Happiness is something that every person strives to achieve; it makes peoples lives easier and meaningful. It is said, that being happy means being a healthy person. Everyone understands happiness in its own way, for some people it is money, for others it is being famous, having friends or a person to love, for some – being recognized as a specialist or a professional in something they are doing. Dutch sociologist Ruut Veenhoven by his researcher found out, that average happiness of people differs from country to country.

Sadly, Lithuania, my home country, is at the very bottom of Ruut Veenhoven’s list of happiness, at 85^th place from a total of 95. That is a sad score, but I can not say that I am surprised by the results. I haven’t travelled anywhere from my country, but when I ask my friends who travels a lot, what is the main different between life in Lithuania and abroad, I usually get the same answer – people “there” are happier. So I became interested, why people in Lithuania can’t find their happiness?

As I said, happiness can be understood in many different ways and that depends on a person, so I am just going to talk about happiness in general. In my opinion, all those things that makes us happy – money, friends, love, career, fame, etc. – are based on a feeling of being secure – socially, financially and in any other possible way. And I think that the main problem in our society (in Lithuania) is that people can’t feel safe. The corruption levels are sky-high, taxes are growing almost every day, and salaries are just going down. Crime levels are also high, so people can’t feel safe even in their homes. And finally, I think that our country is still recovering from a long period of occupation, so people are still not really ready to start trusting each other.

To sum up, I should say that there are still lots of things to change on order to see Lithuania somewhere near the top of Ruut Venhoven’s list, but I believe that those changes will be made with time, and I will have an opportunity to write another composition, considering not why Lithuanian people are sad, but why they are so happy. J

References:

http://worlddatabaseofhappiness.eur.nl/hap_nat/nat_fp.php

http://206.47.170.43/channels/images/happy-face-istock-456.jpg

End-Of-Term self assessment

Writing (A summary)

Summary writing was something new for me when I came to university, because we have never written them in school. During the second term I have familiarized better with the rules of summary writing, however, the main downfall here was that I have skipped too much English lectures and have not written most of the summaries that we had to write.

Performance in ESP vocabulary tests

ESP vocabulary tests are quite easy if written at the proper time, in classroom. I have to admit that I have failed to write most of my ESP vocabulary tests on time, and for this reason I had some difficulties when I had to write all skipped tests at once. However, I am quite confident about ESP tests and I know that with just a little bit more study I could write them perfectly.

Performance in class dictations

Attended at this only once, and I must say that I have never understood the point of writing dictations in any language classes. Anyway, I think I am quite good at it, regardless of some silly little mistakes.

Listening practice in class

Listening is something I have been always good at. I’m quite happy with my listening tasks this term; however, I haven’t got the perfect mark for them, so I guess there’s still some place to improve.

Listening to peers' Power Point presentations

Personally, Power Point Presentations is my favorite part of our English classes. I must say I’m quite impressed with most of my friends PPP’s and that’s something that makes our English lectures much more interesting.

Making Power Point presentations

During the first term I was really nervous about making my presentation, but ant the second term I have already found it much easier to do. I think I have improved at both – understanding how presentation should look as well as presenting it in from of the class. And I really enjoyed this kind of work.

Short talks on ESP themes in class

I like to talk in class when I really have something to say, but it is really annoying when we must say something even when we don’t know what to say, because then most of the ideas starts to repeat from student to student. Anyway, I think that talking on ESP themes are really important, and my short talks have really improved.




Picture reference: http://www.seemoney.co.uk/pages/news/ESMART9/big%20pics/pencil.jpg

Learning languages

Have you ever thought how important learning languages is in your life? Not knowing the language is almost the same as being not able to speak at all. We use language everyday, but how can we improve our language skills efficiently?

Learning mother tongue is easy, because you hear people speaking that language from the moment you born and hear it everyday. Though, the fact, that native language classes are not only in schools, but also in universities (at least for one term) means that it takes a lot of practice to speak fluently ant correctly even in native language. But what about learning foreign languages?

In my opinion, to learn foreign language efficiently, one must use that language as much as possible, that includes speaking, listening and writing. I have learned English as my second language, and by now I can hardily say that I have tried and used many different methods, and found some of them more effective than others.

