Development and Evaluation of an Audio System Trainer

Guided by the desire to contribute a little in the development of an innovative instructional technology for the teaching of electronics, this researcher constructed a prototype audio system trainer. Electronics teachers will find the instructional tool convenient and practical to use for visual instruction, laboratory activities and troubleshooting works in electronics. To support the functionality of the audio system trainer, the researcher developed a supplementary laboratory manual. The project whose production costs totaled fourteen thousand two hundred seventy two pesos and fifty centavos (Php 14,272.50) was finished in two weeks’ time. However, this amount is small if compared to the prices of commercially available instructional device developed for the same purpose. The completed project and the supplementary laboratory exercises were evaluated by selected technical faculty members of the College of Industrial Technology of the Bulacan State University, Bulacan Polytechnic College, University of Rizal System, and Lyceum of the Philippines University. Sampling technique as used in the study is both purposive and incidental. The prototype audio system trainer received an over-all mean rating of 4.62 which means that the project is highly acceptable on a set of criteria which includes – physical features, cost, function / operations, and durability. Furthermore, the supplementary laboratory exercises obtained a mean of 4.70 which could be interpreted that the respondents strongly agree on the validity of the manual.

from Negation to Assertion: A Post Feminist Discourse Analysis of Bernard Shaws Selected Plays

This study investigated the role of gender and the game of power structures in Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion and Candida by focusing on the functional use of language, and it is conducted with the viewpoint that Shaw highlighted Postfeminist tendencies through the construction of gender in his plays. The study is revisionist or rereading of Bernard Shaw in the light of Structural Functional model, which is based on the models provided by Sinclair and Coulthard and Carter and Burton. It examined the conversation in which the principal characters were involved by analyzing their acts, moves, exchanges and transactions. The results obtained from the analysis of both plays are highly revealing. In Pygmalion, there is a role reversal and the acts, moves and exchanges which are quite peculiar to Professor Higgins are adopted by Eliza towards the end of the play: throwing the slippers as an act of liberation. The study shows that Eliza’s sex remains the same, but her gender changes towards the end of the play when she decides to marry Freddy. In Candida, the maternal aspect of women is emphasized and recommended which refers to Shaw’s ambivalent attitude towards feminism as he tries to uphold patriarchy. The present study is a contribution to the field of language and gender issues that begins with the frameworks of deficient to dominance and difference. But the study tends to move away from an essentialist framework that regards gender as a fixed entity to a constructionist one that considers gender as a fluid social construct residing in interaction. As a result, the study reinforces Butler’s concept of gender as performative, that is, gender is a process which is neither complete nor consummate. Thus, the study upholds libratory and postfeminist tendencies as it helps to identify unequal gender relationship and sheds light on the maternal role of the female. This research is complementary to other approaches of text and is useful for students and teachers because it provides an objective way to explore and construct a response to a text independently. In other words, it equips us with a tool through which we can verify the subjective interpretation of a text made through thematic studies.