Asian Research Journal of Arts & Social Sciences

The increasing challenges of potable water supply on the population of Buea municipality, Camerooon, if not monitored and effectively managed by government and all the local communities (stake holders) will be very detrimental to the municipality. The water demand of the growing population of Municipality is supplied by CAMWATER (Cameroon Water Utilities Corporation) and the local communities involved in potable water management. This study employed the use of a purposive systematic random sampling technique and focus group discussion among the community dwellers to evaluate the implications of potable water scarcity. A total of 350 questionnaires were administered in the field, interviews were conducted with water supply authorities and various stake holders in the municipality to identify the major problems faced by the inhabitants of Buea as a result of potable water supply challenges. Results revealed that about 27% of the population of Buea faces frequent water shortages, 32% and 41% of the respondents stated that the main causes of water supply challenges are poor management of potable water by the authorities concerned and over exploitation of water sources by the increasing population respectively. Besides the human factors mentioned above, changing climatic conditions worsen these challenges. In conclusion, over exploitation of potable water sources by the population and poor management by the authorities concerned stands as a major driver of the challenges of water scarcity in the Buea municipality. As such, we recommend an integrated water management approach as a means of making potable water supply challenges less problematic to the population of Buea.

Introduction: Many ESL college students have reading comprehension problems in English, such as difficulty understanding ideas explicitly or implicitly stated in a text, making inferences, and inferring meanings of difficult words from context.

Aims: The article proposes the integration of inspirational quotes in the teaching of English to EFL college students as a supplement to in-class instruction and the textbook, and shows the advantages of integrating inspirational quotes in reading instruction.

Materials, Tasks, and Instructional Phases: The article shows the sources of inspirational quotes; criteria for selecting inspirational quotes; reading skills that can be developed with inspirational quotes (literal, inferential, critical comprehension and appreciation; decoding, using phonic, morphological, semantic, and syntactic clues; deriving word meaning from context; understanding certain grammatical structures such as idioms, ellipsis and participial phrases; locating anaphoric relationships and making inferences). The instructor can use a Facebook page, an online course, or an online discussion forum to post the inspirational quotes and tasks. Reading instruction with inspirational quotes goes through three phases: (i) Before reading an inspirational quote, the instructor introduces the inspirational quote, gives a vocabulary overview and pre-questions, and sets goals for the tasks. (ii) While reading an inspirational quote, the students read for the general topic, pay attention to specific vocabulary, imagery and figures of speech, and use contextual clues to infer the meaning of difficult words. (iii) After reading an inspirational quote, the students discuss answers, summarize or retell the topic orally, comment on it, give their impression and the moral or lesson learnt. The instructor serves as a facilitator. She guides the students, encourages them, and gives feedback on weaknesses and areas of improvement.

Reflections and Recommendation: Students’ responses to a questionnaire-survey revealed positive attitudes towards practicing reading with inspirational quotes. They found them beneficial in promoting their reading skills. Recommendations for creating an inspirational quote repository are given.

The gains of organizational wellbeing and productivity have been challenged by workers disposition especially the heart of forgiving one another within the workplace. The present study investigated forgiveness among public sector workers: a predictive study of employee resilience, emotional intelligence and loneliness at work. Participants in the study were made up of non-academic staff of Nnamdi Azikiwe University. They comprise of 78 males (43.09%) and 103 females (56.91%) with a mean age of 39.77 years and a standard deviation of 7.9 years and age ranges from 28 -65 years. Four different instruments were used to measure the four variables; Resilience, Loneliness, Emotional Intelligence and Forgiveness. The Rye’s Forgiveness Scale was used to measure forgiveness among the participants; Wagnild and Young’ Resilience scale (WYRS) was used to measure resilience; UCLA Loneliness Scale (ULS) was used to measure loneliness while Wong’s Emotional Intelligence scale (WEIS) measured the participants’ emotional intelligence. The design adopted for this study is the correlational design and the statistical method used is the multiple regression technique. The results of the hypotheses tested showed that that there is insignificant relationship between resilience and forgiveness (β=.052 p>.05), the regression results shown in Table 2 show that there is insignificant relationship between loneliness and forgiveness (β=.030, p>.05), there was also a significant relationship between emotional intelligence and forgiveness (β= .500, p<.05) and the overall significance of the effect as shown in Table 3 showed that there was an overall significance between forgiveness and the selected predictors F (3,177)= 3.126, p<.05. It was however recommended that Personnel Managers should inculcate improvement in psychological factors like emotional intelligence in their personnel training agenda so as to improve the individuals’ tendency to forgive coworkers in the workplace.

This study examined team communication and mutual support as drivers of work performance among team members in the organization. The cross-sectional research design was used and with standardized  instruments, data were collected from 133 participants from manufacturing organizations consisting of 63.9% males and 36.1% females whose age ranged from 21-54 years with a mean age of 31.71(SD, 8.7). Work performance was grouped into task performance, contextual performance and counterproductive work behaviour. The hypotheses were tested with the simple regression analysis. Data analysis revealed that team communication positively predicted task performance (β = .56, p < 0.01) and contextual performance (β = .55, p < 0.01) while it negatively predicted counterproductive work behaviour (β = -.21, p < 0.05). Also, mutual support positively predicted task performance (β = .80, p < 0.01) and contextual performance (β = .80, p < 0.01) while it negatively predicted counterproductive work behaviour (β = -.17, p < 0.05). The study recommends that management should encourage employees to work together and also educate them on these key behaviours (communication and mutual support) to help enhance employee performance in the organization.

Pupils learn music through many and different ways. Various methods, approaches and strategies of teaching are described in the literature. Teaching music is an art and activity which require teachers to use a combination or an integration of some of these methods and strategies to provide effective learning experiences to pupils. The aim of this article is to present overviews of some general approaches and strategies of teaching music based on the constructivist theory of teaching in the primary school. It will cover the lecture, demonstration and modelling, discovery, video showing, field trip, role-play, project, questioning technique, assignment, and the discovery methods of teaching. The paper will also highlight factors that determine the selection of a teaching method for a particular lesson and finally, stages in teaching.