How the company seeks to deliver customer value Essay

How the company seeks to deliver customer value - Essay Example Introduction of the Apple Macintosh has engaged in numerous products launches that  have been met  with much anticipation. For instance, Apple iPhone  has been considered  an elegantly designed  device  for sending and receiving  information. The iPhone has a combination of  smart  phone capabilities with  natural  graphical interface projected on a large multi-touch display. Apple’s marketers focus on consumer behaviours in order to improve their marketing strategies and foster an understanding of how the consumer thinks feels and selects between various alternatives (Solomon, 10). These marketers also focus on psychology of consumers and influence of environmental conditions such as a culture, family, signs and media. In fact, this entails the focus on consumers’ behaviours while making purchases and other decisions. Nevertheless, there are limitations concerning consumer knowledge or ability to internalize information that can influence their de cisions and results of marketing strategies. On other hand, focusing on consumer behaviour considers motivation of the consumers to making various decisions strategies among different products in levels of significance and interest (Hawkins, Best and Coney, 4). Study of consumer behaviours enables Apple marketers to improve their marketing campaigns and strategies in a way that is effective in process of reaching the consumers. Therefore, this paper will focus exploring the way Apple deliver value to their customers based on the 4Ps, product, price, promotion, and place. Nonetheless, in order to understand the process through which Apple deliver quality to their customers, there is need to explore their relationship with consumer behaviour and marketing (Schiffman and Kanuk, 20). Moreover, there is need to focus on consumer reception to advertisements, and learning their schedule in advertising. On the other hand, Apple’s marketers have a great understanding of the way produc t are adopted by few consumers and a spread occurs later, leading to rest of the population learning that there are new products. In this case, as marketers, they ensure that the products are financed and available until the target market share is acquired. Besides, they focus on creating a good impression to the initial customers, since they take the role of influencing the other customers. 2. Organization’s Objectives Apple has revamped its products  and service line  in order to  offer  commodities, which could facilitate the delivery of the tightly integrated  experience  of the user. The Company has been making effort by remaining committed to the market with the PC products focusing on homes and lifestyles of the consumer. The Apple Inc has also sustained their  position  through technological innovations and new retail strategies. However, as a typical organization, Apple has several organizations’ objectives such as; 1. To offer quality products and services to customers in a way that meets their expectations. 2. To maintain their leadership in technology and device market, thereby sustaining their competitive advantage. 3. Maximize their profits and grow their organization, while remaining socially responsible in the community. 3. Product and Brand portfolio Product is an element used in referring to things that can be

Skungpoomery - Textual analysis Essay Example for Free

Skungpoomery Textual analysis Essay Skungpoomery features two characters, a mother and her son. The mother is very much a dominant woman who still enjoys fussing over and bossing about her rather useless, weak son. We did an exercise where we visualised what the characters would look like in our heads. Both the mother and the son reminded me of a famous duo, Laurel and Hardy. Mrs Wibble being Oliver Hardy, the domineering one and PC Nicholas Wibble being Stan Laurel, the simple one. Like Hardy treats Laurel, Mrs Wibble treats her son in a condescending way, much to the chagrin of PC Nicholas who would much rather be treated like an adult, and not have his mother still nagging at him. I can picture Mrs Wibble being quite a large character who would be wearing some sort of floral dress with bright red lipstick. I can imagine her voice being loud and perhaps quite high pitched and can see her walking around the stage with a good posture and large strides. PC Nicholas Wibble, I can picture being tall and lanky with a short bowl haircut, which of course his mother would have made him get, and can see him slouching across the stage, with a decidedly nervous disposition. I would imagine his voice would be rather quiet and perhaps slightly squeaky, as if it had not quite broken yet. I found that doing this exercise, helped improve my performance on stage as it meant I was able to act out the characters easier now that I had a clear image of what they looked like and how they acted in my head. PC Nicholas Wibble is still very child like, probably because he still lives at home and Mrs Wibble still treats him like a child rather than the adult that he is. Although PC Wibble may try to stand up to his mother, she will tell him otherwise and he backs down easily, here is an example of this: MRS WIBBLE- Take them off and let me give them a quick press. WIBBLE- O no, Mum-look Im going to be ever so late now. MRS WIBBLE-Take them off, Nicholas, it wont take a moment. WIBBLE- No. MRS WIBBLE- Nicholas!!! WIBBLE- Ooooooooooooh! Doing this exercise made it easier for me to do the butter and trouser scene in the play. This is where the phone is ringing and Mrs Wibble accidentally picks up the iron and puts it to her ear, rather than the phone, and then gets Nicholas to get her some butter to soothe it, and burns his trousers. To make this part of the performance more comical, we had to look at how the characters would move in a panicked way. For example, we thought that we could have Nicholas running about the stage in circles in a confused way, hands on his head, looking about, and thinking what to do while mumbling to himself. We could then have Mrs Wibble shouting at him to get the butter, while sobbing and moaning about her ear loudly, as it would make it more comical for the audience. To make sure that we had enough space on stage for all that was going on, we had to plan out the set and make sure we knew where everything was going to be so that we could determine exactly what the characters had to do and where. Learning and using all of these different techniques was useful when developing our final piece as it meant that we could piece together things that wed used from this practice piece, as well as our own new ideas, to get a good performance. We were now able to visualise exactly what our character would look and act like as well as the way they would move on stage, so that we could get a better understanding of our character and act them out in a suitable way.

