LITMIR.BIZ

Non-degree and undergraduate students are both inexperienced essay writers who need close guidance to become effective writers. One of the puzzles which they encounter at the college and university after reporting for studies is the course assignments offered to them by their lecturers, which demand them to be critical thinkers and argumentative essay writers. In most colleges and universities, lecturers provide to students broad questions to answer in the form of essays, either in group or individual assignments. How should they turn the broad assignment questions provided to them by their lecturers into specific researchable topics for essays? How should they handle literature in order to obtain valuable information to answer the provided question? How should they construct an informed and convincing argument using the collected information as evidence? This book concerns these and other related questions. With its clear illustrations, the book is designed to be a self-study guide and to offer solutions to many struggling students in colleges and universities. At the same time, the book can be helpful for lecturers to instruct their students how to write effective course assignments in their respective courses.

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Women are the majority in almost every cultural or social group. However, their roles vary in various cultures, religions, and traditions. In some cultures and religions, they are highly honored, while in others they are neglected, oppressed, and segregated. This book examines women's role in a few selected world religions, namely Christianity, Islam, African Traditional Religion, Hinduism, and Buddhism. It also surveys the concept of patriarchy and the various theoretical perspectives surrounding it. Eventually, this book discusses the concept of ecofeminism and how feminists perceive of the relationship between nature and the oppression of women. The book grapples with the question, «In what way do world religions perceive of women and their role in their teachings and traditions?» This book is important for students and teachers of gender studies, African theology, and Christian theology as a whole.

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The Apostles' Creed is one of the most prominent creeds in Christianity, perhaps even the most recited creed by normal believers in church services. However, the creed holds a clause that seems controversial to Christian mission in some contexts, especially African contexts. The clause, «He descended into Hell,» is the main concern of this book. In African context, where ancestral cult is prominent in both people's worldview and practice, this clause poses a tangible problem of religious syncretism. The phrase suggests a life after immediate death, that a person can continue to live in a certain realm soon after death. Since the clause depicts Jesus descending into hell after death and burial, and preaching to the other souls of the dead in hell, it suggests the possibility of hearing a message of salvation after death, a doctrine hardly held by Christianity. The doctrine therefore becomes good news for those Africans who hold firm the ancestral cult, and those whose relatives had died in sin on earth. Therefore, this book critically examines the origin and use of this doctrine in the church and its validity in an African context.

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Symbolic interactionism is a social-scientific perspective that seeks to describe how human beings create meaning with one another in their daily lives. Since the world is populated by symbols that characterize all interactions among living beings, this book explores the importance of symbols and symbolic interaction while moving beyond the social sciences to theological studies. By examining the way symbolic interaction is portrayed among characters in the Gospel according to John in the «water narratives,» this book argues that the Bible is a symbol that is itself full of symbols whose meanings are worthy of our study. Hence, the interaction of characters in the Gospel of John and the whole Bible, along with the symbols they use in their interactions, demonstrates that symbolism is directly linked to human life because symbols are major means of communication, and without symbols, human beings are in chaos.

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African Traditional religion (ATR) is one of the world religions with a great people and a great past. It is embraced by Africans within and outside the continent despite the various ethnic religious practices and beliefs. This book highlights and discusses the common elements which introduce African Traditional Religion as one unified religion and not a collection of religions. The major focus of the book is discussing the need for studying ATR in twenty-first-century Africa whereby globalization and multi-culture are prominent phenomena. Why should we study the religion of indigenous Africans in this age? In response to this question, the book argues that since ATR is part of the African people's culture, there is a need to understand this cultural background in order to contextualize Christian theology. Using some illustrations from Nyumbanitu worship shrine located at Njombe in Tanzania, the book purports that there is a need to understand African people's worldview, their understanding of God, their religious values, symbols and rituals in order to enhance meaningful dialogue between Christianity and African people's current worldview. In this case, the book is important for students of comparative religion in universities and colleges who strive to understand the various religions and their practices.

