong emotions and associates with love, warmth and comfort. Green symbolizes nature and represents tranquility, good luck, health and jealousy. Blue calls to mind feelings of calmness or serenity but also can create feelings of sadness or aloofness.
To sum up, I think that it’s not important the colors meaning. If man or women likes that color they wear such colors clothes.

Psychology working fields

2007-09-19T07:21:00.000-07:00

Psychology has many subfields but the basic are business, social and education. Each field is different and has its own pros and cons.
The majority of psychologists work in social field. Why? Well, I think that there work people, which are friendly and like communicate with other people. Work in this field is also interesting because each day is different. Disadvantage could be small salary and tiring work because all day communicate with people is hard.
Only a few percent of psychologists work in education/academic field. I think this field is very serious and fit only for several people of hundred. I don`t say that this field is boring but here people must go deep into this field and over and over renew your knowledge.
The other work in business field. This field has the biggest salaries. Here work creative people because business every day changes and needs new ideas. I think that in this field is only one disadvantage that people must be very responsible for their work.

Why I have chosen psychology to study

2007-09-07T00:29:00.000-07:00

Well, this year I started to study psychology. Why? It`s a good question. For people who ask me such question i answer that it happened by chance. My dream proffesion was architecture but my exam results were too low to join architecture studies in university.

But now I`m happy. I understood that being a psychologist can be very exciting. Psychologist help people to solve their problems or just hear them out because nowadays many people won`t listen their friends or even mans or wifes problems. They have their own. So psychologist communicates with people, knows a lot about people behaviour and thoughts.

In the future I`ll have a very interesting work. Sometimes coincidence could be very useful.