The Rock :: Essays Papers

The Rock He is a three-time world wrestling federation champion and a two time intercontinental champion. He was born on May 2, 1972 is 6’5 and weighs 275 pounds. He goes by the name Dwayne Johnson, calls himself the â€Å"People’s Champion† and otherwise known as â€Å"The Rock.† Other than having the pretty face that Hollywood was looking for, The Rock had to go through many steps as an â€Å"actor† before he became well known. However, the rock graduated from the University of Miami as an all -American Football player. Right away, he was entered into the realm of entertainment. This in turn was called a secondary effect because The Rock being a football player was entertainment and attracted the media’s attention. He was as Gabler states, â€Å"a performing artist.† (Gabler pg. 4) He was ready to enter the world of a celebrity and a star. Inside Wrestler magazine says that The Rock has the â€Å"same ‘X’ factor† as the Phantom of the Opera, â€Å"able to choreograph a rowdy mass of wrestling fans with a simple catch phrase, a dramatic pause, or a little lift of the eyebrow†(March 2001). The public considers the Rock to be a celebrity being that he has gone from music, to commercials, to sports, and journalism. He has starred on Saturday Night Live, That 70’s Show, and will soon be featured in the sequel to â€Å"The Mummy† as the Scorpion King. He is an entertainer who loves performing for the crowd. As he himself said, â€Å"Always entertaining the fans and knowing that I’m entertaining them-that’s the goal, to entertain the fans and nothing compares to that.† Each time he appears somewhere knew it adds to his popularity more and more. You start to conform to this so- called â€Å"reality.† The Rock plays many different roles and has many different names, that one might wonder which he really is. When he is wrestling, he is the Rock and when you research about him, as we did for this paper, we found out his birth name being Dwayne Johnson, and then of course, what he likes to refer to himself as, the â€Å"People’s Champion. These are just a few examples. He takes upon the role of an â€Å"actor† in so many different aspects that he himself becomes comfortable with what he is playing, and eventually this in turn takes over parts of him as a person.

Taking Care of Our Elderly

Davis 1 E. Diana Davis ENGL 2010 Professor Asplund 21st September 2012 The Responsibility of Taking Care of Our Elders My grandmother knows a lot about how it feels to be left in a house alone, waiting for someone to assist her to just get out of bed. This Saturday morning I decided to go visit her while my grandfather was at dialysis. She was surprised to hear my voice as she turned her head over my way and smiled. I could hear the sound of relief in her voice just knowing her granddaughter was here to see about her.My grandmother has been blind since March 2012; she is a diabetic that has had an eye surgery to help repair a detached retina that is still healing. In the meanwhile she’s been dealing with paralysis on her right side from a stroke she suffered over twenty years ago, and it’s really taken a toll on her health. As I sat down beside her with a pen and paper I told her I wanted to get her point of view on how she feels about being an elderly person in this ha rd economy. I needed to know if they were able to cover all their needs on a fixed income. Did she really feel like her and my grandfather’s needs were really being met?As she began to tell me about her fears Davis 2 And concerns my heart sunk and I thought to myself, have we really failed to live up to the obligations of taking care of our elders. As she spoke in her little sweet tone, she made me aware of how hard it is to do simple things like taking a shower, cooking and even going to the restroom is a hard task to do these days. She said â€Å"I feel like everyone is too busy to lend a hand, and me and your grandfather don’t want to be a burden on you all. † I thought to myself as her granddaughter, was I even doing enough?Was the responsibility of taking care of our elderly been overlooked, or was it being passed down to the few faithful people who were getting burnt out on the responsibility? My grandparents as parents bared the moral, legal, and ethical responsibilities to care for their children. However, now that my grandparents have reached an age where they can no longer look after themselves, the duties of their adult children to support them is less clear. It is therefore only fair to say now that their children are grown up and now their parents have become elderly, they should take up the responsibility to provide a decent life for their parents.While it is not a legal obligation, it is a moral obligation and it’s time to pay forward what is owed to our parents/grandparents. It’s our responsibility to help any family member in need. Our family has raised us and helped to survive in this uncertain economy, so why shouldn't we help out when our parents and grandparents reach an age where they need our assistance? Davis 3 Only one out of in five people takes the needed steps to prepare legally and financially for taking care of an incapacitated parent. Consider this contrast between expectations and reality: Only 13 percent of some 4,000 U.S. workers surveyed for the 2011 (Aflac Work Forces Report) believe that the need for long-term care would affect their families. â€Å"The percentage of adult children providing personal care and/or financial assistance to a parent has more than tripled over the past 15 years,† the research group found. Of course, in today's tough economy, it also is common for elderly adults to be supporting their adult children. But in some ways, that's easier to accept: Parents often plan to leave whatever wealth they have to their children anyway.The flow of wealth from older to younger generation feels natural to many. But with Americans living so much longer now, the younger generation has to do more thinking about how they might care for parents who have exhausted their savings. After spending the whole day talking with my grandparents about their concerns I felt compelled to lend a hand. I made lunch for them and started to clean the kitchen. By the end of the day the whole house was spotless, and before I left I help my grandfather get my grandmother ready for bed.I have to say I was really exhausted when I finished, but the feeling I felt when I saw them smiling and relaxing together was worth a million bucks. As soon as I got home that night, I was determined that I had to help with this situation right away. The first thing to do was to call a family meeting. It was time for everyone to pull Davis 4 together and take up their responsibility to do their part. First thing we needed to do is put together a schedule and set it in stone. We all agreed that we would be assigned a day to go and check on our grandparents/parents.This action plan would include cooking, cleaning and donating at least a hundred dollars a month to help with their financial needs. So far this is working out great, and all it took was a concerned person to be a good listener and someone to pull a family together to put a plan in action. By working together as a family it helped to mend broken relationships and it helped us to accomplished many beautiful things. I’m happy to say my grandparents are well taken care now, and years have been added to their life span. Davis 5 Works Cited Http://www. aflac. com/ Aflac_WorkForces_Report 2011

