Hofstedes Cultural Dimensions Of Individualism - 1308 Words

Using Hofstede’s cultural dimensions of individualism/collectivism, context, chronemics, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, masculinity/femininity, and long-term/short-term orientation can help to compare and contrast America and Israel. America is located mainly in the Northern Hemisphere in the continent of North America. Israel is located in Asia, which is located in the Eastern and Northern Hemisphere. There are many things you will find similar when talking about two countries, but also plenty of differences. For example, Hofstede’s cultural dimensions along with the ethnicities, nationalities, race, religions, and the norms of each country. When I think about going to another country I think about what kind of popular food they will have, the sights to see, things to do, if they have good shopping, and so much more. Most people don’t put into consideration how the population of that country defines themselves and their relationships to others. A country can either have an individualist culture or a collectivist culture. According to Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions, individualist cultures believe being individual is important, they stress their independence, reward personal and individual treatment, and value everything about being individual (Sprague, Stuart, Bodary 3-2a). Collectivist cultures view needs and group goals as the most important thing along with focusing mainly on cooperation instead of competition. When talking about America, it is considered veryShow MoreRelatedLeadership And Hofstede s Five Dimensions1540 Words   |  7 PagesLeadership and Hofstede’s Five Dimensions Jordan Luke ORG300 – Applying Leadership Principles Colorado State University – Global Campus Sheila Landfairmueller December 7, 2014 â€Æ' Leadership and Hofstede’s Five Dimensions In my experience, working in a team environment not only means working together collaboratively, but also means being sensitive to cultural differences and outlooks within the team. Dr. Geert Hofstede, a Dutch social phycologist, devised a way to recognize these cultural differencesRead MoreLeadership And Hofstede s Six Dimensions879 Words   |  4 PagesLeadership and Hofstede’s Six Dimensions Hofstede’s six dimensions is a work of cross- cultural communication, which was established by Greet Hofstede. 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For the higher levels of power distance, it would be better to give specificRead MoreCultural Dimensions Of Brazil And China1501 Words   |  7 Pages GCIM International Business and Management Assignment 1 Cultural Dimensions of Brazil and China Nouran AlSahhaf @00413902 â€Æ' Table of Contents Executive summery†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦..3 Cultural Dimensions†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦...†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.4 Power Distance†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.4 Power Distance in China†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦................................................†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦..4 Power Distance in Brazil †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.5 Uncertainty Avoidance†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦.5 Uncertainty Avoidance in China†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Read MoreThe Collective Programming Of The Mind1520 Words   |  7 Pagesdebate. Nevertheless, cross-cultural research brought a great deal of improvements into business and managerial studies. â€Å"Nationality and culture tend to coincide† (Hofstede, 1983), despite the fact that nations envelop a wide range of subcultures, beliefs, religions and code of conducts, in order to illustrate a country’s cultural mapping, numerous studies focused on making national generalizations in order to define and measure culture researches in the field of cross-cultural studies with the aim of

The Silver Linings Playbook Chapter 18 Free Essays

A Hive Full of Green Bees â€Å"Ahhhhhhhhh!† I sit up, my heart pounding. When my eyes focus, I see my dad standing at my bedside with his hands above his head; he’s wearing his number 5 McNabb jersey. â€Å"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!† he continues to scream, until I get out of bed, raise my hands, and say â€Å"Ahhhhhhhhhh!† We do the chant, spelling the letters with our arms and legs. We will write a custom essay sample on The Silver Linings Playbook Chapter 18 or any similar topic only for you Order Now â€Å"E!-A!-G!-L!-E!-S! EAGLES!† When we finish, instead of saying good morning or anything else, my father simply jogs out of my room. I look at the clock, and it reads 5:59 a.m. The game starts at one o’clock. I promised to join Jake’s tailgate party by ten, which gives me two hours to lift and an hour to run – so I lift, and Tiffany is outside at 8:00 a.m. just like she said she would be. We do a short run – maybe only six or seven miles. After a shower, I put on my Baskett jersey and ask my mom for a ride to the PATCO station, but she says, â€Å"Your driver is waiting for you outside.† Mom kisses me on the cheek and hands me some money. â€Å"Have fun, and don’t let your brother drink too much.† Outside, I see Dad in his sedan; the engine is running. I get into the car and say, â€Å"Dad, are you going to the game?† â€Å"I wish I could,† he says, and then we back out of the driveway. The truth is that my father is still serving a self-imposed ban and is therefore not allowed to attend Eagles games. In the early eighties, Dad got into a fight with a Dallas Cowboys fan who dared to sit in the 700 Level, which were the cheap seats at the Vet, where the die-hard Eagles fans sat. The story I heard from my since-deceased uncle was this: When the Cowboys scored a touchdown, this Dallas fan jumped up and began cheering real loudly, so people started throwing beers and hot dogs at him. The only problem was that my dad was sitting in the row in front of this Dallas fan, so the beer and mustard and food rained down on Dad too. Apparently, Dad lost it, attacked the Dallas fan, and beat him within an inch of his life. My father was actually arrested, convicted of aggravated assault, and incarcerated for three months. If my uncle hadn’t made the mortgage payments, we would have lost the house. Dad did lose his season ticket and has not been to an Eagles game since. Jake says we could get Dad in, since no one actually checks IDs at the gate, but Dad won’t go back, saying, â€Å"As long as they let the opposing fans in our house, I can’t trust myself.† This is sort of funny, because twenty-five years after Dad beat the hell out of that Dallas fan, he is just a fat old man who is not likely to beat up another fat old man, let alone a rowdy Dallas fan with the guts to wear a Cowboys jersey to an Eagles game. Although my father did hit me pretty hard in the attic just a few weeks ago – so maybe he is wise to stay away from the games. We drive over the hospital-green Walt Whitman Bridge, and he talks about how this just might be an important day in Eagles history, especially since the Giants won both games last year. â€Å"Revenge!† he keeps yelling indiscriminately. He also tells me I have to cheer real loudly so Eli Manning – who I know (from reading the sports pages) is the Giants’ QB – will not be able to talk or hear during the huddles. â€Å"Scream your goddamn lungs out, because you’re the twelfth man!† Dad says. The way he talks at me – never really pausing long enough for me to say any-thing – makes him sound crazy, I know, even though most people think I am the crazy person in the family. When we are stopped, waiting in line to pay the bridge toll, Dad quits his Eagles rant long enough to say, â€Å"It’s good that you are going to the games with Jake again. Your brother’s missed you a lot. You do realize that, right? You need to make time for family no matter what happens in your life, because Jake and your mother need you.† This is a pretty ironic thing for him to say, especially since he has hardly said anything to me since I have been home and never really spends any time with me or my mother or Jake at all, but I am glad my father is finally talking to me. All the time I have ever spent with Jake or him has always revolved around sports – mostly Eagles – and I know this is all he can really afford emotionally, so I take it, and say, â€Å"I wish you were going to the game, Dad.† â€Å"Me too,† he says, and then hands the toll collector a five. After taking the first off-ramp, he deposits me about ten blocks away from the new stadium so he can turn around and avoid traffic. â€Å"You’re on your own coming home,† he says as I get out. â€Å"I’m not driving back into this zoo.† I thank him for the ride, and just before I shut the door, he raises his hands in the car and yells â€Å"Ahhhhhhhhh!† so I raise my hands and yell â€Å"Ahhhhhhhh!† A group of men drinking beers out of a nearby car trunk hear us, so they raise their hands and yell â€Å"Ahhhhhhhhhh!† Men united by a team, we all do the Eagles chant together. My chest feels so warm, and I remember how much fun it is to be in South Philly on game day. As I walk toward the west Lincoln Financial Field parking lot – following the directions my brother gave me on the phone the night before – so many people are wearing Eagles jerseys. Everywhere green. People are grilling, drinking beer from plastic cups, throwing footballs, listening to the WIP 610 pregame show on AM radio, and as I walk past, they all high-five me, throw me footballs, and yell, â€Å"Go Birds!† just because I am wearing an Eagles jersey. I see young boys with their fathers. Old guys with their grown sons. Men yelling and singing and smiling as if they were boys again. And I realize I have missed this a lot. Even though I do not want to, I look for the Vet and only find a parking lot. There’s a new Phillies ballpark too, called Citizens Bank Park. By the entrance ripples a huge banner of some new player named Ryan Howard. All of this seems to suggest that Jake and Dad weren’t lying when they said the Vet was demolished. I try not to think about the dates they mentioned, and I focus on enjoying the game and spending time with my brother. I find the right parking lot and begin to look for the green tent with the black Eagles flag flying from the top. The parking lot is full – tents and grills and parties everywhere – but after ten minutes or so, I spot my brother. Jake’s in his number 99 Jerome Brown memorial jersey. (Jerome Brown was the two-time Pro Bowler defensive tackle who was killed in a car crash back in 1992.) My brother is drinking beer from a green cup, standing next to our friend Scott, who is manning the grill. Jake looks happy, and for a second I simply enjoy watching him smile as he throws an arm around Scott, whom I haven’t seen since the last time I was in South Philly. Jake’s face is red, and he looks a little drunk already, but he has always been a happy drunk, so I do not worry. Like my father, nothing makes Jake happier than Eagles game day. When Jake sees me, he yells, â€Å"Hank Baskett’s tailgating with us!† and then runs over to give me a high five and a chest bump. â€Å"What’s up, dude?† Scott says to me as we too exchange high fives. The big smile on his face suggests that he is happy to see me. â€Å"Man, you really are huge. What have you been lifting – cars?† I smile proudly as he punches my arm, like guys do when they are buddies. â€Å"It’s been years – I mean, um – how many months has it been?† He and my brother exchange a glance that I do not miss, but before I can say anything, Scott yells, â€Å"Hey, all you fat-asses in the tent! I wanna introduce you to my boy – Jake’s brother, Pat.† The tent is the size of a small house. I walk through the slit on one side, and a huge flat-screen television is set up on milk crates stacked two by four. Five really fat guys are seated in folding chairs, watching the pregame show – all of them in Eagles jerseys. Scott rattles off the names. After he says mine, the men nod and wave and then go back to watching the pregame show. All of them have handheld personal organizers, and their eyes are rapidly moving back and forth between the small screens in their hands and the large screen at the far side of the tent. Almost all have earpieces in, which I guess are connected to cellular phones. As we exit the tent, Scott says, â€Å"Don’t mind them. They’re all trying to get last-minute info. They’ll be a little more friendly after they’ve placed their bets.† â€Å"Who are they?† I ask. â€Å"Guys from my work. I’m a computer tech now for Digital Cross Health. We do websites for family doctors.† â€Å"How are they watching television out here in the parking lot?† I ask. My brother waves me around to the back of the tent, points to a small engine in a square of metal, and says, â€Å"Gas-powered generator.† He points to the top of the tent, where a small gray plate is perched, and says, â€Å"Satellite dish.† â€Å"What do they do with all this gear when they go into the game?