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The existence of orphans is as inevitable to most African cities and the world as it is death. These orphans are caused by the death of one or both parents due to various reasons, including the scourge of HIV and AIDS. Being orphans, most of them are vulnerable to difficult lives because they have nobody to fend for them and take care of their lives. They lack adequate food, living expenses, school fees, and care since their current guardians are also in adverse economic situations. In such situations, orphans end up living a life of hopelessness and trauma, which makes them deeply remember their dead parents and the care they received from them before death. Following the vulnerable situation of most orphans, this book, through a study done in the Tanzanian context, challenges churches to extend their counseling and caring ministries to Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC). It purports that the use of narrative approach is the most effective way to enter into the world of vulnerable children in order to provide pastoral counseling to them. This approach helps pastoral counselors to use life stories, proverbs, biblical narratives, plays, arts, songs, riddles, poems, symbols, and images as healing and coping mechanisms for OVC. Therefore, this book is helpful not only to churches and their ministry to orphans and vulnerable children, but also to those who care for orphans in their homes. Moreover, it will be helpful to children who live in adverse conditions worldwide to find ways to cope with their situations through the stories of children used inside this book.

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We live in a context of change, whereby postmodernity shapes our understanding and our searching for truth. Postmodernity dictates not only what kind of results we obtain in our researches, but also on the ways we use to search for truth. This means that postmodernity dictates the ways we do research in various disciplines, the ways we use to analyze the research results, and the ways we use to communicate the findings. Postmodernity is the paradigm in which we are greatly concerned. What is the place of rules of research, research ethics, selection of the problem, and designing of research as we consider the context whereby nothing absolute can be envisaged? How should one review the literature to suit this postmodern understanding of reality? How should one argue his or her case? This book is designed to help students in higher learning institutions learn qualitative research methods in classrooms or by themselves. It moves students and researchers from modern ways of understanding, doing, and communicating qualitative research towards postmodern challenges and promises. In this case, the book is worthy reading to every serious student and researcher who seeks to equip oneself to the current issues of qualitative research methodology.

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Colleges and universities have been meeting places of students for the sake of studies all over the world. As students transcend from secondary level education to tertiary level, the degree of freedom increases; they become free to live the style of life they choose. This freedom is mainly caused by their advance in age–from childhood to youth ages. Cohabitation is one of the styles of life that students in most higher-learning institutions choose to live. However, cohabitation is not the style of life that emerges in the recent time. In the industrialized world, for example, cohabitation among youth started a long time ago. By the 1970s and 1980s its rate increased greatly due to secularization and increase in freedom. Being aware of this growing trend in cohabitation, this book surveys the extent of cohabitation among students in higher-learning institutions in Tanzania and how it affects the academic performance of the cohabiting partners. It means that the book assesses both positive and negative effects for this style of life among the surveyed students. Therefore, this book is important to both university and college students so that they can be aware of the positive and negative effects of cohabitation, especially in terms of academic performance.

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Community Secondary Schools are the majority secondary schools in Tanzania. These are schools built by community initiatives with the aim of helping more children acquire a secondary education. Despite this good intention, these schools face a number of challenges. One such challenge has to do with academic performance. This book investigates this challenge. It examines the factors that contribute to students' poor performance in the community secondary schools in Tanzania to discern the main factors contributing to their poor performance. Many factors contribute to students' poor performance, such as lack of support from parents on educational issues, teachers' and students' attitudes and perceptions on education, inadequate learning and teaching materials and resources, learning and teaching environments, as well as lack of adequate motivation for teachers and students. This book explores these challenges and proposes future prospects to make such schools have efficient performance in Tanzania and other places of the world they are found.

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This book examines the challenges posed by English, a foreign language, as a language of teaching and learning for community secondary schools in Tanzania in terms of academic performance. The book probes the necessity for having two languages of instruction in the Tanzanian educational system. While Kiswahili, the native language, is predominantly understood by the majority of people, the discussion in this book indicates that most students in community secondary schools in Tanzania are incompetent in understanding, writing, listening, reading, and speaking English, a language they use in learning and doing their examinations, especially in the early stages of their secondary studies. The incompetence in the above-mentioned skills is mostly caused by their inability to cope with the abrupt transition in the languages of instruction from their pre-primary and primary school study [Kiswahili] to secondary school study [English]. Moreover, most teachers are unable to use the English language as a means to impart knowledge or facilitate learning to their students, leading them to code-switching and code-mixing. This book poses a challenge to countries whose students pass through a transition from one language of instruction to another in their educational systems, helping them to make appropriate decisions in regard to the appropriate language of teaching and learning.

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