...Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA) makes it unlawful for service providers to discriminate against disabled people. It applies to nearly all service providers, including local councils, Government departments, charities, hotels and restaurants, shops and leisure facilities, accountants and solicitors, churches, courts, hospitals and clinics. How can Mencap help? Mencap is the UK’s leading organisation working with people with a learning disability. The Mencap Accessibity Unit has expertise in breaking down information into understandable concepts and language. We can provide: • general advice on accessibity for people with a learning disability • editing and writing of accessible material • focus groups where people with a learning disability can provide detailed feedback on your documents or your services. How to contact the Accessibility Unit # 020 7696 6965 or 020 7696 5551 " Email accessibility@mencap.org.uk First printed in 2000. Reprinted in 2002. This report is free of copyright – you can copy and circulate any part of it. Contents Making ourselves clear First steps towards accessibility Using plain English Using layout and design Using symbols, drawings and photos Using technology to make ourselves clear Examples More information about accessible writing and images 2 4 6 8 10 15...
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...with the equations in macroeconomics. This chapter is designed to allay these old fears about mathematics. It does this by means of a step-by-step examination and manipulation of the equations that a student first meets in macroeconomics. Once the student has mastered these equations, the new-found confidence should enable him or her to tackle most of the elementary mathematics that macroeconomics requires. THE FIRST MODEL The first model in equation form seen by macroeconomics students is usually: Y = C + 1 (16-1) C = Co + cY (16-2) I = Io (16-3) It is convenient to think of the symbols in these equations as words, and the equations themselves as sentences. Thus it is possible to translate an English sentence into an equation or an equation into an English sentence. First consider the symbols in this model. Y translated into English is the equilibrium level of income, C is planned consumption; I is planned investment; c is the marginal propensity to consume; Co is autonomous consumption, meaning that it is a fixed amount of consumption that occurs no matter what the level of income; and Io is autonomous...
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...used to denote pronunciation of English words. Each symbol is treated separately, with explanation and examples that are at the same time a link to a dictionary where you can listen to the word pronounced both in American and British English. Just one technical term used in the article: a closed syllable is a syllable which ends with a consonant (in writing; for example “writ” in “writ-ten” is a closed syllable). [xː] long vowel When the symbol”ː” follows a vowel symbol, it means that the vowel is pronounced longer. [æ] cat, bad, sad, sand, land, hand Among all English vowels, the greatest problem for most learners poses “æ”. It is somewhere between “a” in “father” and “e” in “bed”. It is usually pronounced slightly longer in American English than in British English. It is always represented by the letter “a” in a stressed closed syllable, but not all such occurrences are pronounced as [æ]. [ɑː] bra, calm, palm, father, start, dark This vowel is the closest one to the sound of the letter “a” in many other languages and as such is also denoted [a] in some dictionaries. There is no reliable general rule which would tell you when “a” is pronounced as [ɑː] instead of [æ]. It is quite rare in American English to pronounce “a” as [ɑː]; it is usually pronounced [æ], as in grass, can’t, half, bath etc., all of which are pronounced with [ɑː] in British English. On the other hand, the sound is used in American English in words in which a Brit would say [ɒ] (see below), as in god, pot...
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...topic was about language, we had to carefully consider the different types of languages spoken in the classroom. For example, in our power point when we were talking about how different languages are written – the Chinese and Vietnamese language, we had to do extra research on it in order to explain to the audience the reasons why some languages differ from the English alphabet and why some are so similar. The Chinese and Arabic language is combined with different symbols and is completely different to the English alphabet. In contrast, the Vietnamese language is similar to the English alphabet but some of the letters are repeated with different symbols on top of the letters which suggests the different sounds being made when pronounced. For example, the ‘o’ with the hat at the top is in a lower toned compared to the one with a hook on the side. Though the language has different characteristics, we can relate to it in some way, making it easier for us to learn languages that are similar to our English alphabet. When we got the class into groups to discuss the different languages that they can say ‘hello’ in, we considered whether or not there are people from different ethnic backgrounds who speak different languages. We ensured this worked by asking people in the class ‘who speaks a language other than English at home?’ the majority of the people in the class put up their hands therefore, we were given a guide where to place each individual so that each group has people from different...
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...English-X Jennifer Lee’s article titled I Think, Therefore IM describes the effects of “Internet English” “jumping from the realm of teenage online socialization of chat rooms and email into school work” (Lee 160). Lee begins by giving the reader examples of new “short hands” used in today’s everyday writings ,such as single letters u, r and c, or signs such as the “@” symbol, to replace their “Webster” oriented full spellings, and how “some teachers see the creeping abbreviations as part of a continuing assault of technology on formal written English.” Lee then describes tactics such as “deduction of points, red ink, and class scolding,” used by these teachers to counter the up rise in the abandonment of “proper English writing (Lee 160). She proceeds by informing the reader on how much the instant messaging (IM) “fad” has affected the online population by stating, from Nielsen/NetRating, that “almost 60 percent of the online populations under the age of 17 use IM. Lee then continues by voicing the view of those teachers that feel IM “is just part of the larger arc of language evolution” (Lee 161). In Lee’s conclusion, the continuation of IM in every day writing will inevitably spawn reform in how the average persons communicates with one another and force those opposed to IMs to conform to the up rise in short hand. In another article, For Some, the Blogging Never Stops by Katie Hafner and Tim Gnatek, the effects of online...