† I ask. â€Å"Oh,† Scott says with a laugh. â€Å"They don’t have tickets.† Jake pours a Yuengling Lager into a plastic cup and hands it to me, and I notice three coolers loaded with beer cans and bottles, probably four or five cases. I know the plastic cup is to keep away the police, who can arrest you for having an open beer can in your hand but not for holding a plastic cup. The bag of empties just outside the tent suggests that Jake and Scott are way ahead of me. As Scott finishes grilling breakfast – thick sausages and eggs scrambled in a pan he has placed over the gas flames – he does not ask me many questions about what I have been up to, which I appreciate. I’m sure my brother has already told Scott all about my time in the bad place and my separation from Nikki, but I still appreciate Scott’s allowing me to reenter the world of Eagles football without an interrogation. Scott tells me about his life, and it turns out that while I was in the bad place, he married someone named Willow, and they actually now have three-year-old twins named Tami and Jeri-Lyn. Scott shows me the picture he keeps in his wallet, and the girls are dressed alike in little pink ballerina outfits – tutus, tights – their hands stretched up over silver tiaras, pointing toward heaven. â€Å"My tiny dancers. We live on the Pennsylvania side now. Havertown,† Scott says as he loads a half dozen sausages onto the top rack of the barbecue, where they will keep warm while the next batch cooks. I think about Emily and me floating over the waves only the day before, and again I promise myself I’ll get busy making my own daughter just as soon as apart time is over. I try not to do the math in my head, but I can’t help it. If he has twins who are three years old and he was married sometime after I last saw him – but before his wife got pregnant – it must mean that I have not seen Scott for at least four years. Now maybe he knocked up his girlfriend and then married her, but of course, I can’t ask that. Since his daughters are three, the math indicates he and I have not talked for at least three or four years. My last memory of Scott is at the Vet. I had sold my season ticket to Scott’s brother Chris a season or two before, but Chris often went away on business conferences and allowed me to buy my seat back for the few home games played when he was out of town. I came up from Baltimore to see the Eagles play Dallas; I don’t remember who won or what the score was. But I remember sitting in between Scott and Jake – up in the 700 Level – when Dallas scored a rushing touchdown. Some clown behind us stood up and began cheering as he unzipped his jacket, revealing a throwback Tony Dorsett jersey. Everyone in our section started booing and throwing food at this Dallas fan, who smiled and smiled. Jake was so drunk he could hardly stand, but he charged after this guy, climbing up over three rows of people. The sober Dallas fan shoved Jake away easily, but when Jake fell back into the arms of drunken Eagles fans, a cry went up, and the Tony Dorsett jersey was forcibly removed from the visiting fan’s back and ripped into many pieces before security arrived and threw out a dozen people. Jake was not thrown out of the game. Scott and I were able to get Jake up and away from the mayhem, and when security arrived, we were in the men’s room splashing water onto Jake’s face, trying to sober him up. In my mind, this happened last year, maybe eleven months ago. But I know if I bring up this incident now as we are grilling in front of the Linc, I will be told that the memory occurred more than three or even four years ago, so I do not bring it up, even though I want to, because I know Jake’s and Scott’s responses will help me figure out what the rest of the world believes about time. And also, not knowing what the rest of the world believes happened between then and now is terrifying. It’s better not to think too much about this. â€Å"Drink some beers,† Jake says to me. â€Å"Smile. It’s game day!† So I start drinking, even though the little orange bottles that my pills come in have stickers forbidding me to drink alcohol. After the fat guys in the tent are fed, we eat off paper plates, and then Scott, Jake, and I begin throwing the football around. In the parking lot people are everywhere, not just tailgating, but roaming. Guys selling stolen or homemade T-shirts, moms parading around little girls in cheerleading outfits who will do a cheer if you donate a dollar to their local cheerleading booster club, crazy bums willing to tell you off-color jokes for free food and beer, strippers in short pants and satin jackets handing out free passes to the local gentlemen’s clubs, packs of little kids in pads and helmets collecting money for their peewee football teams, college kids handing out free samples of new sodas or sports drinks or candy or junk food, and of course the seventy thousand other drunken Eagles fans just like us. Basically, it’s a green football carnival. By the time we decide to have a catch, I’ve had two or three beers, and I’d be willing to bet Jake and Scott have each had at least ten, so our passes are not all that accurate. We hit parked cars, knock over a few tables of food, beam one or two guys in the back, but no one cares, because we are Eagles fans in Eagles jerseys who are ready and willing to cheer on the Birds. Every so often, other men will jump in front of one of us and intercept a pass or two, but they always give back the ball with a laugh and a smile. I like throwing the football with Jake and Scott because it makes me feel like a boy, and when I was a boy, I was the person Nikki fell in love with. But then something bad happens. Jake sees him first, points, and says, â€Å"Hey, look at the asshole.† I turn my head and see a big man in a Giants jersey, maybe forty yards away from our tent. He is wearing a red, white, and blue hard hat, and the worst part is that he has a little boy with him who is also wearing a Giants jersey. The guy walks over to a group of Eagles fans who give him a hard time at first but eventually hand him a beer. Suddenly my brother is walking toward this Giants fan, so Scott and I follow. My brother starts chanting as he walks, â€Å"Ass – hole! Ass – hole! Ass – hole!† With every syllable, he throws his index finger at the hard hat. Scott is doing the same thing, and before I know it, we are surrounded by twenty or so men in Eagles jerseys who are also chanting and pointing. I have to admit it feels sort of thrilling to be part of this mob – united in our hatred of the opposing team’s fans. When we reach the Giants fan, his friends – all Eagles fans – laugh, and their faces seem to say, â€Å"We told you this would happen.† But instead of acting remorseful, the Giants fan puts his hands up in the air, as if he has just performed a magic trick or something; he smiles widely and nods his head like he is enjoying being called an asshole. He even puts his hand to his ear, as if to say, â€Å"I can’t hear you.† The kid with him, who has the same pale skin coloring and flat nose – probably his son – looks terrified. The little guy’s jersey hangs down to his knees, and as the â€Å"ass – hole† chant intensifies, the kid holds on to his father’s leg and tries to hide behind the big man’s thigh. My brother transitions the crowd into a â€Å"Giants suck† chant, and more Eagles fans come to join in. We now are at least fifty strong. And this is when the little kid breaks into tears, sobbing. When we Eagles fans see that the kid is really upset, the mob chuckles and respectfully disperses. Jake and Scott are laughing as we walk back to our tent, but I don’t feel so great. I wish we did not make that little kid cry. I know the Giants fan was stupid to wear a Giants jersey to an Eagles game, and it is really his own fault that his son was made to cry, but I also know that what we did was unkind, and this is the sort of behavior Nikki hates, what I am trying – I feel his hands explode through my back, and I stumble forward and almost fall down. When I turn around, I see the big Giants fan. He is no longer wearing his hard hat; his son is not with him. â€Å"You like making little kids cry?† he says to me. I’m too shocked to speak. There were at least fifty men chanting, but he has singled out me. Why? I wasn’t even chanting. I wasn’t even pointing. I want to tell him this, but my mouth won’t work, so I just stand there shaking my head. â€Å"If you don’t want a problem, don’t wear a Giants jersey to an Eagles game,† Scott says. â€Å"It’s just bad parenting to bring your son down here dressed like that,† Jake adds. The mob quickly forms again. A circle of green uniforms surrounds us now, and I think this Giants fan must be crazy. One of his friends has come to talk him down. The friend’s a small man with long hair and a mustache – and he’s wearing an Eagles shirt. â€Å"Come on, Steve. Let’s go. They didn’t mean anything. It was just a joke.† â€Å"What the fuck is your problem?† Steve says, and then shoves me again, his hands exploding through my chest. At this point the Eagles fans begin chanting, â€Å"Ass – hole! Ass – hole! Ass – hole!† Steve is staring into my eyes, gritting his teeth so the tendons in his neck bulge like ropes. He also lifts weights. His arms look even bigger than mine, and he is taller than me by an inch or two. I look to Jake for help, and I can see that he looks a little worried himself. Jake steps in front of me, puts his hands up to suggest that he means no harm, but before he can say anything, the Giants fan grabs my brother’s Jerome Brown memorial jersey and throws Jake to the ground. I see him hit the concrete – my brother’s hands skidding along the blacktop – and then blood is dripping from his fingers and Jake’s eyes look dazed and scared. My brother is hurt. My brother is hurt. MY BROTHER IS HURT. I explode. The bad feeling in my stomach rockets up through my chest and into my hands – and before I can stop myself, I’m moving forward like a Mack truck. I catch Steve’s cheek with a left, and then my right connects with the south side of his chin, lifting him off the ground. I watch him float through the air as if he were allowing his body to fall backward into a pool. His back hits the concrete, his feet and hands twitch once, and then he’s not moving, the crowd is silent, and I begin to feel so awful – so guilty. Someone yells, â€Å"Call an ambulance!† Another yells, â€Å"Tell ’em to bring a blue-and-red body bag!† â€Å"I’m sorry,† I whisper, because I find it hard to speak. â€Å"I’m so sorry.† And then I am running again. I weave through the crowds of people, across streets, around cars, and through horns blaring and cursing drivers screaming at me. I feel a bubbly feeling in my midsection, and then I am puking my guts out onto the sidewalk – eggs, sausage, beer – and so many people are yelling at me, calling me a drunk, saying that I’m an asshole; and then I’m running again as fast as I can, down the street away from the stadiums. When I feel as though I am going to throw up again, I stop and realize I’m alone – no more Eagles fans anywhere. A chain-link fence, beyond it a warehouse that looks abandoned. I vomit again. On the sidewalk, outside of the puddle I am making, pieces of broken glass glint and sparkle in the sun. I cry. I feel awful. I realize that I have once again failed to be kind; that I lost control in a big way; that I seriously injured another person, and therefore I’m never going to get Nikki back now. Apart time is going to last forever because my wife is a pacifist who would never want me to hit anyone under any circumstance, and both God and Jesus were obviously rooting for me to turn the other cheek, so I know I really shouldn’t have hit that Giants fan, and now I’m crying again because I’m such a fucking waste – such a fucking non-person. I walk another half block, my chest heaving wildly, and then I stop. â€Å"Dear God,† I pray. â€Å"Please don’t send me back to the bad place. Please!† I look up at the sky. I see a cloud passing just under the sun. The top is all electric white. I remind myself. Don’t give up, I think. Not just yet. â€Å"Pat! Pat! Wait up!† I look back toward the stadiums, and my brother is running toward me. Over the next minute or so, Jake gets bigger and bigger, and then he is right in front of me, bent over, huffing and puffing. â€Å"I’m sorry,† I say. I’m so, so sorry.† â€Å"For what?† Jake laughs, pulls out his cell phone, dials a number, and holds the small phone up to his ear. â€Å"I found him,† Jake says into the phone. â€Å"Yeah, tell him.† Jake hands me the phone. I put it up to my ear. â€Å"Is this Rocky Balboa?† I recognize the voice as Scott’s. â€Å"Listen, the asshole you knocked out – well, he woke up and is super pissed. Better not come back to the tent.† â€Å"Is he okay?† I ask. â€Å"You should be more worried about yourself.† â€Å"Why?† â€Å"We played dumb when the cops showed up, and no one was able to identify you or your brother – but ever since five-o left, the big guy’s been searching the parking lot, looking for you. Whatever you do, don’t come back here, because this Giants fan’s hellbent on revenge.