The Sacred Language of Toni Morrison Essay -- Toni Morrison

The Sacred Language of Toni Morrison  Ã‚        Ã‚  Ã‚   Toni Morrison makes a good point when, in her acceptance speech upon receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature, she says, â€Å"Narrative . . . is . . . one of the principal ways in which we absorb knowledge† (7).   The words we use and the way in which we use them is how we, as humans, communicate to each other our thoughts, feelings, and actions and therefore our knowledge of the world and its peoples.   Knowledge is power.   In this way, our language, too, is powerful.   Ã‚  Ã‚   In her acceptance speech, Morrison tries to communicate the idea that we must be careful with how we use our words.   She analogizes the use of language to the life of a metaphoric bird in a tale of a wise, old, blind woman.   Toni Morrison opens her speech by referring to a tale of two young people who, in trying to disprove the credibility of this wise woman, ask the question, â€Å" ‘Is the bird I am holding [in my hand] living or dead?’† (11).   Of course, being blind, the woman does not know and must say so.   However, she adds that, â€Å" ‘What I do know is that it is in your hands.   It is in your hands’† (11).   In saying this, she tells the youngsters that the fate of the bird’s life is their responsibility.   The bird, in this case, represents language.   Morrison explains, â€Å"So I choose to read the bird as language and the woman as a practiced writer† (12).   The bird has either been found dead, been killed, or has the ability (if it is alive) to be killed, much as language, being looked at as a living thing, can live or die; be saved or destroyed.   Language is â€Å"susceptible to death, erasure; certainly imperiled and salvageable only by an effort of the will† (Morrison 13).   That will is the responsibility of those who ... ...ossible lives of its speakers, readers, writers,† (20) Morrison describes.   The limits of what language can do are indefinite, unachievable, and inaccessible.   For, really, there are no limits to language--no limits to knowledge--no limits to power--the power of the mind.   â€Å" ‘The future of language is yours,’† (23) Morrison tells us.   It is in our hands.   This is why we must hold the life of language sacred--the life of this bird, which has wings to make it soar. Works Cited   Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth.   â€Å"The Claims of a common Culture: Gender, Race, Class and the Canon.†Ã‚   Writing as Re-Vision: A Student’s Anthology.   Ed. Beth Alvarado and Barbara Cully.   Needham Heights: Simon & Schuster   P. 1998.   15-23. Morrison, Toni.   â€Å"Lecture and Speech of Acceptance, Upon the Award of the Nobel Prize for Literature.†Ã‚   New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1994.      

