Notes, summaries, assignments, exams, and problems for Social sciences

1. What changes marked the transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern period?

The demographic recovery made that demand increase, there was more land cultivation and greater crop yield. Also, the improvements in shipping growth to trade the Mediterranean Sea, and the production also rose.

2. Improvements in shipping gave rise to trade in the Mediterranean Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the North Sea. Look at the map of the spice trade, one of the most important trade routes during the 15th century, and try to describe its information. You should use your book to look for more details.

They used this route to interchange eastern spices, such as cinnamon, nutmeg, and pepper, which were used to preserve food and considered prized ingredients in... Continue reading "Transition from Middle Ages to Early Modern Period" »

Abortion Laws: A Global Health Issue

Most countries have laws that prohibit abortion entirely or only permit it to save a woman's life. However, there is a global trend toward liberalizing abortion laws.

Unsafe Abortion: A Public Health Crisis

The World Health Organization has recognized unsafe abortion as a serious public health problem since 1967. When women facing unwanted pregnancies encounter legal restrictions, they are more likely to seek unsafe abortions. Legal restrictions directly correlate with a higher percentage of unsafe procedures, significantly impacting public health.

Even in countries with legal abortion, limited public information and inadequate medical training can hinder access to safe procedures. The United Nations Special... Continue reading "Abortion Laws and UN Security Council Reform: Global Perspectives" »

Word Order in English and Spanish

In English, we find:

• DETERMINER + adjective + noun
• Determiner + noun + adjective
• Adjective as subject complement
• Adjective as object complement (e.g., He made his wife happy)

In Spanish and English, the attributive function shows the following word orders:

• Spanish: Noun + adjective, Adjective + noun
• English: Adjective + noun, Noun + adjective

In English, there are several cases in which the position of adjectives is usually postnominal:

Indefinite pronouns ending in -body, -one, -thing, -where can be modified only postpositively.

Textual Equivalence

Aim: To explore how word order controls information flow and other strategies at the text level.

Cohesive Devices

Cohesive devices include reference, substitution, ellipsis,... Continue reading "Word Order, Cohesion, and Conjunction in English and Spanish" »

We must distinguish between the grammatical category of tense and the semantic category of time. Time is a non-linguistic concept with three divisions: past, present, and future. Tense is a grammatical category that is realized by verb inflection; by tense, we understand the correspondence between the form of the verb and the concept of time. There are just two tenses in English, present and past. However, there is no obvious future tense in English corresponding to the time/tense relation for present and past. Instead, there are several possibilities for denoting future time.

The Term Aspect

refers to a grammatical category which concerns the manner in which a verbal action is experienced or regarded, for example, as complete or in progress.... Continue reading "Understanding Tense, Aspect, Number, and Concord in English Grammar" »

Organized Trips

It's true that today many people decide to pay for organized trips because it is very comfortable. However, other people don't because they see disadvantages in organized trips.

Advantages of Organized Trips

On the one hand, organized trips include visits to the most famous and most visited places. This allows you to avoid planning all the visits and worrying about what to do first. Usually, it also includes accommodation, and because of this, there is no trouble booking last minute. It is likely that organized trips help you waste less time.

Disadvantages of Organized Trips

On the other hand, sometimes if you go to a place with an organized trip you can't see the places that you want. Organized trip visits usually have a limited... Continue reading "Organized Trips, Owning a Car, and Ideal Transport" »

DEFINITIONS

DICTATORSHIP: The political system where the authority rules without any limits.

OLIGARCHY: The political system where the power is controlled by a small group.

REPUBLIC: The political system where the head of the state is elected.

MONARCHY: The political system where the head of the state is a king or queen.

DEMOCRACY

Definition: A political system in which people choose the representation, the leaders, the government voting. A form of government in which the supreme power is in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.

Main characteristics (agree on them first): Equality, freedom, power division, and representatives

Explanation of the characteristics (short paragraph and an example)

IS YOUNGER BETTER?

Two central ideas which lie behind the popular assumption that 'younger is better' are:

1. the widely-held view that since young children learn their mother tongue so quickly and effectively, they will be able to pick up a foreign language in the same way, without ever having to make any real effort.
2. the concept of a critical or sensitive period, an idea developed around the mid-20th century of a 'magic' period in children's lives (usually identified as up to the age of about 12) after which their brains lose plasticity and they are no longer capable of learning another language so effectively.

THE MOTHER TONGUE

In the case of mother tongue acquisition, children are learning language at the same time as they are discovering who they... Continue reading "Language Learning in Young Children: Myths and Realities" »

The human right is a very sensitive issue, since in many countries this is not tolerated as it should be, or there are still cases of violation of the human rights of many people.

It is a subject that includes many perspectives and opinions of people, such as freedom of expression, social freedom, racism, peace, love, etc.

I believe that we should all have knowledge of them, since we treat them day by day, as for example the equality of gender, is something that is being treated at present.

We are all the same, we are women or men, no one is superior, however, there are people who question it, as well as many other rights.

Matthew Arnold's Touchstone Theory in Literary Criticism

The kind of poetry capable of sustaining the responsibility of leading society, according to Matthew Arnold, should possess high seriousness. It ought to be a solemn form of poetry, not comic, and reflective of Victorian ideals. Arnold introduced the concept of touchstones to evaluate such poetry.

Defining the Touchstone Theory

A touchstone is traditionally an instrument used to determine the quality of something. When Matthew Arnold discusses touchstones, he employs a metaphor referring to a set of criteria. With these criteria, one can apply them to poems to assess their function and quality. He identified three types of literary estimates:

• Personal Estimate: Based on individual feelings,