† I hand the phone back to Jake, feeling somewhat relieved to know I did not seriously hurt Steve, but also feeling numb – because I lost control again. Plus, I’m a little afraid of the Giants fan. â€Å"So, are we going home now?† I ask Jake when he finishes talking to Scott. â€Å"Home? Are you kiddin’ me?† he says, and we start walking back toward the Linc. When I don’t say anything for a long time, my brother asks if I’m okay. I’m not okay, but I don’t say so. â€Å"Listen, that asshole attacked you and threw me to the ground. You only defended your family,† Jake says. â€Å"You should be proud. You were the hero.† Even though I was defending my brother, even though I did not seriously hurt the Giants fan, I don’t feel proud at all. I feel guilty. I should be locked up again in the bad place. I feel as though Dr. Timbers was right about me – that I don’t belong in the real world, because I am uncontrollable and dangerous. But of course I do not say this to Jake, mostly because he has never been locked up and doesn’t understand what it feels like to lose control, and he only wants to watch the football game now, and none of this means anything to him, because he has never been married and he has never lost someone like Nikki and he is not trying to improve his life at all, because he doesn’t ever feel the war that goes on in my chest every single fucking day – the chemical explosions that light up my skull like the Fourth of July and the awful needs and impulses and †¦ Outside the Linc, masses form thick lines, and with hundreds of other fans, we wait to be frisked. I don’t remember being frisked at the Vet. I wonder when it became necessary to frisk people at NFL games, but I do not ask Jake, because he is now singing â€Å"Fly, Eagles, Fly† with hundreds of other drunken Eagles fans. After we are frisked, we climb the steps and have our tickets scanned, and then we are inside of Lincoln Financial Field. People everywhere – it’s like a hive full of green bees, and the buzz is deafening. We often have to turn sideways just to squeeze between people as we walk the concourse to get to our section. I follow Jake, worrying about getting separated, because I would be lost for sure. We hit the men’s room, and Jake gets everyone inside to sing the Eagles fight song again. The lines for the urinals are long, and I am amazed that no one pees in the sinks, because at the Vet – at least up in the 700 Level – all sinks were used as extra urinals. When we finally get to our seats, we are in the end zone, only twenty or so rows up from the field. â€Å"How did you get such good tickets?† I ask Jake. â€Å"I know a guy,† he replies, and smiles proudly. Scott is already seated, and he congratulates me on my fight, saying, â€Å"You knocked that fucking Giants fan out cold!† which makes me feel awful again. Jake and Scott high-five just about everyone in the section, and as the other fans call Scott and my brother by name, it becomes obvious that they are quite popular here. When the beer man comes around, Scott buys us a round, and I am amazed to find a cup holder in the seat in front of me. You would never see such a luxury item at the Vet. Just before the Eagles’ players are announced, clips from the Rocky movies are shown on the huge screens at each end of the field – Rocky running by the old Navy Yard, Rocky punching sides of beef in the meat locker, Rocky running up the steps of the art museum – and Jake and Scott keep saying, â€Å"That’s you. That’s you,† until I worry that someone will hear them, understand that I just fought the Giants fan in the parking lot, and tell the police to take me back to the bad place. When the Eagles’ starting lineup is announced, fireworks explode and cheerleaders kick and everyone is standing and Jake keeps on pounding my back with his hand and strangers are high-fiving me, and suddenly I stop thinking about my fight in the parking lot. I begin to think about my dad watching the game in our family room – my mother serving him buffalo wings and pizza and beers, hoping the Eagles win just so her husband will be in a good mood for a week. I again wonder if my dad will start talking to me at night if the Eagles pull out a victory today, and suddenly it’s kickoff and I am cheering as if my life depends on the outcome of the game. The Giants score first, but the Eagles answer with a touchdown of their own, after which the whole stadium sings the fight song – punctuated by the Eagles chant – with deafening pride. Late in the first quarter, Hank Baskett gets his first catch of his NFL career – a twenty-five-yarder. Everyone in our section high-fives me and pats me on the back because I am wearing my official Hank Baskett jersey, and I smile at my brother because he gave me such a great present. The game is all Eagles after that, and at the start of the fourth quarter the Eagles are up 24 – 7. Jake and Scott are so happy, and I am beginning to imagine the conversation I am going to have with my father when I get home – how proud he will be of my yelling whenever Eli Manning was trying to call a play. But then the Giants score seventeen unanswered points in the fourth quarter, and the Philadelphia fans are shocked. In overtime, Plaxico Burress goes up and over Sheldon Brown in the end zone, and the Giants leave Philadelphia with a win. It is awful to watch. Outside of the Linc, Scott says, â€Å"Better not come back to the tent. That asshole will be there waiting, for sure.† So we say goodbye to Scott and follow the masses to the subway entrance. Jake has tokens. We go through the turnstiles, descend underground, and push our way onto an already packed subway car. People yell, â€Å"No room!† but Jake mashes his body in between the other bodies and then pulls me in too. My brother’s chest is against my back; strangers are smashed against my arms. The doors finally close, and my nose is almost touching the glass window. The smell of beer resurfacing through everyone’s sweat glands is pungent. I don’t like being this close to so many strangers, but I don’t say anything, and soon we are at City Hall. After we exit the train, we spin another turnstile, climb up into center city, and begin walking down Market Street, past the old department stores and the new hotels and The Gallery. â€Å"You wanna see my apartment?† Jake asks when we get to the Eighth and Market PATCO stop, which is where I can hop a train over the Ben Franklin Bridge to Collingswood. I do want to see Jake’s apartment, but I am tired and anxious to get home so I can do a little lifting before bed. I ask if I might see it some other time. â€Å"Sure,† he says. â€Å"It’s good to have you back, brother. You were a true Eagles fan today.† I nod. â€Å"Tell Dad the Birds will bounce back next week against San Fran.† I nod again. My brother surprises me by giving me a two-armed hug and saying, â€Å"I love you, bro. Thanks for getting my back in the parking lot.† I tell him that I love him too, and then he is walking down Market Street singing â€Å"Fly, Eagles, Fly† at the top of his lungs. I descend underground, insert the five my mother gave me into the change machine, buy a ticket, stick it into the turnstile, descend more stairs, hit the waiting platform, and begin to think about that little kid in the Giants jersey. How hard did he cry when he realized his father had been knocked out? Did the kid even get to see the game? A few other men in Eagles jerseys are sitting on the chrome benches. Each nods sympathetically at me when they see my Hank Baskett jersey. One man at the far end of the platform yells, â€Å"Goddamn fucking Birds!† and then kicks a metal trash can. Another man standing next to me shakes his head and whispers, â€Å"Goddamn fucking Birds.† When the train comes, I choose to stand just inside the doors, and as the train slides across the dusk sky, over the Delaware River, across the Ben Franklin Bridge, I look at the city skyline, and – again – I start to think about that kid crying. I feel so awful when I think about that little kid. I get off the train at Collingswood, walk across the open-air platform and down the steps, stick my card into the turnstile machine, and then jog home. My mother is sitting in the family room, sipping tea. â€Å"How’s Dad?† I ask. She shakes her head and points at the TV. The screen is cracked so that it looks like a spiderweb. â€Å"What happened?† â€Å"Your father smashed the screen with the reading lamp.† â€Å"Because the Eagles lost?† â€Å"No, actually. He did it when the Giants tied the game at the end of the fourth quarter. Your father had to watch the Eagles blow the game on the bedroom television,† Mom says. â€Å"How’s your brother?† â€Å"Fine,† I say. â€Å"Where’s Dad?† â€Å"In his office.† â€Å"Oh.† â€Å"I’m sorry your team lost,† Mom says, just to be nice, I know. â€Å"It’s okay,† I answer, and then go down into the basement, where I lift weights for hours and try to forget about that little Giants fan crying, but I still can’t get the kid out of my mind. For whatever reason I fall asleep on the rug that covers part of the basement floor. In my dreams the fight happens again and again, only instead of the Giants fan bringing a kid to the game, the Giants fan brings Nikki, and she too is wearing a Giants jersey. Every time I knock the big guy out, Nikki pushes through the crowd, cradles Steve’s head in her hands, kisses his forehead, and then looks up at me. Just before I run away, she says, â€Å"You’re an animal, Pat. And I will never love you again.† I cry through my dreams and try not to hit the Giants fan every time the memory flashes through my mind, but I can’t control my dream self any more than I could control my awake self after seeing the blood on Jake’s hands. I wake up to the sound of the basement door being closed, and I see the light streaming in through the small windows over the washer and dryer. I walk up the steps, and I cannot believe the sports pages are there. I am very upset about the dream I had, but I realize it was only a dream, and despite everything that has happened, my father is still leaving me the sports pages after one of the worst Eagles losses in history. So I take a deep breath. I allow myself to feel hopeful again and start my exercise routine. How to cite The Silver Linings Playbook Chapter 18, Essay examples

Federal Bureau of Prisons free essay sample

The Federal Bureau of Prisons was established in 1930. Its main goal is to provide humane care for Federal inmates. There are 11 Federal prisons in operation. The Bureau consists of 115 institutions, 6 regional offices, a Central Office (headquarters), 2 staff training centers, and 22 community corrections offices. The Bureau of Prisons career opportunities web page is the place where you can learn about BOP careers, the employment process and current vacancies. The BOP career opportunities web page has quick links to: application steps, attorney recruitment, career FAQs, health care careers, job descriptions and job vacancies. The Bureau has approximately 37,700 employees within 115 correctional institutions. The BOP is currently accepting applications for: Chaplain, Clinical Psychologist, Dental Officer, Medical Officer, Nurse Practitioner, Physician Assistant and Registered Nurse. The jobs are accessible through USAJOBS. The bureau has approximately 37, 700 highly motivated individuals working in 115 correctional institutions across the country and a wide range of occupations. Job opportunities within the correctional facilities: automobile, painting, plumbing, carpentry, and electricity. They are always accepting applications for dental officer, medical officer, and registered nurse. Salaries are based on the position and location of the job you are selected to fill. The Law Enforcement Special Salary Rate and Locality pay scale may vary from the General Schedule and Locality pay scale. Salaries for positions such as Electrician, Mechanic, and Plumber, are found on the Federal Wage System pay scale. A variety of health insurance plans are available to Federal employees, with the Government paying about 60 to 72 percent of the cost and the employee paying 28 to 40 percent, depending on the health plan. Basic life insurance is automatic and effective on the first workday the employee is in pay and duty status, unless the employee chooses to waive life insurance coverage. Every employee is guaranteed a life insurance policy. The Government pays one-third of the cost for Basic life insurance. Basic life insurance is the employees salary rounded up. After 20 years of service in a position covered by hazardous duty law enforcement retirement provisions is eligible to retire at age 50. BOP has four different work life programs which makes it easier to balance work and family. These programs consist of teleworking, compressed, flexible, and part time work schedules. Under special, limited circumstances, inmates who meet strict requirements may be allowed temporary releases from the institution through furloughs and staff-escorted trips. A furlough allows inmates to be in the community without a staff escort. There are several purposes for furloughs: for example these enable inmates to be present during a family crisis, facilitate re-establishing family and community