Improving Speaking Skills Essay

This article examines the different circumstances under which infant and adult learners develop speaking skills. We will see the facilities or difficulties in both cases in order to focus on the real possibilities of adults to develop a high level of speaking proficiency. We will see what the role of the teacher is in order to improve the learners’ skills, the features of oral communication that need to be improved and which strategies can be used to overcome the difficulties. Key words: speaking skills, adult learning, oral communication, teaching strategies. Resumen Este articulo analiza las diferentes circunstancias en las que ninos y adultos desarrollan las destrezas orales. Veremos las facilidades y dificultades en ambos casos para asi centrarnos en las posibilidades reales que tienen los adultos de alcanzar un alto nivel de competencia oral. Veremos tambien cual es el papel del profesor en este contexto, para mejorar las capacidades de los alumnos, y ver cuales son los elementos de la comunicacion oral que hay que mejorar y que estrategias se pueden aplicar para superar las dificultades. Palabras clave: destrezas orales, aprendizaje de adultos, comunicacion verbal, estrategias de ensenanza. If we think of the period in our lives when we learned to speak our first language, and the moment in which we started to make huge efforts to speak our second/foreign language we find significant differences. In the former case, we may have fond memories of what our parents told us; and in the latter, it suddenly becomes a frustrating experience that seems to bring imperfect results. For adults, learning to speak a new language is in many cases far from satisfactory simply because they feel they need to cope with many different aspects at one time, and that seems to be impossible in real conversations. I wonder if it is possible to acquire a high level of speaking proficiency in adults; I wonder if it is possible to make adult learners improve their speaking skills, and the most important thing for teachers: how? The first question we have to consider in order to reach a conclusion is whether learning at infancy is different from learning at adulthood; which are the circumstances that differentiate them and if those onditions inevitably lead to obvious and hopeless results. Only bearing in mind what we can expect of a particular type of learner, we can focus on how to improve their speaking skills. It is obvious that there are marked differences between children learners and adult learners and that they cannot acquire the second language under the same circumstances. Consequently, the results will be also different. Concerning children and the early age at which they learn to speak, we can say that they enjoy certain advantages that make them outstanding learners. They have surprising linguistic abilities due to optimal moment in which they find themselves for language learning, this is to say, at this moment their brain is characterized by a certain plasticity that allows some abilities to develop with ease during a period of time, after which it becomes really difficult for these abilities to be developed (Fleta, 2006: 53), or using 86 Improving Speaking Skills Betsabe Navarro Romero Encuentro, 18, pp. 86-90 Klein’s words ‘between the age of two and puberty the human brain shows the plasticity which allows a child to acquire his first language’ (Klein, 1986: 9). Therefore, children are special learners for their natural and innate abilities to acquire a language. According to Fleta, one of these special abilities is ‘filtering sophisticated information about language properties from birth’ (Fleta, 2006: 49), in other words, children have an enormous ability to integrate difficult information in an easy and unconscious way from the beginning of their development. They are able to acquire and integrate complex data without being aware of it, whereas other learners, at other ages, would find it arduous to achieve. Moreover, apart from this special gift children have for assimilating difficult information, we can mention some of their other qualities, such as their capacity for perceiving and imitating sounds. Some studies have showed that ‘young infants are especially sensitive to acoustic changes at the phonetic boundaries between categories’ (Kuhl, 2004: 832). Also, children are especially good at predicting syllable chunks: ‘infants are sensitive to the sequential probabilities between adjacent syllables’ (Kuhl, 2004: 834) which makes children with a surprising instinct as far as language knowledge is concerned . Finally, students also acquire the ability of ordering words within a sentence (grammar rules) unconsciously: ‘there is some evidence that young children can detect non-adjacencies such as those required to learn grammar’ (Kuhl, 2004: 836). All in all, we can say that children learn the language without being aware of it when they ‘are exposed to the right kind of auditory information’ (Kuhl, 2004: 836), this is, children learn the language through communication and interaction and thanks to that they acquire all the abilities they can potentially develop. On the other hand, concerning adults we observe how difficult is that they can acquire certain native sounds; their pronunciation will be, on many occasions, foreign-like which is due to their difficulty in distinguishing and producing some sounds after the so called ‘critical period’. In that respect, some authors claim that adult learners cannot acquire a phonological development (Lightbown and Spada, 2006: 69). However, other researchers defend the opposite. Wolfgang Klein, in his book Second Language Acquisition (1986) stated that ‘the apparent facility with which children learn a second language is often attributed to biological factors, but an alternative explanation might be that, unlike adults, children have no need to fear the loss of their social identity’ (Klein, 1986: 6). Authors such as Klein argue that phonological facilities of children are not bound to biological reasons, but