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...irrelevant according to John R. Searle (Searle 372). In terms of thinking and the aspects of a machine is far more complex than that of an ordinary strong AI. Machines in general have a great deal more going on than just a symbol manipulation system such of that as a strong AI. Ultimately the strong AI would then be incapable of being able to help understand machines and the aspect of thinking. Furthermore, the definition of “machine” needs to be reiterated in a simpler term to help explain this issue....
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...Many say Shakespeare had his own language. People nowadays do not even notice that the words they use daily might have been originated because of Shakespeare. “Shakespeare's Non-Standard English, begins with the general prefatory aim to provide the student of Shakespeare with a series of authoritative guides to the principal subject-areas covered by the plays and poems. While demonstrating authority and command.” Says article writer, Curren-Aquino, Deborah T. Curren-Aquino explains that Shakespeare had his own way with words when it came to talking about women, music, food, etc. Curren-Aquino gives us an example of a word people use in today’s time that was created by Shakespeare himself, swagger. Swagger was used in Hamlet as a verb to describe...
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...• Characteristics of Medieval Literature Themes of Medieval Literature: • The Seven Deadly Sins • The Seven Heavenly Virtues • Physiognomy and "The Humours" • Values of "courtly love" • The Code of Chivalry(CF) The Poets and Authors: Caedmon: First English poet; author of "The Dream of the Holy Rood." Venerable Bede: wrote the Ecclesiastical History of England and the scientific treatise, De Natura Rerum. Geoffrey Chaucer: Famous Medieval author of the Canterbury Tales. Margery Kempe: Author of the first autobiography in English. John Gower: Medieval poet and friend of Geoffrey Chaucer Francesco Petrarch: Italian poet, and a humanist. Famous for his poems addressed to Laura. Dante: Medieval poet and politician. Christine de Pizan: Medieval author and feminist. William Longland: English poet who wrote the Vision of Piers Plowman. Boccaccio: Italian writer who was famous for writing the Decameron. Raphael Holinshed: Medieval author of Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland. (KM) Romance: • Chivalry was the reason behind this type of literature. • The greatest English example of the romance is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. • The romance hero-who often has the help of magic-undertakes a quest to conquer an evil enemy. (KM) Chivalry: • A system of ideals and social codes governing the behavior of knights and gentlewoman. • The rules included: taking an oath of loyalty to the overlord and observing...
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...phonetic script for English created in 1847 by Isaac Pitman and Henry Ellis was used as a model for the IPA. Uses * The IPA is used in dictionaries to indicate the pronunciation of words. * The IPA has often been used as a basis for creating new writing systems for previously unwritten languages. * The IPA is used in some foreign language text books and phrase books to transcribe the sounds of languages which are written with non-latin alphabets. It is also used by non-native speakers of English when learning to speak English. Where symbols appear in pairs, the one on the right represents a voiced consonant, while the one on the left is unvoiced. Shaded areas denote articulations judged to be impossible. http://www.omniglot.com/writing/ipa.htm Contents page Contents page for Vowels and Consonants Chapter 1 Chapter 1 book links Clicking on a symbol will take you to a part of the chart where you can hear the corresponding sound. To hear the sounds in a row or column and get short definitions of the terms click here. The sounds of English and the International Phonetic Alphabet © Tomasz P. Szynalski, Antimoon.com This chart contains all the sounds (phonemes) used in the English language. For each sound, it gives: * The symbol from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), as used in phonetic transcriptions in modern dictionaries for English learners — that is, in A. C. Gimson’s phonemic system with a few additional symbols. The...
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...generations through individual and group striving. * Culture is the systems of knowledge shared by a relatively large group of people. * Culture is communication, communication is culture. * Culture in its broadest sense is cultivated behavior; that is the totality of a person's learned, accumulated experience which is socially transmitted, or more briefly, behavior through social learning. * A culture is a way of life of a group of people--the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next. * Culture is symbolic communication. Some of its symbols include a group's skills, knowledge, attitudes, values, and motives. The meanings of the symbols are learned and deliberately perpetuated in a society through its institutions. * Culture consists of patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior acquired and transmitted by symbols, constituting the distinctive achievement of human groups, including their embodiments in artifacts; the essential core of culture consists of traditional ideas and especially their attached values; culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, on the other hand, as conditioning influences upon further action. * Culture is the sum of total of the learned behavior of a group of people that are generally considered to be the tradition of that people and are transmitted...