ties, and allow an inmate to participate in certain activities to help his/her release transition. The Bureau may authorize staff-escorted trips for purposes such as visiting a critically ill family member; attending a funeral; receiving medical treatment; or participating in educational, religious, or work-related functions. The Bureaus philosophy is to release preparation begins the first day of incarceration, focus on release preparation intensifies at least 18 months prior to release. The Release Preparation Program includes classes in areas such as resume writing, job search, and job retention. The program also includes presentations by community-based organizations that help ex-inmates find jobs and training opportunities after release. The Bureau places appropriate inmates in halfway houses prior to release to help them adjust to life in the community and find employment. Some inmates will be eligible for a release gratuity, clothing, or money for transportation to their release destination. The Inmate Transition Branch provides additional pre-release employment assistance. Many institutions hold mock job fairs to provide inmates an opportunity to practice job interview skills and to expose community recruiters to the skills available among releasing inmates. Qualified inmates may apply for jobs with companies that have posted job openings. This Branch also helps inmates prepare release folders that include a resume; education certificates, diplomas, and transcripts; and other significant documents needed for a successful job interview. Medical, dental, and mental health services are provided to Federal inmates n Bureau facilities. Most Facilities provide one or more primary Physicians who specialize in family practice. Medical officer provide direct service to inmates in Federal prisons (e. g. performance of diagnostic and preventive). Nurses play an important role on patient health, patient safety and patient education. (e. g. observation and evaluation of patients, perform case histories, conduct physical examinations, and order laboratory tests). De ntal officers are responsible for the full range of dental care provided to inmates. Pharmacist provide pharmaceutical care, they are responsible for medication. (e. g. same as nurse). Over 3,000 health care positions are offered. The food service operation within each institution represents a major program area within the Federal Criminal Justice system. The Bureau offers a food service career for correctional cook supervisors in a fast pace and challenging environment. Cook supervisor receive full training and are responsible for serving nutritious meals and provides guidance/direction to inmate cooks, bakers, butchers as well as in sanitation. Meals are served to a population of several hundred to 2,000 per meal depending on size and type of facility. Completion of a 2 to 4 year culinary degree is desirable but qualifying experience in quantity production from the military or food hospital industry is acceptable. Even though cook supervisors are at the entry level position, ambitious and interested individuals can apply for higher positions to Assistant Food Service Manager to the top Food Service Administrator. Each federal prison has its own education department that provides educational and recreational activities to inmates. Inmates are encouraged to adopt a healthy lifestyle through physical fitness, health education and leisure programs. Inmates who participate in industries or vocational training programs are more likely to find and keep a job upon release and less likely to return to prison. The Bureau offers a variety of programs for inmates to acquire literacy and marketable skills to help them obtain employment after release. All institutions offer literacy classes, English as a Second Language, parenting classes, wellness education, adult continuing education, library services, and instruction in leisure-time ctivities. In most cases, inmates who do not have a high school diploma or a General Educational Development (GED) certificate must participate in the literacy program for a minimum of 240 hours or until they obtain the GED. Occupational and vocational training programs are based on the needs of the inmates, general labor market conditions, and institution labor force needs. An important component is on-the-job training, which inmates receive through institution job assignments and work in Federal Prison Industries. Parenting classes help inmates develop appropriate skills during incarceration. Recreation and wellness activities encourage healthy life styles and habits. Institution libraries carry a variety of fiction and nonfiction books, magazines, newspapers, and reference materials. Inmates also have access to legal materials to conduct legal research and prepare legal documents. The Bureau of Prisons has various job opportunities ranging from Automotive to electric and is always looking for professionals in the medical field. There are over 3,000 health care positions available ranging from Dental to nursing. While a job with the bureau of prisons maybe stressful it does offer benefits, such as retirement, paid holidays, flexibility room for growth and retirement options. Each federal prison has its own education department and inmates are encouraged to adopt a healthy lifestyle. It is often found that inmates who participate in industries or vocational training programs are more likely to find and keep a job upon release and less likely to return to prison.

Topic Cardiovascular System Essays - Angiology, Circulatory System

Topic: Cardiovascular System Student: Norairka Gonzalez Pirez School: Advance Science Institute Class: Anatomy and Physiology Professor: Yuliza Chao Cuba Date: 02-08-2016 CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM The human organism contains eleven organ systems, all of them make different functions and have strong interrelationship, they work together in the maintenance of the homeostasis in the body. One of the mo re important systems is the Cardiovascular, which is responsible for transporting oxygen, nutrients, hormones, and cellular waste products throughout the body and is composed by the heart, blood vessels and blood. The heart The heart is known as the body's hardest-working organ because is the pump that impulses the circulation of the blood through the human body. Is located in the mediastinum in the thoracic region, the upper part or base lies below the second rib and connects to the great blood vessels of the body: the aorta, vena cava, pulmonary trunk, and pulmonary veins. The bottom tip of the heart or apex lies on the diaphragm turned to the left, for that reason about 2/3 of the heart is located on the body's left side with the other 1/3 on right. The heart is made up muscular cardiac tissue, has four chambers, one septum and four valves. T he size of the heart is like a person's closed fist, and in adults the normal weight average is 310 grams for male and 225 grams for female. 1266825508000 The heart pumps over 5 liters of blood throughout the body in a minute, what is call Cardiac Output. This is possible because the cardiac electrical activity makes the heart contract and relax the atriums and ventricles. Like the Pleura protects the lungs, and the Peritoneum protects internal organs in the abdominal cavity, the heart is protected by the Pericardium, which is a membrane divided in Parietal (outermost part near to the ribs) and Visceral (inner part rounding the Epicardium). T he presence of lubricating serous fluids makes the Pericardium provides protection to the heart against friction. The heart is also protected by tree layers: Endocardium: the inner part Myocardium: the medium and muscular part Epicardium or Serous Pericardium : the outer part 3829050000 Circulatory Loops There are two major circulatory loops in the human organism: Pulmonary or Minor circulation loop Systemic circulation loop Minor circulation carries deoxygenated blood from the right part of the heart to the lungs, where the blood obtains oxygen and returns to the left part of the heart. We have two chambers of the heart working in the pulmonary circulation loop; the right atrium and right ventricle. The Systemic circulation moves highly oxygenated blood from the left part of the heart to the whole body, except lungs, removing wastes in the organism and returning deoxygenated blood to the right part of the heart. We have two chambers working in the Systemic circulation loop; left atrium and left ventricle. Blood vessels Arteries They carry extremely oxygenated blood away from the heart, with exception of the pulmonary artery, which carries deoxygenated blood from the heart to the lungs to be oxygenated. The arteries can be Elastic (largest in the body) like the Aorta, Muscular (carry blood to specific organs) like the Gastric, Arterioles (smallest named as group). Capillaries They are the smallest and thinnest of the blood vessels in the body, also the most common, and connect to arterioles on one end and venules on the other. They are present in vascular and avascular tissue. The Capillaries can be True ( receive blood flow out metarterioles), Continuous (typical in skeletal muscle) and Sinusoid (has a much larger lumen and more winding than other capillary vessels). Veins They are the large vessels that carries blood toward the heart, also subjected to very low blood pressures, because of that the walls of veins are much thinner, less elastic, and less muscular than the walls of arteries. The Venules are the smallest veins. The veins contain valves that prevent blood from flowing away from the heart. 1562100889000 Blood The human body contains about 4 to 6 liters of blood. Blood is a liquid connective tissue that transports oxygen from the lungs, provides the cells with nutrients, transports hormones and removes waste products. Also helps to maintain temperature

20 Essay Topics About Othello

20 Essay Topics About Othello Othello is, perhaps, one of the most complex and controversial plays written by the famous poet, writer, actor, and playwright William Shakespeare. Writing an analytical essay on his play can be as difficult as reading the play itself. This is why we have prepared this three-in-one guide for you. By using it you will actually learn the easiest and fastest way to compose your analytical essay on Othello. In this second guide, we have gathered 20 Othello essay topics that are going to help you start writing immediately. We have also included a sample essay which will help you understand how to write an essay, and will be a good starting point for your own topic. Without further ado, here they are: Should Othello be considered a Tragic Hero or a Guilty Murderer? Why is it that Iago’s Accusations Are Not Initially Ð ¡onfirmed by Othello? What Were Othello’s Real Motives? What Was the Real Reason that Led Othello to Kill His Wife? Othello’s Relationship with Desdemona: An Analytical Essay on Love Versus Lust The Motives of Shakespeare in the Play: Racism or Feminism? How Did Iago Defeat Othello Despite Othello’s Deep Love to His Wife? Why Did Shakespeare Add His Own Character Roderigo? What Is the Role of Verbal Communication in the Play Othello by William Shakespeare? What Does Desdemona Represent in the Play, Written by William Shakespeare? A Thorough Analysis on the Female Characters and Their Common Traits in Othello by William Shakespeare In What Way Does Othello’s and Iago’s Jealousy Correlate with Each Other? How is Iago/Emilia’s Marriage Similar to Othello/Desdemona’s Marriage? A Comparison on Emilia’s and Desdemona’s View on Love, Sex, Men, and Marriage Why Othello Was Played by a White Man with a Blackface? Why Othello is Considered as One of Shakespeare’s Most Relevant and Controversial Plays? Othello’s Tragic Flaw which Caused Him to be Defeated by Iago The Four Important Monologues in Othello: What is Their Role and Meaning? A Critical Analysis on Othello’s Character in Act I and in Acts from II to V The Real Motives of Iago in Othello But before you start writing, we also recommend you to have a thorough look at our final guide, how to write a killer analytical essay on Othello, which is a perfect manual that’ll help you compose a stellar and sublime analytical essay which would definitely be admired by your teacher, professor or instructor. Here it is: A Sample Essay on The Four Important Soliloquies in Othello: What are they and What Do They Mean? William Shakespeare, the greatest playwright, writer, actor and poet of all time, has always used soliloquies in his plays. There is only slight difference between soliloquies and monologues, and mostly these terms are interchangeable. In fact, if making the content analysis of Shakespeare’s plays, it is evident that he is fond of using soliloquies. Arguably, this preference came out of the desire and necessity to emphasize the inner thoughts that have   been lurking in his character’s minds, thus, giving the audience an insight into some crucial information. In simple words, you’ll find several soliloquies in Othello, because they helped Shakespeare develop and drive the plot and the character