to psychological ones. In that respect, adults feel attached to their native identities, to their original social identities, which is what prevent them from achieving perfection in L2 pronunciation. Klein confirmed that ‘suitably motivated adults are capable of mastering to perfection the pronunciation of the most exotic languages’ (Klein, 1986: 10). Therefore, we conclude that although the cases of adults speaking a second language without any accent are not very common, this does not mean that it is impossible to acquire a native-like pronunciation. Also, besides phonological issues, we can talk about the capacity of adults to acquire any other kind of linguistic faculties, more related to structural relations (UG). In that sense, there are authors that doubt the validity of Lenneberg’s Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) by assuring that even adults have access to the well known Universal Grammar. While Lenneberg claimed that only before puberty learners had UG available, authors such as S. W. Felix defended by evidence that adult L2 learners also benefit from the UG principles: ‘If child and adult learners use different modules for the purpose of language acquisition, then we would expect adult learners to be unable to attain grammatical knowledge that arises only through the mediation of UG. If, in contrast, adults do attain this type of knowledge, then, we have reason to believe that UG continues to be active even after puberty’ (Felix, 1988: 279). Therefore, we can conclude that adults are also able to master a proficient use of the second/foreign language, not only in grammatical issues but also in phonological ones, which makes us believe that we can improve adult learners’ speaking skills. 87 Improving Speaking Skills Betsabe Navarro Romero Encuentro, 18, pp. 86-90 Once we know that adults can be biologically and psychologically prepared to have a native-like proficiency in the second language, we should move on to the second language teaching context in order to achieve our aim of improving adult learners’ skills. In that respect, we should reflect on the teachers’ role in this situation and what they can do to be successful with their learners. Teachers therefore need to analyse the students’ needs, face their problems and find fruitful solutions that help them develop their speaking abilities. S. Pit Corder, in his chapter called ‘Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching’, in Introducing Applied Linguistics (1973) defended the important role of linguists who identify the problems of the learners and find solutions for them. Corder added that specialists’ role is to formulate the appropriate questions in order to define problems that need to be faced. Using his words, ‘the formulation of the questions, the identification of the problems and the specification of their nature presupposes linguistic theory. The nature of the problem is defined by the theory which is applied to it. The solution to a problem is only as good as the theory which has been used to solve it’ (Corder, 1973: 138). In this direction he said that in language teaching there are two appropriate questions teachers should make: what to teach and how to teach, ‘these are the problems of content and method, or, using an industrial analogy, the problem of product and process design respectively’ (Corder, 1973: 139). Therefore, if teachers wish to know how to improve speaking skills, what they need to ask themselves first is what they are going to teach, and how. On the one hand, let us consider the first question: what. If we need to improve speaking skills we need to know which skills or which features learners need to develop. In that respect, there are several authors that stated different goals or different dimensions that speakers needed to achieve. Goodwin, for instance, established several goals for a proper pronunciation. She called them ‘functional intelligibility, functional communicability, increased self-confidence, and speech-monitoring abilities’ (Goodwin, 2001: 118). She argued that learners should be able to speak an intelligible foreign language, that is to say, listeners need to understand the learner’s message without huge efforts; learners also need to be successful in a ‘specific communicative situation’ (Goodwin, 2001: 118); they need to ‘gain confidence in their ability to speak and be understood’ (Goodwin, 2001: 118); and finally, they need to monitor and control their own production by paying attention to their own speech. Goodwin specified those abilities that learners need to acquire through certain linguistic features that can be practiced: Intonation, rhythm, reduced speech, linking words, consonants and vowel sounds, word stress, etc. These are concrete speaking aspects in which learners should be trained in order to improve their speaking skills. Similarly, other authors such as Anne Lazaraton suggest that oral communication is based on four dimensions or competences: grammatical competence (phonology, vocabulary, word and sentence formation†¦); sociolinguistic competence (rules for interaction, social meanings); discourse competence (cohesion and how sentences are liked together); and finally, strategic competence (compensatory strategies to use in difficult situations), (Lazaraton, 2001: 104). According to Lazaraton learners should develop all these abilities to acquire a high oral level of the foreign language, but she adds that in recent years, with the influence of the communicative approach, more importance is given to fluency, trying to achieve a balance with the traditional accuracy. Moreover, apart from what pedagogically and theoretically should be taught, many researchers are presently analysing real problems that learners face: ‘fluent speech contains reduced forms, such as contractions, vowel reduction, and elision, where learners do not get sufficient practice’ (Lazaraton, 2001: 103); use of slang and idioms in speech since students tend to sound ‘bookish’ (Lazaraton, 2001: 103), stress, rhythm, intonation, lack of active