Phobias

Phobia is a persistent irrational fear of an object, situation, or activity that the person feels compelled to avoid. There are many different phobias, such as claustrophobia, scotophobia, dentophobia and others. People who suffer from phobias feel panic, horror, rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath, trembling and can take extreme measures to avoid the feared situation or an object.

Coulrophobia (Fear of clowns)

Despite the fact, that clowns are believed to be the reason of laughter, sometimes they might be very frightening, especially for those who have coulrophobia. Symptoms can range from high anxiety to outright panic attacks around people in clown outfits. The cause of this fear is usually psychological – it can be a traumatic event I the childhood, a very scary movie about clowns, etc. It is known that a movie star, actor Johnny Depp has this fear of clowns – coulrophobia.

Siderodromophobia (Fear of trains, railroads or train travel)

People who have this fear may feel panic only if they think about traveling by train or just imagine it in their minds. The view of the coming train may raise their blood pressure, make heart beat faster and cause other symptoms of the real fear. Austrian Physician Sigmund Freud had siderodromophobia, despite the fact that he had been traveling by train very often.

Why?

The first reason, why people have phobias, is traumatic events. It is obvious that negative experiences can influence the latest fear.
The second reason may be cultural influence. F. ex, there is a kind phobia called taijin kyofusho, which occurs only in Japan. It is the fear of offending other persons by an excess of modesty or showing respect.
Many psychologists believe the cause lies in a combination of genetic predisposition mixed with environmental and social causes. It has been demonstrated that identical twins may develop the same type of phobia, even when they were reared separately soon after birth, and educated in different places.

Treatment

One of the most successful treatments is behavior therapy. In this therapy, a person who suffers a phobia meets with a trained therapist, confronts the feared object or situation in a carefully planned way, and learns to control physical reactions of fear.
Hypnosis can also set a person free of phobias. Posthypnotic suggestions can help him control his reaction – breathing, slow his heart rate, and achieve a relaxed state of mind.
Medications may also be used to control the panic. Drugs such as Xanax, Valium, Prozac or Zoloft may be prescribed for people who suffer agoraphobia or other social phobias. However, it helps to control only physical aspects but do not remove the fear.






http://www.way2hope.org/Illnesses/coulrophobia-fear-clowns.htm
http://www.answers.com/topic/siderodromophobia-1
http://allpsych.com/journal/phobias.html
http://www.leinsterhypnotherapyclinic.ie/phobias-anxiety.html
http://www.medindia.net/patients/patientinfo/phobias.htm
http://www.nvdaily.com/lifestyle/2009/03/overcoming-fear.html

END-OF-TERM SELF-ASSESSMENT

Learning is a process that never stops. It is easier to notice your progress when you separate your learning time into some parts. I’ve already written about my self-assessment some time earlier where I was talking about my progress during the first term. Now, when the second term is already finished, I’m going to write about my progress during it.


• Writing (a summary)

In this term, we didn’t write as many summaries as in the first one. More than that, this term we have been writing the other type of summary, called restatement summary. At first, I found it difficult to write because I was got used to analytical summaries. Nevertheless, after getting some practice now I don’t have any problems in writing both types of summary.

• Performance in ESP vocabulary tests

In the previous term, this aspect was the least pleasant for me. I understood that I have to change my learning strategy and I did it. I was trying to rewrite definitions just right after reading the module. It helped me to think about the most important words and learn using them during my English-classes. Therefore, now I find ESP vocabulary tests easier than before.

• Performance in class dictations

This task was new for me. After the first dictation I was little bit confused because my results were awful. I made many grammar and punctuation mistakes. However, the second dictation was easier because I’ve already knew what to expect and what kind of mistakes I should avoid. More than tat, the first dictation was about the law, thus specific words were unknown for me. The second one was about suicides, this topic is more familiar to my specialty. The results had shown that the second performance was really better.

• Listening practice in class

In the first term, I felt lack of this task. In this term was enough listening practice. However, I still make mistakes. Nevertheless, now I know when and how I should pay attention while listening. I believe, that during the third term I’ll reach results that I want to.