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...Chris Kahl Jordan Benoit English February Name People do not decide their own names, so it does not make sense that it affects who they are. Even so, In The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisnero, of the character’s names have greater meanings than just a name. Several of them have more than one name, like Meme Ortiz, çwhose Spanish name is Juan. This shows where he is from, and many people that live in Esperanza's neighborhood have an American name and a name from their heritage. In The House on Mango Street, the names people have have larger meanings to Esperanza and the reader because names define who a person is and sometimes where they come from. Esperanza thinks that her name plays a big role in who she is and that’s why it’s symbol...
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...their feelings, attitudes, and experiences to each other through words. By speaking, information can be give to others about oneself and the world around him/her. In Christine Leong's essay Being A Chink, she describes the power of language. She said, "It gives us identity, personality, social status, and it also creates communities, defining both insiders and outsiders. Language has the ability to heal or to harm, to praise or belittle, to promote peace or even to glorify hate." I believe this is what language is all about. Language has two purposes. Depending on what is said, and how others perceive what has been said, language can be helpful to the soul or destroy one's self-confidence. Words are intended to inform others so they can understand us. Words are not intended to establish superiority; if they are, people get hurt in the process. Language is a uniquely human trait, and questions of how and why it evolved have been intriguing...
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...This page intentionally left blank The Study of Language This best-selling textbook provides an engaging and user-friendly introduction to the study of language. Assuming no prior knowledge of the subject, Yule presents information in short, bite-sized sections, introducing the major concepts in language study – from how children learn language to why men and women speak differently, through all the key elements of language. This fourth edition has been revised and updated with twenty new sections, covering new accounts of language origins, the key properties of language, text messaging, kinship terms and more than twenty new word etymologies. To increase student engagement with the text, Yule has also included more than fifty new tasks, including thirty involving data analysis, enabling students to apply what they have learned. The online study guide offers students further resources when working on the tasks, while encouraging lively and proactive learning. This is the most fundamental and easy-to-use introduction to the study of language. George Yule has taught Linguistics at the Universities of Edinburgh, Hawai’i, Louisiana State and Minnesota. He is the author of a number of books, including Discourse Analysis (with Gillian Brown, 1983) and Pragmatics (1996). “A genuinely introductory linguistics text, well suited for undergraduates who have little prior experience thinking descriptively about language. Yule’s crisp and thought-provoking presentation of key issues works...
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...San Mateo dialect. Before turning to the data I need to make clear three special properties of the language which are different from English. 1. The following six vowels occur in Huave words: [ i e æ ɨ o ɑ]. The vowels can be short or long — the long vowels are marked here with a following colon, e.g. [tɑndɑ:b] ‘burned’ has a short [ɑ] in the first syllable and a long [ɑ:] in the second. The [ɨ] vowel is a high central tense vowel. It resembles the sound of the second vowel in the English word roses, where the [ə] has a rather high allophone for many speakers. This sound occurs only as a stressless vowel in English. To practice making it, you can try to say [u] and then unround your lips completely and hold the vowel (try smiling as a way to make sure your lips are not rounded — smiling pulls back the sides of your mouth). Huave, along with Russian and Modern Irish (for example), has the important characteristic that most of the consonants can be either plain (regular) or palatalized. A palatalized segment has in addition to its ordinary articulatory gestures an additional movement of the tongue body upward and forward in the mouth, as if to pronounce a [ j] (y-like sound). For this reason palatalization is notated with a small superscript ʲ to the right of the affected segment. So for example in Huave [kɨtʲ] the final [tʲ] is palatalized. To English speakers a palatalized consonant sounds a bit like a consonant followed by [ j], so [mʲut] sounds like mute whereas [mut] sounds like...
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...Sounds of English: Introduction English Within English there are roughly 50 unique sounds(phonetics). These 50 sounds are represented by 26 letters, alone or in combination with one another (orthography). The sound system of English consists of about 2/3 consonants, which are either voiced or voiceless depending on which sounds surround them, and 1/3 vowels, which may be long or short depending on where they fall within a word (phonology). Of these sounds, vowels are fairly well understood and will not be addressed too heavily in this series. Vowels are also more difficult to discuss definitively because many of them vary by dialect. Consonants shall be the focus of these discussions on English, and to understand consonants, it is necessary to be familiar with the organs of the vocal tract used to produce them. Consonants The 30+ consonants in English, consist of the following types: * Plosives/Stops* * Fricatives * Affricates *Stops are technically the first two parts of a plosive, with the third part being a sudden expelling of air as a release. Without this ‘explosion‘ of air, a plosive is merely a stop. * Nasals * Liquids * Glides The first three involve some type of halting or obstructing the flow of air. They always occur as voiced and voiceless pairs, with two sounds being produced in mechanically identical ways, but with the only difference between them being the vibration (or lack of vibration) of the vocal cords. The final three types of sounds...
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