vocabulary, lack of interaction pattern rules†¦ 88 Improving Speaking Skills Betsabe Navarro Romero Encuentro, 18, pp. 86-90 Once speaking goals have been determined, next step consists of questioning how they are going to be achieved. For designing a concrete methodology teachers need to adopt a theoretical perspective, they need to reflect on the linguistic approach that will be used in their teaching. Many authors, following the up-todate trend of the Communicative approach, defend the interactive role of speaking and promote its teaching from a communicative perspective stressing meaning and context. In Goodwin’s words: ‘In â€Å"Teaching Pronunciation† the goal of instruction is threefold: to enable our learners to understand and be understood, to build their confidence in entering communicative situations, and to enable them to monitor their speech’ (Goodwin, 2001: 131), also ‘pronunciation is never an end in itself but a means of negotiating meaning in discourse, embedded in specific sociocultural and interpersonal contexts’ (Goodwin,2001: 117). If we think of how this theoretical background will be applied in real teaching, we find that in traditional classes they focused speaking practice on the production of single and isolated sounds, whereas within the communicative approach, ‘the focus shifted to fluency rather than accuracy, encouraging an almost exclusive emphasis on suprasegmentals’ (Goodwin, 2001: 117). There is the key word, when communication is the main goal linguistic practice turns into longer structures, at the suprasegmental level; therefore, the training on individual sounds makes way for macro structures that affect interaction directly. The second part of how to teach, moves away from theory to approach real problems and their solutions. Several authors have stated that when learners face problems in speaking they need practical and concrete solutions to know how to behave and respond in order to overcome those difficulties. Mariani, in his article ‘Developing Strategic Competence: Towards Autonomy in Oral Interaction’, recalls L1 strategies that native speakers use when they encounter communication problems, and suggests teaching those strategies to L2 learners: ‘just think of how often, in L1 communication, we cannot find the words to say something and have to adjust our message, or to ask our interlocutor to help us, or to use synonyms or general words to make ourselves understood’ (Mariani, 1994: 1). Mariani classifies those strategies according to the speakers’ behaviour: learners can either avoid certain messages because they don’t feel confident with their speaking skills (‘reduction strategies’), or make the most out of their knowledge and modify their message bearing in mind their weaknesses and strengths (‘achievement strategies’: borrowing, foreignizing, translating†¦(Mariani, 1994: 3). The author praises the latter by saying that achievement strategies are a very interesting way of developing learners’ language domain. Speakers who opt for this option make huge efforts to transmit a message by playing with the language to the extreme, which only brings beneficial consequences. In the second or foreign language classroom context, teachers should train learners to use and practice the different strategies that can help them face difficult situations. The only way of training students in this direction is by means of a bank of activities in which they become aware of the different possibilities that they can put into practice. Authors such as Goodwin or Lazaraton offer a varied list of exercises to be used in class: poems, rhymes, dialogues, monologues, role plays, debates, interviews, simulations, drama scenes, discussions, conversations†¦ Therefore, coming back to the initial question proposed above, I think it is absolutely feasible to teach adults strategies to improve their speaking skills. Of course, that objective depends on many different factors that will affect the degree of acquisition, let us think of age, motivation, or even the context in which the language is learned: ESL versus EFL. In that respect, learners in a second language context will have numberless occasions to practice the language and that will undoubtedly influence their skills development. With reference to the foreign language context, authors such as Lazaraton admitted the difficulties learners 89 Improving Speaking Skills Betsabe Navarro Romero Encuentro, 18, pp. 86-90 ormally face: ‘homogeneous EFL classes, where all students speak the same first language and English is not used outside the classroom, present certain additional challenges for the teacher’ (Lazaraton, 2001: 110). As she said, teachers have considerable limitations in EFL classes such as lack of opportunities to use the language, lack of motivation in the learners, the number of students in the class, curriculum re strictions†¦(Lazaraton, 2001: 110), but there are solutions and strategies, as the ones previously mentioned, that should be put into practice. Mariani, in his article mentioned above, also makes a reflection on whether communication strategies should be teachable or not. He states the pros and cons by saying that training students on specific strategies can provide them with certain limitations and consequently hamper fluent communication: ‘we can hardly force them into a straightjacket of pre-selected strategies. Most of us would agree that we should encourage spontaneity, creativity and originality in language use’ (Mariani, 1994: 7). However, on the other hand, he argues that if learners become aware of the different strategies they can flexibly use, they will finally integrate them either consciously or unconsciously, which will stretch their possibilities for communication. To sum up, as teachers can, and should, improve learners’ speaking skills and communication strategies, the only thing they need to do is to plan their teaching around two main questions: what they want to teach, which specific speaking features they want to develop in their learners; and how they want to do it.

