Timor Leste essays

Timor Leste essays After centuries of external oppression as well as civil war, the Democratic Republic of East Timor is facing both challenges and opportunities with regard to the country's economic and environmental sustainability. Politically, oppression has been suffered at the hands of the Portuguese, Dutch, Japanese and Indonesians. The country has finally overcome all these invasions and gained its independence under United Nations mandate, to become a sovereign state on 20 May 2002. However, the repercussions of poor governmental management along with other issues have kept the East Timor wedged in its third-world status, with few resources to promote either financial or environmental sustainability. Combined with political difficulties, East Timor is furthermore challenged by its geographic environment. The country is for example very mountainous, which causes agricultural problems. Few crops will grow in such a region. Developments such as roads and other modern infrastructure are also difficult and expensive, due to the landscape structure. The current situation of the people in East Timor is that the nation comprises more or less four million inhabitants, relying mostly on crops such as rice, coffee and coconuts. Poverty and unemployment are two of the biggest social problems in the country. However, its recent gain of independence has injected into the country and its people a sense of both urgency and eagerness to rise above their situation. This paradigm should then be used by the international community to help the country achieve its ideal of becoming economically and environmentally sustainable. Being representative of the global community, the United Nations Development can make a significant contribution to improving East Timor's situation by means of its Environment and Natural Resources Unit. Inherently, East Timor has the capacity to be both enviro...

How to Avoid Bias in Your Writing

How to Avoid Bias in Your Writing How to Avoid Bias in Your Writing How to Avoid Bias in Your Writing By Mark Nichol Gender and ability bias in language doesn’t register for many people, but that’s often because many of them do not belong to the classes who have been subjected to the bias. For example, many writers persist in referring to our species, collectively, as man or mankind, even though several reasonable alternatives exist: the human race, humankind, and humanity. Most (though not all) are men. â€Å"Get over it† is a common counterargument to the assertion that because half of mankind is womankind, a gender-neutral alternative is more sensitive to that fact; man and mankind, the reasoning goes, have sufficed for most of recorded human history sorry, I mean â€Å"man history† and everybody knows it refers not just to the breadwinner, the man of the house, the king of the castle but also to the weaker sex, the little woman, the housewife. Get my drift? Get over it, indeed. Man up, and join the human race. One justification for opposing gender-neutral language is that it can be so cumbersome. Why convolutedly change he, as a generic term, to â€Å"he or she,† or his to â€Å"his or her†? We all know he or his can refer to a man or a woman, and English lacks an inclusive pronoun. (Except that it doesn’t but I’ll get to that in a moment.) Yes, repetitious use of â€Å"he or she† or â€Å"his or her† is ridiculous, but it’s easy to mix it up with it, the magical indeterminate pronoun, or to alternate between he and she or his and her in successive anecdotes, or to pluralize a reference and use they in place of a specific pronoun. Or gasp! you can replace â€Å"he or she† with they. Kill the klaxon, switch off the warning lights, and think about it: They has been long used as a singular pronoun as well as a plural one. But not everybody agrees, so be prepared for pushback if you employ this solution. References to physical disabilities are even more fraught with risks to sensitivity. Such constructions as â€Å"confined to a wheelchair† identify people by their limitations, which is discriminatory. It’s more respectful to refer to someone who â€Å"uses a wheelchair.† What about, simply, â€Å"wheelchair users,† or â€Å"blind people,† or â€Å"deaf children†? These phrases violate what’s known as the people-first philosophy, which holds that any reference to a person should emphasize the person, not their disability. So, refer to â€Å"Smith, who uses a wheelchair,† â€Å"people who are blind† or â€Å"people with visual impairments,† and â€Å"children who are deaf† or â€Å"children who are hearing impaired.† And it should go without saying that references to a disability are extraneous unless it is relevant to the discussion. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Business Writing category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Comparative Forms of Adjectives15 Words for Household Rooms, and Their Synonyms48 Writing Prompts for Middle School Kids

Development of Teaching Strategies Research Paper

Development of Teaching Strategies - Research Paper Example While developing a teaching strategy, some of the points that must be considered include but are not limited to the objectives of teaching and its learning outcomes, the needs of students, the desires of students, the previous experience of the students as learners and the strategies of teaching that they are used to, the expertise of the teacher, the resources available to the teacher, and the possible impact of the adjustments made in the teaching method on the teacher. This paper discusses the development of teaching strategies. Fundamentals of Effective Teaching Significance of subject in the teaching strategy Developing an effective teaching strategy is integrally linked with the subject that needs to be taught. Learning needs differ from one subject to another. On one hand, there are subjects that are entirely theoretical e.g. history, politics, and philosophy whereas on the other hand, there are subjects that are mathematical e.g. math and physics etcetera. There is also a thi rd category of subjects that are both theoretical and mathematical simultaneously depending upon the course selected for that subject e.g. risk management. To be able to impart maximum knowledge to the students, it is imperative that a teacher assesses the individualistic needs of the subject being taught. For instance, developing a teaching strategy for the subject of â€Å"History† might not require a teacher to take the students on a field visit because most of the knowledge is essentially gained merely by reading the books whereas for the subject of â€Å"Geology†, a teacher might never consider the job done unless the students have been taken to a field visit and have been provided with an opportunity to see, touch, and feel the rocks, minerals, and metals that constitute a particular strata of Earth. Equal attention While teaching, it is the moral and ethical responsibility of a teacher to provide all students with equal attention. Disparity in the division of at tention of a teacher among the students is one of the causes of poor academic performance of certain students; the ones that are neglected or not sufficiently attended to. â€Å"In this task, teachers are crucial because of the central role they play in promoting participation and reducing underachievement, particularly with children who might be perceived as having difficulties in learning† (Rouse 1). (McGhie-Richmond, Underwood, and Jordan) carried out a study to investigate the skills required for effective teaching in the elementary teachers in the inclusive classrooms. The researchers’ objective was to find out if the appearance of the constructivist skills follows from or is independent of the mastery of more transmissive behaviors of teaching. The researchers found that the patterns of behaviors of teaching were consistent across the students, though the academically ‘at risk’ students were found to be receiving differentiated instruction and less a ttention of the teacher as compared to other students. Differentiated teaching The term â€Å"differentiated teaching† means planning of ways by the teachers to address differences in such factors as age, culture, profile of multiple intelligences, ethnicity, temperament, personality style, development and possible delays in development, and styles of learning of