Laziness

Laziness is the lack of desire to act or work in general to do an act or work that is expected of a person. In extreme cases, a tendency to do nothing can grow into apathy and be a symptom of depression. Laziness can be considered an exaggeration of the natural instinct to get healthy rest and conserve preciuos energy. Laziness is usually associated with procrastination. Moreover, laziness is considered by Christians to be one of the seven deadly sins, though it is called sloth on the list.

The expression "intellectual laziness" is frequently used to describe a tendency to not ask questions and not to scratch too much behind the apparent, applying a kind of mental routine or just following the crowd. Jeff Atwood has said: Be lazy, but not intellectualy lazy. It means that when you are doing something you should think and know what you are doing, not just do it without understanding.

Let's take one example. According to researches, Nigeria is the most coruppt country in the world. One of the reasons is considered to be mental laziness of its leaders and majority of habitants. Most of Nigerians do not want to go through pain and suffering to attain the level of wealth they want in their life. They want to get rich at the twinkle of an eye.

Finally, I can say that we all know what laziness is, and most of us like to be lazy in their freetime, however, laziness is considered to be a negative feature, so we should try to be active in order if we want to achieve our aims.

Cognition And Language

COGNITION AND LANGUAGE

Summary

All people use thinking in their everyday life. Every moment people are categorizing, comparing, analyzing or evaluating some things, even when they are sleeping and dreaming according to psychologists this is kind of thinking, however, only the minority reasons how they do this. When people are thinking they often face some problems, sometimes it is difficult to solve ones, sometimes it is easier. What methods are used for this? How can thinking be improved? When people are solving problems they express their minds by using language, however, there are many questions about this issue: is babbling some kind of language, do animals have their language and so on.

At first, it is important to define thinking – it is manipulation of mental representations of information. Although, there are many species of animals in the world but only humans use thinking to find a solution, advice or to solve problems. To do this people often use syllogistic reasoning – a formal reasoning when we derive implications from a set of assumptions that we know to be true. Moreover, algorithms and heuristics – rules that lead or may lead to a solution - are often used. All these questions are considered by cognitive psychology.

Speaking about problem solving it is important to say that it involves three major steps: preparing to create a solution, producing solutions, and evaluating the solutions. All people use these steps in order to solve a problem, however, their success of solving depends on the way a problem is framed, mental set, functional fixedness. There are some types of problems too: arrangement problems, problems of inducing structure and transformation problems. People use several methods to solve problems for example, trial and error method – trying various solutions and learning from errors, means-ends analysis – repeated testing when each step brings you closer to a solution. People can experience insight – sudden awareness, burst of comprehension. Some people are very creative in solving problems, they can combine responses or ideas in novel ways – this is divergent thinking. All people can improve their thinking by redefining problems, using fractionations, adopting a critical perspective, considering the opposite, using analogies, heuristics.

When it is spoken about language it is important to know that it is communication of information by symbols according to systematic rules. The basic structure of language rests on grammar which deals with three major components: phonology – study of phonemes, syntax – ways in which words and phrases can be combined to form sentences, semantics – the rules governing the meaning of words and sentences. When person is born he babble – make speechlike but meaningless sounds and this is the beginning of language. After some period he begins using telegraphic speech – when not critical words to message are left out. When person is at the age of five years he acquires the basic rules of language. Moreover, Noam Chomsky claimed that all worlds’ languages have common underlying structure. However, languages are different and people face problems of multilingualism. For example, bilingual education supports idea of students to be taught in both languages: native and foreign. Nevertheless, immersion programs say that students must be plugged into foreign language in all subjects immediately.

Finally, it is obvious that people are very clever features, but often do not realize that they have such spectacular mechanisms, that helps to solve problems, think and express minds by language. Humans must be proud of having such abilities.

Emotional Literacy

At first, what is emotional literacy? It can be defined as the ability to manage yourself and your own emotions and to understand what other people are thinking and feeling.
Why it is important, is it useful to be well-literate? Answer is accurate - Yes. Most political leaders use emotional techniques to affect electors. However, not only political leaders need to be experts in this area - If you want to be a good businessman relationship between workers and the management must be very good. Researchers found out that emotional literacy is one of the most important factors of learning, so more and more psychologist are needed at schools. Nevertheless, there is one problem - it is difficult to teach pupils (and other people with weak emotional literacy) how to express their feelings and emotions because their emotional needs are different. All people share the main needs (as need of water, food or sleep, freedom or security...) but each differs in the strength of the need.
Nowadays we can measure our emotional literacy by tests. I tried one myself and I was satisfied by results - my EQ was quite high (research shows that those with high EQ are better at reading non-verbal cues). The words I'm used to use in order to describe my emotions are typical to people with the level of emotional literacy as mine. There are a lot of words discribing feelings for example, comfortable (uncomfortable), accepted (rejected), loved (resentful) and so on.
Finally, I can say that some people express their feelings easier and it is much more difficult to others - this is one of the main factors of emotional literacy. We make things much easier when our language is clear and direct, so it is important to be well-literate in emotions in order to benefit from the life.