Discuss Steinbeck’s presentation of The American dream in Of Mice And Men Essay

George and lennie want to recreate happier time â€Å"I could build a smoke house like the one grandpa had† this shows they want to recreate there childhood when they were safe and cosy A kid of paradise with lots of food – a cosy life â€Å"When we kill a pig we can smoke the bacon and the hams and make sausages† So they can eat some rich fresh succulent meat whenever they want it Better working conditions – not getting canned not working if they didn’t want to â€Å"No one could can us an if we don’t Steinbeck’s language shows the dream won’t come true because he uses alliteration to slow down your reading and by the way curley’s wife neck clicks there is no more sound as if the universe came to a massive stand still As soon as he says â€Å"stop† the first time its like running into a brick wall as if its just like boom dead end no way out to late and no more American dreamland then followed by the second as if that was the rest of the wall boxing him in as to seal his fate as lennie says â€Å"i didn’t want to hurt you but george’ll be mad if you go yelling † and then as it dawns on him of what his actions done â€Å"I done a bad thing I done another bad thing † this leaving the reader feeling sorry for lennie as he is a bit simple as if in his head he is still a kid in a full grown mans body . And as Steinbeck writes the end of chapter five his words showing how distressed / depressed and scared for lennie candy is â€Å"poor bastard† and emphasizing how quiet the barn is as if death himself had walked and lingered in the darkened corners of the barn as the darkness appears in as if a symbolic sign of death hovering the ranch with his scythe waiting to collect his crop. Candy cry’s because when he finds curlys wife dead because he knows that it was lennie and that curly is going to kill lennie when he finds out he will chase down lennie like a hound chasing a rabbit homing in waiting for the death blow and after lennies gone so have George and candies dream and as this starts to hit him he starts to worry about his friends and there future . George talks to lennie about the dream before he shoots him so lennies calm and happy not distressed , panicky and depressed so his last moment is one of his favourite memories George decides to go and to shoot lennie so that he can make lennie happy and calm before he is executed rather than lennie upset and crying at the hand of curly just so that lennie can be happy and glad before he is shot which is really good it must take a lot of courage to shoot a friend It’s a shame really been as they nearly had the finance to buy there dream place with all the three of there money put together had enough to place the deal on the house Steinbeck shows that something will go wrong at the end as he got the title for this novel from a poem by the Scottish writer Mr. Robert burns the poem goes like this The best laid schemes o’ mice an men Gang aft agley An’ leare us nought but grief an’ pain For promised joy In other words the plans of mice and men often go ugly and leave nothing but grief and pain when it was promised to give us joy. The story is set back just after the cowboy/bandit era a time were movies were quite and woman were even more so Its set about two friends who travel together and stop off at ranches to do some work before they move on to earn enough money to support there American dream which is that when they have enough money to buy a ranch they saw for 600 American dollars and then they could live of the fat of the land and everything would be perfect â€Å"an if we didn’t like the guy we just say get out and wed have a spare room and if a friend came by we’d say why don’t you stay the night and by god he would† Steinbeck’s idea of the American dream is basically that the dream can only be reached by the wealthy and unavailable to the poor and dreamful