accordingly. For example, when Iago pronounces words such as â€Å"I am not what I am†, it displays the honesty of the character, it helps to underline the complexity of his figure in this play, and to provoke broader understanding of the dramatic dilemma. In Act I, Scene iii and Act II, Scene I, it can easily be seen what Iago’s self-interest is and how the misinterpretation of circumstances has led him to the decision about the necessity of revenge, and finally to almost clinical obsession. These soliloquies reveal Iago’s intentions, and overwhelming desire to take revenge by manipulating Othello and taking advantage of Othello’s open nature. In Act I, Scene iii, 393, the soliloquy â€Å"I know his trumpet† delivered by Iago where â€Å"his† relates to Othello, clarifies that Iago knows the weak points of Othello, and he intends to use his jealousy against Othello himself. He does this by misleading Othello about his Desdemona having an affair with Cassio, a noble lieutenant under Othello’s command and a friend of Desdemona. As the story plays along, the audience realizes that Lago is relishing his satisfaction for revenge, which can be seen in his soliloquy in Act II, Scene iii. In this soliloquy, the audience then gets to know Iago’s developing plan and how easily it has been for him to use Cassio and Roderigo for his wicked avail. In Act III, Scene iii; we can see how Othello has been crippled by Iago’s deceit when he uses the soliloquy, â€Å"for I am black,† which shows his insecurities and doubts. Listening to this dramatic speech,   we can see that Othello struggles over his faith in his wife, Desdemona. In Act V, Scene ii, it can be clearly perceived how Iago’s deception has led Othello to believing that his wife has been having an affair with Cassio behind his back. The idea of being deceived was so striking that Othello decided to kill the love of his life. .Verbally, in the â€Å"betray more men† soliloquy, Othello explains his decision not with the allusions to his love or pain, but with the intention to prevent Desdemona from deceiving other man. Till now there are hot discussions around the honesty of those claims. However, in the last soliloquies, â€Å"so sweet was neer so fatal† and â€Å"oculus proof†, it is confirmed that Othello has been defeated by the over-riding effects and misleading manipulation of Lago. Shakespeare, known for his soliloquies, uses them to ensure that the audience knows what’s going on with the plot and to keep them informed about the character’s intention, which is what has made his plays so interesting to read. Without the use of these soliloquies, it would have been almost impossible to let the audience know what’s happening inside of the tragic heros’ soul, without disrupting the characters or play. †¦ By now, you must have pretty good idea on how you should get started, choosing one of ten facts for analytical paper on Othello, and how an analytical essay on Othello should be composed. But of course, you don’t want to write some mediocre paper, you want to write something that can catch the attention of your professor or teacher, and leave him astonished. If that’s the case, then let’s head on to our third guide on how to write a killer essay on Othello right away. References: Bhattacharyya, J. (2006). William Shakespeare’s Othello. Atlantic Publishers Dist. Shakespeare, W. (2003). The new Cambridge Shakespeare. Othello. N. Sanders (Ed.). Cambridge University Press. Hadfield, A. (Ed.). (2005). William Shakespeares Othello: A Routledge Study Guide and Sourcebook. Routledge. Howard, J. E., OConnor, M. F. (2013). Shakespeare reproduced: the text in history and ideology. Routledge. Potter, Lois (2002). Othello:Shakespeare in performance. Manchester University Press. p. 12. Clemen, W. (2004). Shakespeares soliloquies (Vol. 6). Psychology Press. Bullough, G. (1973). Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeares: Major tragedies. Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth. Volume VII (Vol. 7). Columbia University Press.

How to Get 36 on ACT Reading 11 Strategies from a Perfect Scorer

How to Get 36 on ACT Reading Strategies from a Perfect Scorer SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Are you scoring in the 26–34 range on ACT Critical Reading? Do you want to raise that score as high as possible- to a perfect 36? Getting to a 36 ACT Reading score isn't easy. It'll require perfection. But with hard work and my strategies below, you'll be able to do it. I've consistently scored 36 on Reading on my real ACTs, and I know what it takes. Follow my advice, and you'll get a perfect score- or get very close. Brief note: This article is suited for students already scoring a 26 on ACT Reading or above. If you're below this range, my "How to Improve your ACT Reading Score to a 26" article is more appropriate for you. Follow the advice in that article, then come back to this one when you've reached a 26. Overview Most guides on the internet on how to score a 36 are pretty bad quality. They're often written by people who never scored a 36 themselves. You can tell because their advice is usually vague and not very pragmatic. In contrast, I've written what I believe to be the best guide on getting a 36 available anywhere. I have confidence that these strategies work because I used them myself to score 36 on ACT Reading consistently. They've also worked for thousands of my students at PrepScholar. In this article, I'm going to discuss why scoring a 36 is a good idea, what it takes to score a 36, and then go into the 10 key strategies so you know how to get a 36 on ACT Reading. Stick with me- as an advanced student, you probably already know that scoring high is good. But it's important to know why a 36 Reading score is useful, since this will fuel your motivation to get a high score. Final note: in this guide, I talk mainly about getting to a 36. But if your goal is a 34, these strategies still equally apply. Understand the Stakes: Why a 36 ACT Reading? Let's make something clear: for all intents and purposes, a 34 on an ACT is equivalent to a perfect 36. No top college is going to give you more credit for a 36 than a 34. You've already crossed their score threshold, and whether you get in now depends on the rest of your application. So if you're already scoring a 34, don't waste your time studying trying to get a 36. You're already set for the top colleges, and it's time to work on the rest of your application. But if you're scoring a 33 or below AND you want to go to a top 10 college, it's worth your time to push your score up to a 34 or above. There's a big difference between a 32 and a 34, largely because it's easy to get a 32 (and a lot more applicants do) and a lot harder to get a 34. A 33 places you right around average at Harvard and Princeton and when it comes to admissions, being average is bad, since the admissions rate is typically below 10%. So why get a 36 on ACT Reading? Because it helps you compensate for weaknesses in other sections. By and large, schools consider your ACT composite score more than your individual section scores. If you can get a 36 in ACT Reading, that gives you more flexibility in your Math, English, and Science scores. It can compensate for a 32 in one other section, for example, to bring your average back up to 34. Harvard's 75th percentile Reading score is likely a 36. There's another scenario where a 36 in ACT Reading is really important. First is if you're planning to apply as a humanities or social science major (like English, political science, communications) to a top school. Here's the reason: college admissions is all about comparisons between applicants. The school wants to admit the best, and you're competing with other people in the same "bucket" as you. By applying as a humanities/social science major, you're competing against other humanities/social science folks: people for whom ACT Reading is easy. Really easy. Here are a few examples from schools. For Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and U Chicago, the 75th percentile SAT Reading score is an 800, or equivalent to a 36 in ACT Reading. That means at least 25% of all students at these schools have a 36 in ACT Reading. But if you can work your way to a 36, you show that you're at an equal level (at least on this metric). Even if it takes you a ton of work, all that matters is the score you achieve at the end. I'll be honest- ACT Reading wasn't my strong suit in high school. When I started studying, I was scoring around the 31–32 range. I was always stronger in math and science. But I learned the tricks of the test, and I developed the strategies below to raise my score to a 36. Now I'm sharing them with you. Know that You Can Do It This isn't just some fuzzy feel-good message you see on the back of a Starbucks cup. I mean, literally, you and every other reasonably intelligent student can score a 36 on ACT Reading. The reason most people don't is they don't try hard enough or they don't study the right way. Even if language isn't your strongest suit, or you got a B+ in AP English, you're capable of this. Because I know that more than anything else, your ACT score is a reflection of how hard you work and how smartly you study. ACT Reading is Designed to Trick You. You Need to Learn How Here's why: the ACT is a weird test. When you take the Reading section, don't you get the sense that the questions are nothing like what you've seen in school? I bet you've had this problem: in ACT Reading passages, you often miss questions because of an "unlucky guess." You'll try to eliminate a few answer choices, and the remaining answer choices will all sound equally good to you. Well, you throw up your hands and randomly guess. This was one of the major issues for myself when I was studying ACT Reading, and I know they affect thousands of my students at PrepScholar. The ACT is purposely designed this way to confuse you. Literally millions of other students have the exact same problem you do. And the ACT knows this. Normally in your school's English class, the teacher tells you that all interpretations of the text are valid. You can write an essay about anything you want, and English teachers aren't (usually) allowed to tell you that your opinion is wrong. This is because they can get in trouble for telling you what to think, especially for complex issues like slavery or poverty. But the ACT has an entirely different problem. It's a national test, which means it needs a level playing field for all students around the country. It needs a solid test to compare students with each other. Every question needs a single, unambiguously, 100% correct answer. There's only ever one correct answer. Find a way to eliminate three incorrect answers. Imagine if this weren't the case. Imagine that each reading answer had two answer choices that might each be plausibly correct. When the scores came out, every single student who got the question wrong would complain to the ACT, Inc. about the test being wrong. If this were true, the ACT, Inc. would then have to invalidate the question, which weakens the power of the test. The ACT, Inc. wants to avoid this nightmare scenario. Therefore, every single Reading passage question has only one, single correct answer. But the ACT disguises this fact. It asks questions that sound subjective, like: The author would most likely agree with which of the following statements? The first paragraph primarily serves to: In line 20, 'dark' most nearly means: Notice a pattern here? The ACT always disguises the fact that there's always one unambiguous answer. It tries to make you waver between two or three answer choices that are most likely. And then you guess randomly. And then you get it wrong. You can bet that students fall for this. Millions of times every year. Students who don't prepare for the ACT in the right way don't appreciate this. But, if you prepare for the ACT in the right way, you'll learn the tricks the ACT plays on you. And you'll raise your score. The ACT Reading section is full of patterns like these. To improve your score, you just need to: learn the types of questions that the ACT tests, like the one above learn strategies to solve these questions, using skills you already know practice on a lot of questions so you learn from your mistakes The point is that you can learn these skills, even if you don't consider yourself a good reader or a great English student. I'll go into more detail about exactly how to do this. One last point: let's make sure we understand how many questions we can miss and still score a 36. What It Takes to Get a 36 in Reading If we have a target score in mind, it helps to understand what you need to get that score on the actual test. Unlike for English and Math, there's a large amount of variation in grading scale for the Reading and Science sections. On some tests, a certain raw score could get you a 36; on others, that same raw score could drop you down to a 34. I've compiled the conversion tables from 4 official ACT practice tests to show you what I mean. (If you could use a refresher on how the ACT is scored and how raw scores are calculated, read this.) ACT