I think that language learning is not only about rules and vocabulary. The most effective way that I found is watching movies or TV shows in original language. That way you will not only extend your vocabulary, but also learn to use your vocabulary in any given situation. Also, you will learn both – speaking AND listening at once. This method is not only very effective, but can also be really entertaining, thus – you will not get bored easily.

Other effective method is communicating with other people. If you have an opportunity to visit the country that is speaking that language which you are learning – take it, it’s obviously the best way to improve your language skills. If you do not have that opportunity, you can always communicate with other people over the internet. That could be done by having a pen friend, or, as in my case, communicating with foreign players in multiplayer games. The only problem is that other people can also make lots of mistakes, so at least basic language knowledge is required to sort out correct language from errors, so that you do not learn other people’s mistakes. Anyway, this method is also quite entertaining and interesting.

The two previous methods, although interesting, effective and entertaining, they are not enough if you seek perfection. And that’s when learning language rules and doing various exercises becomes important. So, I think, that the third efficient way to learn foreign language is to learn it, if possible, in school, university or to sign up for a special courses.

To sum up I can say that those are obviously not all available methods of learning foreign language. There may be hundreds of them, and you just have to choose the one that are suitable for you. You just have to remember, that there is only one important thing – you have to use that language as much as possible, and everything will come with time. It just needs practice.


References:


http://www.uniquetranslations.dk/picts/book.jpg

Psychology @ mruni and abroad

There are few universities in Lithuania, such as Mykolas Romeris university, Vilnius university or Vytautas Magnus University that offers to study psychology. However, many young people often choose to study abroad, so I’m going to compare psychology studies in Mykolas Romeris university, the university I am studying in, and University of Southampton.

Mykolas Romeris university is a modern institution seeking to have a well-established position in European higher education. The programme of Bachelor Studies in Psychology is designed to grant a European standard of bachelor qualification in Psychology. Postgraduate students can choose between law, social or business psychology as master studies. Bachelor study programme is for 4 years, and master studies takes 2 years.

The University of Southampton is already one of the top 10 research universities in the UK and has achieved consistently high scores for its teaching and learning activities. Psychology degree in university of Southampton introduces to the various areas covered by contemporary psychology. Postgraduate students can choose between Clinical psychology, Educational psychology, forensic psychology, health psychology, etc. First year of psychology studies gives an opportunity to explore the foundations that support psychological theory, research methods and analysis, and be introduced to practical psychology experiments. Second year covers material from six key research areas: cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, biological psychology, learning and behaviour, social psychology and personality psychology. Year three offers the opportunity to specialise in an area of your choice. So yes, bachelor studies in university of Southampton takes only 3 years.

To sum up, there are, of course, some differences and some similarities between those two universities, but they both share the same main purpose – to train high level specialists. And in my opinion, what matters more than the university, is the persons desire to study and seek knowledge in his chosen field.


References:

http://www.soton.ac.uk/study/index.shtml (2009.05.28)

http://www.mruni.lt/lt/(2009.05.28)

http://www.eauc.org.uk/image_uploads/southampton_uni_logo_large.jpg (2009.05.28)

Professor Richard Wiseman

Richard Wiseman - Psychologist, magician, author of The Luck Factor, and a professor at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK. Widely known for his research into the quirkiest areas of psychology, such as deception, humour, luck and paranormal.

Richard Wiseman is also well known for his books, including the bestselling The Luck Factor. His newest book – Quirkology examines the curious science of everyday life, such as psychology of lying, love, and laughter.

Also, Richard Wiseman is known for designing and conducting mass-participation projects. One of them is called LaughLab, one of the world’s largest interactive experiments involving 350,000 people from 70 countries. The idea was simple – LaughLab website had two sections – one for submitting favorite jokes and the other one – simply to answer some questions about their gender, age, country and so on. The goal was to find the worlds funniest joke and to answer some questions related to humour, such as: Do men and women find the same jokes funny? Does our sense of humour change as we grow older? When is the best time of day to tell a joke? Do people from different countries laugh at the same jokes? etc. . Over the course of a year they received over 40,000 jokes. After much hard work, they finally managed to track down the world’s funniest joke.

Here it is:

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, "My friend is dead! What can I do?". The operator says "Calm down. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says "OK, now what?"