Motor Development essays

Motor Development essays Ten subjects participated in a childrens block stacking exercise. The childrens age ranged from eighteen-months to six-years-old. Four of those subjects were male. Six subjects were female. The following description of the block stacking demonstration shows the development of the childrens abilities over time. The eighteen-month-old male subject demonstrated some interest in the stacking exercise. He quickly stacked a total of two blocks then his attention was no longer directed on the exercise. The two-year-old male slowly stacked a total of nine blocks using one hand and an overhand grip. He was very focused and could either stack or speak but not at the same time. One of the two three-year-old female subjects was very anxious to stack the blocks. She slowly stacked a total of eleven blocks using two hands, one hand at a time and also made small adjustments to the tower she was building. The other three-year-old female was very serious and used a two-hand method in the same manner as the other three-year-old female. She paid very close attention to detail and used an overhand grip. She stacked a total of twelve blocks. The three-year-old male subject was excited and very social. He, too, was anxious to begin stacking the blocks. He slowly and carefully stacked a total of nine blocks, making few adjustments after each consecutive block placed on top of the tower. One four-year-old female subjects was somewhat shy to participate but she slowly stacked a total of ten blocks, using one hand and an overhand grip. However, the other four-year-old female subject demonstrated a stacking method unlike any of the other subjects. She used two-hands, one hand to pick up the block then using two hands to carefully place the block on top of the tower. She quickly stacked a total of twelve blocks and made further adjustments when she was done stacking. The five-year-old female subject quickly stacked a total of twelve blocks very...

Beethovens Fifth Symphony essays

Beethovens Fifth Symphony essays When listening to any piece by Beethoven, you receive the whole range of emotions, and the Fifth Symphony is no different. Just the first four notes, a simple da-da-da-dum, is enough to send shivers up your back. Packed with all the furious confidence of Beethoven, it suggests scarlet eruptions, heavenly processions and all the powers human drama. These four notes started the memorable first movement. This movement is like a Stephen King novel because it is so saturated with intensity and suspense. The pauses leaves the audience hanging and trying to guess where the unpredictable Beethoven will lead. The peaceful intervals of swaying melodies only added to the expectancy and tension, like the eye of the storm. It was played con brio, with a confident, agitato attack. Over and over, the four note theme was twisted, turned and thrown out with gusto. Melodies from brass, echoed by strings weave in and out throughout the movement. The second and third movements were more dolce and leggiero. The second movement started with lovely dynamic shapes with phrases dropping off into a dreamy pianissimo. Then they would crescendo almost stealthily to the climax. The melody ebbs and flows, now semplice, no con fuoco. The third movement is still dolce but is more playful than the second movement. The solos pass the melodies to each other and the dynamics deliberately chase each other. In this movement, the four note theme is used as a rhythm pattern, though not necessarily the same notes. The fourth and final movement becomes revitalized and majestic. The brass echoes the theme again. This movement is joyous, like a sun bursting boldly from the clouds, symbolizing hope for humankind. With all the triumph and joy, the final resounding chords pounded and hammered out with an immortal energy. Watching the video, the excitement, vigor and enthralling rapture of the conductor and the musicians, makes the powerful music even more dramatic a...