Cognate Definition and Examples in English

Need a definition of  cognate?  A  cognate is a word that is related in origin to another word, such as the English word  brother and the German word  bruder  or the English word  history and the Spanish word historia. The words were derived from the same source; thus, they are cognates (like cousins tracing back their ancestry). Because they come from the same origin, cognates have  similar meanings and usually similar spellings in two different languages.   Key Takeaways: Cognates Cognates are words that came from the same root.Cognates can come into a language from different sources; they just have to have the same origin.False cognates look like theyre related to each other but are actually not. Cognates are  often derived from Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian) that have their origins in Latin, although some are derived from other language families (e.g., Germanic), noted Patricia F. Vadasy and J. Ron Nelson in their book Vocabulary Instruction for Struggling Students (Guilford Press, 2012).  Ã‚   If two words in the same language are derived from the same origin, theyre called  doublets; likewise, three are  triplets. A doublet may have come into English from two different languages. For example, the words fragile and frail both came from the Latin word fragilis. Frail came into English from French into Old English and stayed on through Middle and now Modern English, and the word fragile was borrowed directly from Latin instead of going through French first. Origins of Cognates The Romance languages have so much in common etymologically because the Roman Empire brought Latin to those regions. Of course, regional dialects were already established in present-day Spain, Portugal, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy, but Latin-influenced vocabulary throughout these regions for a long period—because of the relative stability of the empire—especially in the sciences and law. Following the collapse of the Roman Empire, the language was still in use in various forms and continued to move into areas where the empire hadnt been, such as Slavic and Germanic regions, and it was useful as a universal language for people from different regions to be able to communicate. Christian missionaries brought the Roman alphabet to present-day Britain during the first millennium of the common era, and Latin remained in use in the Catholic church even as the Middle Ages evolved into the Renaissance. When the Normans conquered England in 1066, Latin words and roots came into English via Old French. Some English words also came in from Latin itself, thus creating doublets, two words with the same origin in the same language. The cognates would be the French words and the English words derived from them and the Latin originals. The derived words are all related to a common ancestor. More Examples of Cognates Here are a few examples of cognates (including those that share only the stem and not all the affixes, which are semi cognates, or paronyms) and their roots: night: nui (French), noche (Spanish), Nacht (German), nacht (Dutch), natt (Swedish, Norwegian); root: Indo-European, nà ³kÊ ·tconstipated: constipado (Spanish);  root (stem): Latin  cÃ… nstipÄ t-nourish: nutrir (Spanish),  noris (Old French); root: nutritivus (Medieval Latin)atheist:  ateo/a (Spanish),  athà ©iste (French), atheos (Latin); root: à ¡theos (Greek)controversy: controversia (Spanish); root:  controversus (Latin)comic (meaning comedian):  cà ³mico (Spanish); root: cÃ… mÄ ­cus (Latin)abortion: aborto (Spanish); root: abÃ… rtus (Latin)government: gobierno (Spanish),  governement (Old French),  gubernus (Late Latin); root:  gÃ… ­bÄ•rnÄ re (Latin, loaned from Greek) Obviously, not all the cognates for a root are listed, and not all of these words came directly from Latin into English; this list just shows the common ancestral roots—and some words even changed in between their roots and the cognates listed here. For example, government came into English from French, where many bs became vs. Language is an evolving thing, even though it may not seem like it to us, because its so gradual, happening over centuries.  