Reading Score Raw Scores Test 1 Test 2 Test 3 Test 4 36 40 38–40 40 40 35 39 37 39 39 34 38 36 38 38 33 – 35 37 – 32 37 34 36 37 31 36 – 35 36 30 35 33 34 35 29 34 32 32–33 34 28 32–33 30–31 31 33 27 31 29 30 32 Notice that Test 1 is the strictest grading scale out of the four. In this case, missing one question drops you to a 35; miss another and you'll drop to a 34; miss one more, and you drop to a 32. This is a very unforgiving test that requires perfection. Test 2, on the other hand, is much more forgiving. You can miss two questions- with a raw score of 38- and still get a 36! The reason these tests differ so much is that the ACT tries to make the scores from every test equivalent to all other tests. A 36 on one test should mean the same as a 36 on another. So if a test has particularly difficult passages or questions, they'll soften the curve. Regardless: The safest thing to do is to aim for perfection. On every practice test, you need to aim for a perfect raw score for a 36. Notice that in three of the four tests, you needed a perfect raw score to get a 36. Whatever you're scoring now, take note of the difference you need to get to a 36. For example, if you're scoring a 30 now, you need to answer five to seven more questions right to get to a 36. As a final example, here's a screenshot from my ACT score report. You can see that I likely missed one question, since I scored a 17 on Social Studies/Sciences. Also notice that a single mistake already drops me down to a 97 percentile- there are a lot of students who do extremely well on this test! OK- so we've covered why scoring a higher Reading score is important, why you specifically are capable of improving your score, and the raw score you need to get to your target. Now we'll get into the meat of the article: actionable strategies and reading tips that you should use in your own studying to maximize your score improvement. Strategies to Get a 36 on ACT Reading What's your greatest weakness? Strategy 1: Understand Your High Level Weakness: Time Management, Passage Strategy, or Vocabulary Every student has different flaws in ACT Reading. Some people don't have good strategies for tackling the passage questions. Others don't read quickly enough and struggle to get through all the questions. Here's how you can figure out which one applies more to you: Find an official ACT practice test, and take only the Reading section. We have the complete list of free practice tests here. For that section, use a timer for 35 minutes. Treat it like a real test. If time runs out and you're not done yet, keep working for as long as you need. But starting now, for every new answer or answer that you change, mark it with a special note as "Extra Time." Grade your test using the answer key and score chart, but we want two scores: the realistic score you got under normal timing conditions, and the extra time score. This is why you marked the questions you answered or changed during Extra Time. Get what we're doing here? By marking which questions you did under Extra Time, we can figure out what score you got if you were given all the time you needed. This will help us figure out where your weaknesses lie. If you didn't take any extra time, then your Extra Time score is the same as your Realistic score. Here's a flowchart to help you figure this out: Was your Extra Time score a 32 or above? If NO (Extra Time score 32), then you have remaining content weaknesses. You might have weaknesses across a range of subjects, or a deep weakness in only a few subjects. (We'll cover this later). Your first plan of attack should be to develop more comfort with all ACT Reading subjects. If YES (Extra Time score 32), then: Was your Realistic score a 32 or above? If NO (Extra Time score 32, Realistic 32), then that means you have a difference between your Extra Time score and your Realistic score. If this difference is more than 2 points, then you have some big problems with time management. We need to figure out why this is. Are you generally slow across most questions? Or did particular questions slow you down more than others? Or are you spending too much time on reading the passage? Generally, doing a lot of practice questions and learning the most efficient solutions will help reduce your time. More on this later. If YES (both Extra Time and Realistic scores 32), then you have a really good shot at getting an 36. Compare your Extra Time and Realistic score- if they differed by more than one point, then you would benefit from learning how to solve questions more quickly. If not, then you likely can benefit from shoring up on your last skill weaknesses and avoiding careless mistakes (more on this strategy later). Hopefully that makes sense. Typically I see that students have both timing and content issues, but you might find that one is much more dominant for you than the other. For example, if you can get a 36 with extra time, but score a 32 in regular time, you know exactly that you need to work on time management to get an 36. This type of analysis is so important that it's a central part of my prep program, PrepScholar. When a new student joins, he or she gets a diagnostic that figures out specific strengths and weaknesses. The program then automatically customizes your learning so that you're always studying according to where you can make the most improvement. No matter what your weakness is, my following strategies will address all weaknesses comprehensively. Strategy 2: Learn to Eliminate 3 Wrong Answers This strategy was by far the most effective for me in raising my Reading score. It completely changed the way I viewed passage questions. I spent some time talking above about how the ACT always has one unambiguous answer. This has a huge implication for the strategy you should use to find the right ACT Reading answer. Here's the other way to see it: Out of the four answer choices, three of them have something that is totally wrong about them. Only one answer is 100% correct, which means the other three are 100% wrong. You know how you try to eliminate answer choices, and then end up with a few at the end that all seem equally likely to be correct? "Well, this can work...but then again this could work as well..." STOP doing that. You're not doing a good enough job of eliminating answer choices. Remember- every single wrong choice can be crossed out for its own reasons. You need to do a 180 on your approach to Reading questions. Instead of trying to find the one right answer, find a reason to eliminate three answer choices. "Can I find a reason to eliminate this answer choice? How about this one?" You have to learn how to eliminate three answer choices for every single question. "Great, Allen. But this doesn't tell me anything about HOW to eliminate answer choices." Thanks for asking. One thing to remember is that even a single word can make an answer choice wrong. Every single word in each answer choice is put there by the ACT for a reason. If a single word in the answer choice isn't supported by the passage text, you need to eliminate it, even if the rest of the answer sounds good. There are a few classic wrong answer choices the ACT loves to use. Here's an example question. For example, let’s imagine you just read a passage talking about how human evolution shaped the environment. It gives a few examples. First, it talks about how the transition from earlier species like Homo habilis to neanderthals led to more tool usage like fire, which caused wildfires and shaped the ecology. It then talks about Homo sapiens 40,000 years ago and their overhunting of species like woolly mammoths to extinction. So then we run into a question asking, "Which of the following best describes the main subject of the passage?" Here are the answer choices: A: The transition between Homo habilis and neanderthals B: The study of evolution C: How the environment shaped human evolution D: The plausibility of evolution E: The influence of human development on ecology (I know the ACT only has four answer choices, but we'll just pretend they have five for this example to discuss the different kinds of wrong answers.) As you're reading these answer choices, a few of them probably started sounded really plausible to you. Surprise! Each of the answers from A–D has something seriously wrong about it. Each one is a classic example of a wrong answer type given by the ACT. Wrong Answer 1: Too Specific A: The transition between Homo habilis and neanderthals This type of wrong answer focuses on a smaller detail in the passage. It’s meant to trick you because you might think to yourself, "well, I see this mentioned in the passage, so it’s a plausible answer choice." Wrong! Think to yourself- can this answer choice really describe the entire passage? Can it basically function as the title of this passage? You’ll find that it’s just way too specific to convey the point of the overall passage. Wrong Answer 2: Too Broad B: The study of evolution This type of wrong answer has the opposite problem- it’s way too broad. Yes, theoretically the passage concerns the study of evolution, but only one aspect of it, and especially as it relates to the impact on the environment. To give another ludicrous example, if you talked to your friend about losing your cell phone, and he said your main point was about the universe. Yes, you were talking about the universe (since we all live in this universe), but you were talking about only a tiny, tiny fraction of it. This is way too broad. Wrong Answer 3: Reversed Relationship C: How the environment shaped human evolution This wrong answer choice can be tricky because it mentions all the right words. But of course the relationship between those words needs to be correct as well. Here, the relationship is flipped. Students who read too quickly make careless mistakes like these! Wrong Answer 4: Unrelated Concept D: The plausibility of evolution Finally, this kind of wrong answer preys on the tendency of students to overthink the question. If you’re passionate about arguing about evolution, this might be a trigger answer since any discussion of evolution becomes a chance to argue about the plausibility of evolution. Of course, this concept will appear nowhere in the passage, but some students just won’t be able to resist. Do you see the point? On the surface, each of the answer choices sounds possibly correct. A less prepared student would think that all of these were plausible answers. But plausible isn't good enough. The right answer needs to be 100%, totally right. Wrong answers might be off by even one word- you need to eliminate these. Carry this thought into every ACT Reading passage question you do and I guarantee you will start raising your score. Strategy 3: Predict the Answer Before Reading the Answer Choices As we've discussed already, the ACT is designed to goad you into making mistakes by putting really similar answer choices next to each other. In Strategy 2, we covered the strategy of ruthless, unforgiving elimination of answer choices. Here's another Strategy that works well for me. Before reading the answer choices, come up with your own answer to the question. Gaze into your crystal ball and predict the right answer. This strategy is exactly designed to counteract the trickiness of the answer choices. If you don't apply this strategy, your thinking process likely resembles something like this: "OK, I just read the question. Answer A is definitely out. B can kind of work. C...it doesn't exactly fit, but I can see how it can work." and so on. By now, you've already fallen into ACT, Inc.'s trap of starting to muddle the answer choices. Take the opposite approach. While you're reading the question, come up with your own ideal answer to the question before reading the answer choices. This prevents you from getting biased by the ACT's answer choices, especially the incorrect ones. If it's a "Big Picture" type question asking about the main point of the passage, answer for yourself, "What would make a good title for this passage?" If it's an "Inference" question, answer for yourself, "What would the author think about the situation given in the question?" Even if you can't answer the question straight away- for example, if you have to refer back to the line number to remember what the passage was saying- try to form a hunch briefly before looking at the answer choices. (There are of course some detail-oriented questions that are hard to solve this way. For example, questions that ask "All of these were mentioned as details EXCEPT FOR" require you to look at the passage. Even in these cases, you can form hunches about details that you remember reading about, and those you don't.) The key here is that the passage must support your answer choice. Every correct answer on ACT passages needs to be justified by the passage- otherwise the answer would be ambiguous, which would cause problems of cancelling questions I referred to earlier. Note that this only works if you can read and understand passages well! That's why I don't recommend this strategy yet before you hit a 26 level since you're more likely to come up with the wrong answer choice in your