• Listening to peers’ Power Point presentations

Watch and listen to Power Point presentations that are made by others is important because then we get a lot of new information, improve our knowledge and may help presenter by giving some comments after his presentation. However, this task isn’t very interesting for me, thus I have to try very hard not to pay my attention to other things.


• Making Power Point presentation

This task is still the best for me. It is the most creative and sometimes I think I would rather do presentations every week than writing summaries. Of course, it depends on the topic. This term the topic of my Power Point presentation was very interesting for me and I enjoyed preparing for it.

• Short talks on ESP themes in class

This task became so easy for me that I even do not notice it as real task. I think I’ve already remove my fear to talk in foreign language and this is the reason why it is easier for me now.


To sum up, this term was easier for me than the previous one because I’ve finally understood the system of this subject, my mistakes and gain more confidence.




http://www.sterling.edu/content/library-studying-the-stacks
http://www.dumblittleman.com/2008_09_21_archive.html

Professor Richard Wiseman and his researches

Richard Wiseman is a professor of the University of Hertfordshire in the UK. He had made many researches in different psychology areas, such as humour, luck, deception and paranormal. Professor Wiseman is well known all over the world for his researches and popular book called “The Luck Factor”.

Despite the fact, that usually people talk about Professor Wiseman while speaking about luck or minds of human kind, the most interesting topic for me is paranormal. I know many psychology students who believe in magic, ghosts and things like that, thus it was very interesting for me to explore what do professionals think about that.

Professor Richard Wiseman investigated many people who had claimed they could do magic things, f.ex, materialize objects in their bare hands. The experiment had shown that no one could do some kind of magical trick under controlled conditions.

Professor Wiseman has examined why do people feel strange feelings in places where ghosts are believed to appear. The professor with his team visited places such as Hampton Court Palace and the Edinburgh Vaults. Some people claim they have experienced apparitions, unusual odours, sudden changes in temperature and a sense of presence there. After the research, Professor Wiseman came to conclusion that people may feel strange in places like these because of magnetic fields, infrasound, and various psychological factors such as prior knowing that you may feel presence and becoming anxious when entering these areas.

In conclusion, it is very good that people from the ‘world of science’, like Professor Wiseman, still care about unusual situations in people lives and try to find answers to questions that interest many of us. This is why we should always try to examine what do professionals say about things we are interested in before making our own decisions.

References: http://www.richardwiseman.com/index.html

Learning Languages

There are from 3,000 to 8,000 different languages all over the world. Some of them are more common, some are less. The popularity depends on how many speakers do they have and how often they are being used in business, cultural work and how easy they are to learn for non-native speakers. However, learning foreign languages have the same strategies. In includes speaking, listening, reading and writing.

The most important aspects, in my opinion, are speaking and listening. Even native speakers start learning their own language not from grammar but from listening, learning how to pronounce different sounds, how to say most common words and then join them into sentences. The same strategies should be used learning foreign language. It is important to find differences in pronunciation of letters and words. F.ex., if someone wants to learn Finnish language, he has to know that unusual sound may the ‘y’, which is a 'front-u', the same as 'u' in French, etc. It is easier to understand language better when you are using it. All people who go abroad and live there for a while can understand language better because they always hear it and have to talk with natives in their language. If there is no opportunity to go into the country where people talk in language you want to learn other possibility is listening to the music with words of that language or find a friend from there you can sometimes talk to even using phone, Skype, MSG and so on.

Reading is other very important aspect of learning language. In this way, you can learn many new words and have their visual images in your mind. It can also help you when you go abroad and have to find streets or buildings, filling some document, etc. Usually reading is being associated with writing. However, it is possible to communicate with people from other countries in their languages even when you do not know the grammar of them.

I always remember one common proverb my first English teacher said to me long time ago - practice makes perfect. No matter how many books do you have or how long you have been dreaming about some language. The most important thing is use it in your life as frequent as possible.



References: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/languages/finnish.html
http://www.ling.gu.se/projekt/sprakfrageladan/english/sprakfakta/eng-sprak-i-varlden.html