What was most interesting for me in Richard Wiseman’s work, is that he examines such areas of psychology, that are usually not touched by other psychologists, and he does that in really interesting methods.

References:
http://richardwiseman.wordpress.com/ (2009.05.18)

http://www.richardwiseman.com/research/research.html (2009.05.18)

http://www.laughlab.co.uk/ (2009.05.18)

Phobias

The word “phobia” came from the Greek word phóbos, which means fear. Phobia is described as an irrational, intense, persistent fear of certain situations, activities, things, or people. The main symptom of this disorder is the excessive, unreasonable desire to avoid the feared subject. There is multitude of known phobias, some of them are more serious than others, and some may even seem ridiculous, but for people who have to face them every day those phobias doesn’t seem to be funny.I am going to analyse only few of them.

Lalophobia :

Lalophobia is a fear of speaking. Unlike the fear of public speaking (called glossophobia), people with lalophobia suffer from this disorder more or less always. Lalophobia is usually caused by an intense negative experience from the past, but the mind can create this fear even without any basis. Some lalophobics may develop speech disorders, while others may develop selective mutism or even total mutism, refusing to talk at all. This phobia is not related with any kind of danger, and even lalophobiacs realize that this fear is irrational, though sometimes even thinking about facing this fear may lead to a panic attack or severe anxiety. Since lalophobia is purely psychological disorder, the best way to treat it is using hypnotherapy or Neuro-linguistic programming method. The use off drugs, though possible, is not recommended, because they may help to deal with lalophobia, but they do not actually help to overcome it.

Glossophobia:

Glossophobia or speech anxiety is the fear of public speaking. Stage fright may be a symptom of glossophobia. The cause of this phobia is usually unknown, but sometimes can be attributed to a single or multiple traumatic incidents, usually experienced personally but sometimes associated with someone who has, or slow build-up from avoiding public speaking over time until it builds into a more severe form of glossophobia. Sometimes glossophobia can be related not only with public speaking, but with any public performance, though usually glossophobics are able to dance or perform on stage as long as it does not require speaking. This fear can be overcome with psychological treatment or simply with the power of one’s will to face the fear until it is simply gone. Many famous actors or singers claim to have had this phobia in the past, and have successfully managed with it over the time by having lots of performance in front of audience.

To sum up, Phobias are the most common form of anxiety disorders. Most of them are just psychological fears and usually can be overcome step by step over the time. There are hundreds of known phobias, and despite how nonsensical many of them may sound, they are all causing huge problems for people who face them.

References:
http://knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/Lalophobia/ (2009.05.18)

http://www.changethatsrightnow.com/problem_detail.asp?SDID=256:1647 (2009.05.18)

http://www.phobia-fear-release.com/lalophobia.html (2009.05.18)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobia (2009.05.18)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossophobia (2009.05.18)

http://img1.eyefetch.com/Portfolio%5Cpenrod%5C13413.jpg (2009.05.18)

Psychology of laughter

Laughter is an expression of amusement. Strong laughter can sometimes bring an onset of tears or cause a moderate muscular pain as a physical response to the act. Laughter is regulated by the brain, and is used as a signal for being in a group – it signals acceptance. The study of humor and laughter and its psychological and physiological effects on the human body is called geletology.

It is said, that laughter is the best medicine. And there's lots of evidence that laughter does lots of good things for us. It reduces pain and allows us to tolerate discomfort, reduces blood sugar levels, increasing glucose tolerance in diabetics and nondiabetics alike.

Laughter establishes - or restores - a positive emotional climate and a sense of connection between two people, In fact, some researchers believe that the major function of laughter is to bring people together. And all the health benefits of laughter may simply result from the social support that laughter stimulates. Laughter also helps in fighting against mental stress, anxiety, depression, insomnia and various other mental disorders. Some specialists even recommends a therapy, called “A therapy of laughter” for both – physical and mental health.

In conclusion, it is safe to say that laughter is a way more than just an expression of joy, happiness or amusement. It is also a natural medicine for our body and mind, and the most effective way to strengthen relationships between people, to show acceptance and the feeling of being socially accepted. Laughter is one of the main keys to a joyful and healthy life.