head. Strategy 4: Experiment with Passage Reading Strategies and Find the Best for You In your prep for the ACT, you may have read different strategies for how to read a passage and answer questions. Some students read the questions before reading the passage. Others read the passage in detail first. At your high level, I can't predict which method will work best for you. We're going for perfection, which means that your strategy needs to line up with your strengths and weaknesses perfectly, or else you'll make mistakes or run out of time. What I will do, however, is go through the most effective methods. You'll then have to figure out through your test data which one leads to the highest score for you. Passage Method 1: Skim the Passage, then Read the Questions This is the most common strategy I recommend to our students, and in my eyes the most effective. I prefer this one myself. Here it is: Skim the passage on the first read through. Don't try to understand every single line, or write notes predicting what the questions will be. Just get a general understanding of the passage. You want to try to finish reading the passage in three minutes, if possible. Next, go to the questions. If the question refers to a line number, then go back to that line number and understand the text around it. If you can't answer a question within 30 seconds, skip it. My preferred way to tackle a passage: skimming it on the first read-through. This strategy is a revelation for students who used to close-read every detail about a passage and run out of time. This skimming method works because the questions will ask about far fewer lines than the passage actually contains. For example, lines 5-20 of a reading passage might not be relevant to any question that follows. Therefore, if you spend time trying to deeply understand lines 5-20, you’ll be wasting time. By taking the opposite approach of going back to the passage when you need to refer to it, you guarantee reading efficiency. You're focusing only on the parts of the passage that are important to answering questions. Critical Skill: You must be able to skim effectively. This means being able to quickly digest a text without having to slowly read every word. If you're not quite good at this yet, practice it on newspaper articles and your homework reading. Passage Method 2: Read the Questions First and Mark the Passage This is the second most common strategy and, if used well, as effective as the first method. But it has some pitfalls if you don't do it correctly. Here's how it goes: Before you read the passage, go to the questions and read each one. If the question refers to a series of lines, mark those lines on the passage. Take a brief note about the gist of the question. Go back to the passage and skim it. When you reach one of your notes, slow down and take more notice of the question. Answer the questions. Here's an example passage that I marked up, with questions on the right. Notice that beyond marking the lines and phrases referenced in the question, I left clues for myself on what's important to get out of this phrase. In the hands of an ACT expert, this is a powerful strategy. Just like Method 1 above, you save time by skipping parts of the passage that aren't asked about. Furthermore, you get a head start on the questions by trying to answer them beforehand. But there are serious potential pitfalls to this method if you're not careful or prepared enough. Here's one: when you first read the questions before the passage, you won't have enough time to digest the actual answer choices (nor will they make sense to you). So you have to make your best guess for what the question is asking when you're writing a note along the passage. In some cases, this can lead you astray. Take this example from above: When I read the question, I saw that it referred to lines 75-76, starting with "Like an eagle." So I marked this in the passage and added a note to myself: "Meaning?" The problem is, it's not obvious what this is supposed to mean. What does it mean for a person's words to "slip regally and strike with awful ease?" This is especially difficult with figurative language. If I were the obsessive type, I might struggle for far too long trying to understand what this means. What meaning am I supposed to extract from these lines? How deeply should I read into this? But when I read the answer choices, I can see the answer choice is actually pretty obvious. The line is referring to the rich customer's words. It has nothing to do with the narrator and her relationship with her parents. It's clear then that the answer is G. The customer is implying that most of the house is dirty, and that the narrator's mother should take care to find a place where there aren't cockroaches scampering about. Critical Skill: You need to have so much experience with the ACT Reading section that you can anticipate what the question is going to ask you for your notes to be helpful. If you're not sure of this, you can easily be led down the wrong track and focus on the wrong aspect of the passage. Passage Method 3: Read the Passage In Detail, then Answer Questions This method is what beginner students usually use by default, because it's what they've been trained to do in school. Some beginner books like Princeton Review and Kaplan also suggest this as a strategy. It's my least favorite method because there are so many ways for it to go wrong. But for the sake of completeness, I'm listing it here in case it works best for you. Here's how it goes: Read the passage in detail, line by line. Take notes to yourself about the main point of each paragraph. Answer the questions. As you might guess, I don't like this method for the following reasons: By reading the passage closely, you absorb a lot of details that aren't useful for answering questions. The notes you take aren't directed toward helping you answer the questions. By interpreting the passage ahead of time, you risk being led astray. But this might work especially well for you if you're very good at reading for understanding, and if you have so much expertise with the ACT that you can predict what the test is going to ask you about anyway. This can also work if taking notes forces you to read the passage much more closely than you would otherwise. In all other cases, I haven't seen this strategy work very well. Choose Which Works Best for You, Based on Test Data Because I can't predict which one will work best for you, you need to figure this out yourself. To do this, you need cold, hard data from your test scores. Try each method on two sample test passages each, and tally up your percentage score for each. If one of them is a clear winner for you, then develop that method further. If there isn't a clear winner, choose the one that feels most comfortable for you. As part of our PrepScholar program, we give you advanced statistics on your score performance so that you can experiment with methods that work best for you. Next strategy: find your weak links and fix them. Strategy 5: Understand Every Single Mistake You Make On the path to perfection, you need to make sure every single one of your weak points is covered. Even just two mistakes will knock you down from a 36. The first step is simply to do a ton of practice. If you're studying from free materials or from books, you have access to a lot of practice questions in bulk. As part of our PrepScholar program, we have over 1,500 ACT questions customized to each skill. The second step- and the more important part- is to be ruthless about understanding your mistakes. Every mistake you make on a test happens for a reason. If you don't understand exactly why you missed that question, you will make that mistake over and over again. I've seen students who have done 20 practice tests. They've solved over 3,000 questions, but they're still nowhere near a 36 on ACT Reading. Why? They never understood their mistakes. They just hit their heads against the wall over and over again. Think of yourself as an exterminator, and your mistakes are cockroaches. You need to eliminate every single one- and find the source of each one- or else the restaurant you work for will be shut down. Here's what you need to do: On every practice test or question set that you take, mark every question that you're even 20% unsure about. When you grade your test or quiz, review every single question that you marked, and every incorrect question. This way even if you guessed a question correctly, you'll make sure to review it. In a notebook, write down the gist of the question, why you missed it, and what you'll do to avoid that mistake in the future. Have separate sections by question type (vocab questions, big picture questions, inference questions, etc.). It's not enough to just think about it and move on. It's not enough to just read the answer explanation. You have to think hard about why you specifically failed on this question. By taking this structured approach to your mistakes, you'll now have a running log of every question you missed, and your reflection on why. No excuses when it comes to your mistakes. Always Go Deeper- Why Did You Miss a Reading Question? Now, what are some common reasons that you missed a question? Don't just say, "I didn't get this question right." That's a cop out. Always take it one step further- what specifically did you miss, and what do you have to improve in the future? Here are some examples of common reasons you miss a Reading question, and how you take the analysis one step further: Elimination: I couldn't eliminate enough incorrect answer choices, or I eliminated the correct answer. One step further: Why couldn't I eliminate the answer choice during the test? How can I eliminate answer choices like this in the future? Careless Error: I misread what the question was asking for or answered for the wrong thing. One step further: Why did I misread the question? What should I do in the future to avoid this? Vocab: I didn't know what the key word meant. One step further: What word was this? What is the definition? Are there other words in this question I didn't know? Get the idea? You're really digging into understanding why you're missing questions. Yes, this is hard, and it's draining, and it takes work. That's why most students who study ineffectively don't improve. But you're different. Just by reading this guide, you're already proving that you care more than other students. And if you apply these principles and analyze your mistakes, you'll improve more than other students too. Reviewing mistakes is so important that in PrepScholar, for every one of our 1,500+ practice questions, we explain in detail how to get the correct answer, and why incorrect answers are wrong. We also point out bait answers so that you can you can learn the tricks that the ACT plays on test takers like you. Bonus Tip: Re-solve the Question Before Reading the Answer Explanation When you're reviewing practice questions, the first thing you probably do is read the answer explanation and at most reflect on it a little. This is a little too easy. I consider this passive learning- you're not actively engaging with the mistake you made. Instead, try something different- find the correct answer choice (A-D or F-J), but don't look at the explanation. Instead, try to re-solve the question once over again and try to get to the correct answer. This will often be hard. You couldn't solve it the first time, so why could you solve it the second time around? But this time, with less time pressure, you might spot a new reason to eliminate the wrong answer choice, or something else will pop up. Something will just "click" for you. When this happens, what you learned will stick with you for 20 times longer than if you just read an answer explanation. I know this from personal experience. Because you've struggled with it and reached a breakthrough, you retain that information far better than if you just passively absorbed the information. It's too easy to just read an answer explanation and have it go in one ear and out the other. You won't actually learn from your mistake, and you'll make that mistake over and over again. Treat each wrong question like a puzzle. Struggle with each wrong answer for up to 10 minutes. Only then if you don't get it should you read the answer explanation. Strategy 6: Find Your Reading Skill Weaknesses and Drill Them Reading passage questions might look similar, but they actually test very different skills. At PrepScholar we believe the major passage skills to be: #1: Big Picture/Main Point: What is the main point of the passage or paragraph?#2: Little Picture/Detail: What does this small detail mean? Where in the passage was the following detailed mentioned?#3: Inference: What would the author most likely feel about the following hypothetical scenario?#4: Vocabulary in Context: What does this word or phrase mean in the context of the passage?