Ã‚   Aid in Learning Other Languages Because of the relationship between Romance languages and their roots in Latin, learning a third language can be easier than learning a second because of the similarity in vocabulary, for example, learning French after already understanding Spanish. Author Annette M. B. de Groot illustrated the concept with an example that compares Swedish and Finnish learners of English: Ringbom (1987) reasoned that the existence of cognates might be one reason why Swedes are generally better in English than Finns; English and Swedish are related languages, sharing many cognates, whereas English and Finnish are completely unrelated. The consequence is that a Finn will be at a complete loss when encountering an unknown English word, whereas in many cases a Swede may infer at least part of the English cognates meaning. Using cognates to teach vocabulary can be very helpful to English language learners (ELL), especially those students whose native language is Spanish, because of the great amount of overlap between the two languages. Authors Shira Lubliner and Judith A. Scott noted, Researchers indicate that English-Spanish cognates account for one-third of educated adult vocabulary (Nash, 1997) and 53.6 percent of English words are of Romance-language origin (Hammer, 1979).  (Nourishing Vocabulary: Balancing Words and Learning. Corwin, 2008)   Not only can you learn new-language words faster and infer meaning to figure words out in context, but you can also remember the vocabulary more easily when the words are cognates. This kind of language study can begin with learners as early as preschool age. Problems that come  with learning vocabulary through cognates include pronunciation and false cognates. Two words might share similar spellings but be pronounced differently. For example, the word  animal  is spelled the same way in English and Spanish but pronounced with different stresses in each language. False, Accidental, and Partial Cognates False cognates are two words in different languages that appear to be cognates but actually are not (for example, the English advertisement and the French avertissement, which means warning or caution). Theyre also called false friends. Author Annette M. B. De Groot shared some examples: False  cognates  are  etymologically  related but no longer overlap in meaning between the languages; their meanings may be related but also opposite (in English an  auditorium  is a place for a large gathering, whereas in Spanish an  auditorio  is an audience;  stretch  means to extend in English but  estretcher  in Spanish is to make narrow).  Accidental cognates  are not etymologically related but just happen to share form (English  juice  and Spanish  juicio, judge...). (Language  and  Cognition in  Bilinguals and  Multilinguals: An Introduction. Psychology Press, 2011) Partial cognates are words that have the same meaning in some contexts but not others. For example,  twig  and  Zweig  are used similarly in some contexts, but in other  contexts,  Zweig  is better translated as branch. Both  Zweig  and  branch  have  metaphoric  meanings (a branch of a business) which  twig  does not share. (Uta Priss and L. John Old, Bilingual Word Association Networks in Conceptual Structures: Knowledge Architectures for Smart Applications, ed. by Uta Priss et al. Springer, 2007)