#5: Author Method: How does the author construct the passage? What is the author's purpose in utilizing the following method? Each of these question types uses different skills in how you read and analyze a passage. They each require a different method of prep and focused practice. Luckily, there aren't very many unique skills on ACT Reading. There are only five above, compared to 18 for ACT English, and 24 for ACT Math. The passage tends to repeat these types of questions over and over again for the entire section. The flipside is, getting better at these skills is often a bit harder than mastering a narrow math skill like trigonometry. Because you've been reading and making logical arguments your entire life, bad habits are a lot harder to unlearn. The ACT requires a lot of skills. Make sure you know which ones are your weaknesses. If you're like most students, you're better at some areas in Reading than others. You might be better at getting the Big Picture of a passage, compared to the Inference. Or you might be great at reading passages quickly, but bad at memorizing details. If you're like most students, you also don't have an unlimited amount of time to study. This means for every hour you study for the ACT, it needs to be the most effective hour possible. In concrete terms, you need to find your greatest areas of improvement and work on those. Too many students study the "dumb" way. They just buy a book and read it cover to cover. When they don't improve, they're shocked. I'm not. Studying effectively for the ACT isn't like painting a house. You're not trying to cover all your bases with a very thin layer of understanding. What these students did wrong was they wasted time on subjects they already knew, and they didn't spend enough time on their weaknesses. Instead, studying effectively for the ACT is like plugging up the holes of a leaky boat. You need to find the biggest hole, and fill it. Then you find the next biggest hole, and you fix that. Soon you'll find that your boat isn't sinking at all. How does this relate to ACT Reading? You need to find the sub-skills that you're weakest in, and then drill those until you're no longer weak in them. Fixing up the biggest holes. Within reading, you need to figure out whether you have patterns to your mistakes. Is it that you don't get Inference questions? Or maybe you're really weak at interpreting details? Or from Strategy 1: is it that you're running out of time in reading passages? For every question that you miss, you need to identify the type of question it is. When you notice patterns to the questions you miss, you then need to find extra practice for this subskill. Say you miss a lot of inference questions (this is typically the hardest type of question for students to get). You need to find a way to get focused practice questions for this skill so you can drill your mistakes. Bonus: If all of this is making sense to you, you'd love our ACT prep program, PrepScholar. We designed our program around the concepts in this article, because they actually work. When you start with PrepScholar, you’ll take a diagnostic that will determine your weaknesses in over forty ACT skills. PrepScholar then creates a study program specifically customized for you. To improve each skill, you’ll take focused lessons dedicated to each skill, with over 20 practice questions per skill. This will train you for your specific area weaknesses, so your time is always spent most effectively to raise your score. We also force you to focus on understanding your mistakes and learning from them. If you make the same mistake over and over again, we'll call you out on it. There’s no other prep system out there that does it this way, which is why we get better score results than any other program on the market. Check it out today with a 5-day free trial: Strategy 7: Force Yourself to Be Fascinated by the Passage Subject Matter The ACT has passages about a lot of weird topics. Victorian novels, underwater basket-weaving, and the evolution of gerbils are all fair game. It's unlikely that you're naturally thrilled about all the subjects you'll read about. This makes it easy to tune out when you're reading the passage. This makes it harder to answer the questions, which will make you more frustrated. Instead, adopt this mindset: For the next 10 minutes, I am the world's most passionate person about whatever subject this passage is about. For every single passage, be as excited as she is. Force yourself to care about what the passage is telling you. Pretend that your life depends on understanding this passage. Maybe you're about to give a lecture on this subject. Or someone's holding a puppy hostage if you don't answer enough questions correctly. When I was preparing for the ACT in high school, I even took this so extremely that I ended up genuinely interested in whatever the passage was telling me about. I remember reading a passage about Native American life and thinking, "Wow, I'm really glad I just learned this." (I know this sounds crazy.) If you stay engaged while reading, you'll understand the passage so much better, and you'll answer questions with way more accuracy. Strategy 8: Finish With Extra Time and Double-Check Your goal at the end of all this work is to get so good at ACT Reading that you solve every question and have extra time left over at the end of the section to recheck your work. I'll admit, this is hard for the ACT. You have 35 minutes for 40 questions, which means less than 10 minutes per passage and less than 60 seconds per question on average. After reading the passage, this might mean less than 30-40 seconds per question. But you get better at speed. In high school and even now, I can finish the 40 minute Reading section in 30 minutes or less. I then have 10 minutes left over to recheck my answers two times over. The best way to get faster is, as explained above, to choose an efficient reading strategy that works best for you, and to do so many questions that you're fluent at interpreting what the ACT wants you to do. Here are some time benchmarks that might help: You should finish skimming a long passage within three minutes. This ultimately means less than two seconds per line. If a question takes you more than 30 seconds to solve, and you're not within 30 seconds of the answer, skip it immediately. If you can do this well, you'll get a little less than a minute per remaining passage question. What's the best way to double-check your work? I have a reliable method that I follow: Double-check any questions you marked that you're unsure of. Try hard to eliminate answer choices. Make sure that the passage supports your answer. If I'm 100% sure I'm right on a question, I mark it as such and never look at it again. If I'm not sure, I'll come back to it on the third pass. At least two minutes before time's up, I rapidly double-check that I bubbled the answers correctly. I try to do this all at once so as not to waste time looking back and forth between the test book and the answer sheet. Go five at a time ("A J D F B") for more speed. If you notice yourself spending more than 30 seconds on a problem and aren't clear how you'll get to the answer, skip and go to the next question. Even though you need a near perfect raw score for a 36, don't be afraid to skip. You can come back to it later, and for now it's more important to get as many points as possible. Quick Tip: Bubbling Answers Here's a bubbling tip that will save you two minutes per section. When I first started test taking in high school, I did what many students do: after I finished one question, I went to the bubble sheet and filled it in. Then I solved the next question. Finish question 1, bubble in answer 1. Finish question 2, bubble in answer 2. And so forth. This actually wastes a lot of time. You're distracting yourself between two distinct tasks- solving questions, and bubbling in answers. This costs you time in both mental switching costs and in physically moving your hand and eyes to different areas of the test. Here's a better method: solve all your questions first in the book, then bubble all of them in at once. This has several huge advantages: you focus on each task one at a time, rather than switching between two different tasks. You also eliminate careless entry errors, like if you skip question 7 and bubble in question 8's answer into question 7's slot. By saving just five seconds per question, you get back 200 seconds on a section that has 40 questions. This is huge. Note: If you use this strategy, you should already be finishing the section with ample extra time to spare. Otherwise, you might run out of time before you have the chance to bubble in the answer choices all at once. Strategy 9: Be Ready for Turbulence in Scores Now you know what it takes to achieve perfection in ACT Reading. You know the best strategies to use for tackling the passage. You know how to identify your weaknesses and learn from them. You know how to save time, and you know to stay engaged while reading a passage. Even despite all this, sometimes a passage just won't click with you. Of all ACT sections, I find that Reading has the most volatile score. How you vibe with a passage has a big impact on your score. You might get a string of questions wrong just because you couldn't really understand what the passage was really about. This doesn't happen on Math or Writing. No matter what happens, you need to keep calm and keep working. You might swing from a 36 on one practice test to a 32 on another. Don't let that faze you. Remember from the scoring charts above that there's a huge variation from test to test, which also suggests that students tend to vary significantly from test to test. Don't start doubting all the hard work you've put in. Keep a calm head, and, like always, work hard on reviewing your mistakes. This might even happen on the real ACT. You might get below your target score and be crestfallen. Pick yourself up. This happens. If you've consistently been getting 36's on practice tests, you should take the test again and try to score higher. Very likely, you will. And because many schools nowadays Superscore the ACT, you can combine that new 36 with your other sections for an awesome ACT score. Strategy 10: Don't Focus On Reading Other Texts One strategy for ACT Reading I hear proposed often is to read a lot of advanced writing like the New York Times, the Atlantic Monthly, and the New Yorker. Their logic is, the more you practice reading, the better you'll get at ACT Reading. This seems so plainly obvious that many don't question it. I don't fully agree with this approach. As I mentioned above, ACT Reading tests very specific skill sets- can you read a passage of a certain length and type, and can you answer specific types of questions about it. When you're reading a text casually, you're not going to treat it with the same type of scrutiny and mindset. You're in more of a general understanding mode, trying to get the gist of the reading. You're not actively in the mindset to pick apart what specific lines mean, or to infer what the author would feel about a specific situation. If you'd have to force yourself to read an hour a day to pick up this habit, it's far more effective to practice on ACT Reading passages. The skills you'll use align far more closely this way. Now, if reading these texts is already part of your regular routine, by all means continue doing it. You're likely reading at a very high level, and you can only get better at reading more quickly and with better comprehension. But if these kinds of texts are difficult for you, or you don't regularly do this as a habit, focus your time on the ACT. Your score will thank you. (Note that reading in general is a fantastic habit, and as a nation we don't do enough of it. It can lead to a lot of personal growth, so I encourage you to do it for your overall growth- just not if the purpose is to improve at ACT Reading). In Overview Those are the main strategies I have for you to improve your ACT Reading score to a 36. If you're scoring above a 26 right now, with hard work and smart studying, you can raise it to a perfect ACT Reading score. Even though we covered a lot of strategies, the main point is still this: you need to understand where you're falling short, and drill those weaknesses continuously. You need to be thoughtful about your mistakes and leave no mistake ignored. Keep reading for more resources on how to boost your ACT score. What's Next? We have a lot more useful guides to raise your ACT score. Read our accompanying guide to a 36 on ACT Math. Read our complete guide to a perfect 36, written by me, a perfect scorer. Learn how to write a perfect-scoring 12 ACT essay, step by step. Make sure you study ACT vocab using the most effective way possible. Want to improve your ACT score by 4 points? Check out our best-in-class online ACT prep classes. We guarantee your money back if you don't improve your ACT score by 4 points or more. Our classes are entirely online, and they're taught by ACT experts. If you liked this article, you'll love our classes. Along with expert-led classes, you'll get personalized homework with thousands of practice problems organized by individual skills so you learn most effectively. We'll also give you a step-by-step, custom program to follow so you'll never be confused about what to study next. Try it risk-free today: