ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

All of the postings in this blog starting from posting 1 until posting 6 are done as course requirement for SKBP 1023 Language and ICT under the supervision of Ass. Prof. Datin Dr. Norizan Abdul Razak.

]]> http://cahayaizzati.wordpress.com/2010/04/02/so-long-and-goodbye/feed/ 0 cahayaizzati thank_you_people http://cahayaizzati.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/its-the-end-of-what-a-journey-concordance/ http://cahayaizzati.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/its-the-end-of-what-a-journey-concordance/#comments Mon, 29 Mar 2010 15:53:33 +0000 cahayaizzati http://cahayaizzati.wordpress.com/?p=142 ]]>

And finally…..

• Click on the Submit button to create and display the concordance results.  The actual work is done on the SEAsite server and the results are sent back to your computer and displayed on the screen by your browser.  This may take anywhere from a second to several minutes, depending on the amount of data to be sent back and forth and processed on the server.

The concordance output consists of

• the original text processed in a scrollable text box
• 0 to many concordance lines  (the % number in the right-most column is the approximate position of the line in the text)

You can now

• examine the results on-screen
• save the results to disk
• print the results from your browser

Try this online concordancer for a clearer view how it really works…http://www.lextutor.ca/concordancers/concord_e.html

Hurmm….what was the question again???

O yeah here it is :

1. Do I think that computer can assist me to become a better language learner?

Why yes of course… during my journey with this course, I’ve found out that there are lots of websites that provide guides for students like me and you to improve our English command in term of speaking, reading, writing and listening. I also can find many websites that contains quizzes and activities for me to do so that I can always detect my weakness in English language.

2.  How effective is blogging in assisting me in the followings:

• confidence in writing

At first I thought blogging is only for people who afraid to express their feelings because they don’t have to confront people face-2-face in their blogs. Then, when I started to get use to blogging, I think it’s a good platform for us to show our skills of writing and ability to attract people’s attention through our writings. I have my own personal blog and I ise it to express my feelings and also as a medium for me to share informations and current updates about what’s happening to me in daily life. I keep my writing as fun and exiting as I could because I don’t want my readers to get bored easily by my writing, so I learn to write better by viewing other people’s blog and their character of writing. By doing that, I can use it as a guide to improve my writing so that it will be more informative and exciting.

• confidence in publishing my work

I don’t have to answer this question I think, because If I don’t have the confidence to publish my work I don’t think this blog exist today rite? Hihi so my answer is DEFINITELY YES. I told myself to be confident in publishing my work eventhough there might be mistakes here and there, but that’s how life should be rite? We learn from mistakes andthat mistakes can bring up our confidence level each time we try to improve our work so that it will be better in the future.

• getting ideas to write

Usually when I feel like writing something on my blog, I will browse though other people’s blog to search for ideas. Same like my writing, I refer to blogs to search for ideas and facts to help me write anything. Sometimes I do copy other people’s work (gotta admit it…) but I do change it uasing my own sentences so that I don’t promote plagiarism through my writings.

• improving my writing skills

Sometimes when I need help in my writing, I refer to some blogs that provide guides on how to do effective writing. Through that, I can improve my writing skills so that each time I do my writing, I will not make the same mistakes and my writing will give great impact to those people who read it.

3.  If I’m going to use computer to teach language one day which language learning website will I  recommend and why?

For me, I prefer http://www.englishpage.com/

This wbsite provides all the essential guides to a better command of English. There’s guides to improve our grammar, reading skills, listening skills and many more aspects of English. This website also contains activities in forms of crosswords that can be done by students as an exercize in class.

Yeah kids, it’s gonna be fun fun fun in English! If I become an English teacher in my future, I’m definitely gonna use this website to help me with my teaching.

SO LONG FOLKS!

Sad to know that I’ve reach the end of my posting for this blog Language and IT…but every meeting will come to an end rite? Hope to get good grades (i mean marks..hehe) for this blog from my lecturer. I’ve tried to do my best to finish all the assignments and tasks given to me and this is the results…Hurmmm maybe mine is not as fancy as other people’s blog but at least I know that I’ve done my best for this subject.

A big THANK YOU to all the people that involves and helping me during my blogging moments for this subject. Wish me luck for the final exam just near the corner, hope to see you guys next sem for more exciting learning experiences.

Signing off, sayonara!

Ok now let us start evaluate —>> http://www.english-test.net/

This test is mainly about vocabulary test. The level of difficulties is divide into 3 section according to your level : elementary, intermediate, advance.

One of the advantages of this test is there is no time limit for each question you answer. So, you can take as many time as you want to answer it. This can help the weak students to learn to improve their level without any stress. This test also can give you immediate answer when you clik the ” CHECK YOUR SCORE” button.

This test will give you explanations on each of your answer and provide guides on how to answer that certain types of question correctly. The analysis of the question also can be use as guideline for you in studying English vocabulary.

This website can be use as a part of teaching activities in classroom or as an assesment test for ELS students to help them to improve their knowledge about English vocabulary.

There’s also some disadvantages of this online test. One of the disadvantages is there’s no supervision from the teachers when the students answer the test. The students may copy other student’s asnwer and they will never try to figure out the answer themselves. Students also can easily refers to dictionary or notes to find the answer all the questions. Actually, the objective of online test is to test student’s knowledge about grammar and vocabulary skills. If they refer to notes to answer the questions, then they will not be able to learn from their mistakes.

We are also required to study page 299 in the book “Online Teaching and Learning in ELT”. Overall, this chapter is about the research that has been made to develop  a placement test to help to assist the Centre for Academic Development in UKM. The team had listed some criteria for the online test such as the specifications, content, format and timig, and also the level of performance. each criteria has its own specifications that crucial to help to develop the ideal online test system that can be apply.

English Literature for Secondary Schools : http://literature.com.my/

This is a website created by a private company ( Just English Sdn.Bhd) as an initiative to help Malaysian secondary school students who are preparing for PMR and SPM. This is an online resource to guide them to achieve their best at English Literature components in the examination. This website contains all the literature components for PMR and SPM students as a guide for them to understand English literature better. There also biographies of the writers and poets such as Joseph Rudyard Kipling (If), Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins (The Prisoner of Zenda) and so on. To make it more interesting, this website provide interactive games and question banks for the students to test their mastery in English literature.

For me, this website provide full and complete guide on secondary school’s literature components. It is suitable for all students who need extra information and revision about English literature. There are sample of the literature materialssuch as poems, short stories and novels to assist them. Students can have access to the foolowing content :

• Synopsis, summary, setting, plot, character, themes, moral values, language, aspects of novel/short story, biography of author and etc.
• Comprehension questions and answers for practice and can be downloaded.
• Interactive flash games for fun and reinforcement.
• Sample questions of SPM English 1119 papers.
• Great illustrations of the characters to accompany the novels.

Sparknotes : http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/pearl

From a general summary to chapter summaries to explanations of famous quotes, the SparkNotes “The Pearl” Study Guide has everything you need to ace quizzes and tests to help students excell in English literature especially for this short story. This website may contains other English literature components that can be useful for PMR and SPM students but I can’t seem to find it in the searchbox. Eventhough it only focus on the short story “The Pearl”, but this website can really help students to focus on certain topic and aspects of English literature, in this case short story. I don’t really recommend this website for students who need extra guides on understanding more on all aspects of literature components.

So I hope my reviews on these websites can give input to those people who need help on searching the right study guide in literature study.

According to Levy (1997 : 97) as taken in the book ‘Online Teaching and Learning in ELT’ , CMC a.k.a ‘Computer-mediated Communication’ refers as “concerned with communication  between two or more participants via a computer covering technological platforms such as e-mails, bulletin boards, discussion list and computer conferencing, both text and video-based”.

Based on the research that has been made on the benefits of CMC in literature learning. Some of the advantages is :

• acts as a text-based medium that increases learners’ attention to linguistic form. (Warschauer, 1997; Blake, 2000;Pelletieri, 2000; St.John & Cash, 1995)
• produces improved quality language output. (Kern, 1995; Warschauer, 1996; Chun, 1994)
• results in a more decentralized role of the dominant teacher. (Kern, 1995; Kelm, 1992; Beauvois, 1992)

RATIONALE FOR USING WEB-BASED COMPUTER APPLICATIONS

Web-based computer applications is a term that refers to all CMC channel such as e-mails, e-lists, e-forums, chat rooms, online discussion groups, mailing lists and blogs. (Warschauer, 1996; Vethamani, 2003, 2004)

This allows for the creation of a new learning environment that is entirely different from a traditional and conventional classroom. There are  many function of computer applications that can help for teaching literature.

• enable learners to decide their own course and path in learning about a text or a writer.
• allows for genuine communication between readers of literary texts.
• teachers acts as facilitators in the learning process.

Nowadays, one of the way to take advantage of the usage of CMC is e-mail communication in distance learning programme. It is called e-learning and many higher learning institutions had actively applied this method on several courses. According to a research made by Uitm on one of their course that use e-learning as the learning method, there are several effects that had been discovered commonlythrough the online communication : grammatical inaccuracy, miscommunication, inappropriate language use and different types of language function.

This condition happened because there are differences in the flow of communication between learning environment and working environment. As an example, students used e-mails to communicate with their instructors to get clarification or explanations about some matters, whereas in the working environment, workers send e-mails of reports  to their superior levels. The students use e-mail as a way for them to express their feelings related to their study. Because of the sense of informality betwen them and the instructors, they often uses certain paralinguistic cues such as short forms and abbreviations.

By conducting this kind of research and identifies the language errors made by distance learners, we have the benefit of :

• using the findings as guideline especially for ESL students to be able to prepare themselves with the appropriate knowledges and skills in online communication.
• equip the ESL teachers with the correct skills and be well informed about the differences between formla and informal e-mails so that they can help their students to understand better and use it correctly.
• indirectly help learners to avoid mixing up their formal writing on papers with  conventional e-mail writing.

WHAT IS NETSPEAK?

Netspeak define as “speaking in ways commonly used to converse in text on the Internet.” This new kind of language is now widely used by people around the world when they send e-mails, instant messages, chat, or text messaging. Other terms that are common for Netspeak is :

• Netlish
• Weblish
• Internet language
• cyberspeak
• electronic language
• electronic discourse
• interactive written discourse
• Computer Mediated Communication (CMC)

From the work of David Crystal, the author the book ‘Language and the Internet’, I found out that Netspeak is one of a kind set of language and words for the Internet. It is created from the electronic and modern environment that eventually influence the usage of this laguage across the Net. Netspeak includes the usage of acronyms, keyboard symbols, special characters, emoticons, and lack of proper punctuation and capitalization. Some people might find the language hard to understand because of the use of short-form words and acronyms but some of them find it convenience when use in a hurry or text messaging. This will cut the time of typing the messages and make it easier for them to type it in short form rather than full spelling. Some of the acronyms and abbreviations that commonly use is :

• ASAP = As soon as possible
• BRB = Be right back
• LOL= Laughing out loud

MEDIUM OF NETSPEAK

The basic influence of Netspeak comes from the electronic characters of the channel itself. Meaning that if the sender and receiver uses one specific medium to communicate via the Internet, let say using email, the set of language they use in the email is determine by the capability of the service provider and the medium itself. The linguistic capability and capacity is determine by a set of keyboard characters which the medium can accept. There are certain linguistic activities that can work well with the medium that the sender and receiver use, but some of it is restricted only for certain medium of communication.

NETSPEAK : SPEECH OR WRITING?

According to the research made by David Crystal, it is found that Netspeak belongs to both sides due to its characteristic. The function of the Web don’t differ much from the common situations that inolves writing. For example, some of the Web functions is more similar in term of interaction to typical speech such as in e-mails and chatgroups.

NETSPEAK – FACE TO FACE CONVERSATION

There are some major differences between Netspeak and real-live conversation that occurs face to face. The first one is from the function of technology. Netspeak is lack of instant feedback while face to face conversation can have instant response from the receiver. For example, if two person chat via the Internet, chances of the sender to get delayed response from the receiver is higher because sometimes the message will not be send immediately after the sender click the ‘SEND’ button. The message maybe delayed or late because of poor Internet connection. This means the rhythm of Internet conversationis much more slower than direct speech. In the other way, face to face conversation allows the speaker to receive immediate response from the audience that listen to his speech. The second difference is from the phonological aspect. Netspeak doesn’t allow us to see the difference or changes of intonation, loudness, speed, pause and tone of voice because we only type our message literally and don’t use any verbal signal in our messages. Because of this, the sender will desperately use spelling exxageration and punctuation, capitalization and repeated use of letters. For example : aaaaaaahhhhhhhh, hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, ooopss. The last one is Netspeak only use commands and special characters or emoticons to express feelings textually with enhancement of visual or sound effects. Some of the example of special characters and emoticons which is commonly use is for happy, for sad and :-* for kiss. This language is also lack of facial expressions, gestures, body language and distance that is crucial in real conversation. On the other side, speech or direct conversation allows the speaker and audience to see each other fecial expression and body language during the conversation. Body language is important in a speech because through the gestures of hand and other parts of the body, the audience will understand the message of the speech clearly rather than the usage of emoticons or acronyms that sometimes difficult to understand.
As the conclusion, Netspeak is the new generation language that only can occupies the world of cyber and not really effective in the real world.

For this assignment, we need to discuss differences and similarities of 2 social networks, for example twitter, facebook, etc.
Then we need to state which one is we prefer more plus the reasons.

FACEBOOK

Facebook, owned by Facebook Inc., was founded by a college student Mark Zuckerberg together with his roommates and students. At first, this social network is only limited to Harvard students only but then it was expanded throughout all  universities, high schools and finally to the entire world. Currently, Facebook has over 400 million active users around the globe, placing it at 2nd place out of 100  global website by web traffic.

FRIENDSTER

A social website that operates from the headquarter at Sydney, Australia. I didn’t found much info about this site except it has about 115 million registered users around the world and over 61 million unique  visitors monthly. Asian countries such as Malaysia, Korea, Philipines and Singapore contributes 90% of Friendster’s traffic which means it is more popular among Asian web surfers.

WHICH ONE IS BETTER?

Well if you ask me, I would say Facebook is my favourite because it has so much differences from Friendster. Facebook has chat utilities that enable the users to have a conversation or chat with their friends while viewing their profile page. Not only you can post comments to their “Wall”, you also can chat online, how cool is that! Friendster only allows users to post comments on their pages, so it’s not interactive like Facebook.

Furthermore,users can play various types of online games at Facebook. Some of the popular games at Facebook is Farmville, Mafia Wars, Cafe World and so on. Friendster don’t have games application, makes it less interesting than Facebook. Eventhough Facebook users can’t listen to music while viewing their page, but users can still upload music videos or song clips and share it with other users on the network.

Another interesting part of Facebook is users can know the latest updates of their friends such as new photos, announcements and so on. They also can leave comments on other user’s page or photos. Friendster users can leave comments just like Facebook, but the users can’t get the latest updates from their friends. Besides that, Facebook also provide suggestions of friends that the users maybe know so they can search for their long-lost friends and add them as friends on the network.

>>Well guys, the choice is yours. No matter which social networks you join, make sure use it only to make FRIENDS not ENEMIES ok? That’s all from me, i’m signing off for now,bye!

This is my first time using WordPress,not really like it but I’ll try to like it more after this…hehe

Ok I’m gonna start posting stuffs to this blog probably this weekend,gonna use this blog to post all of my assignments for my subject which is Language and Information Technology under supervision of our beloved Dr.Norizan….

So c you guys very soon,signing off now!

So tonite I thought of sharing with you guys about my lab activity during the tutorial for my Languge & Information Technology a few days ago.Dr Norizan asked us ELS students to search for websites which specifically for translation,English learning centre and also grammar guide that can be resourceful and beneficial for our studies.These websites can help us to improve our proficiency in English and also provide guides for us on how to write good essays,use correct grammar,speak english the right way and so on.
I’ve already found some websites which is quite good,but here I only want to highlight some of it.
For translation utilities,the best website that I found via Google is http://www.citcat.com/
For me,the translation is quite accurate than any other website that I found.I’ve tried to translate some words form English to Malay and Malay to English.The result is impressive,it’s almost the perfect translation with minor mistakes.For example,I translate :

English – Malay
I like to eat chicken rice = Saya suka makan nasi ayam.
Malay – English
membasuh baju = wash clothes

Next,for English learning centre on the web,I looked for websites that contains the essential guides which focuses on the 4 important skills for learning English :

• speaking
• listening
• reading
• writing

I used Bing search engine and found http://www.englishtime.us/index.aspx .
This website provide us with learning center and test center.At learning center,we can learn about different skills of learning English.They also have tests especially for elementary,intermediate or advance English learners,so it is suitable as additional reference for students of any level of study.So do check out this website and tell me what you think about it…

The last one is websites that specifically for English grammar and its components.For this one,I used Google search engine and manage to found http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar .
This website contains many useful guides on the correct ways to use different types of grammar elements such as adjectives,adverb,nouns and much more.Essay writing skills also provided here,as well as grammar quizzes to enhance our English proficiency.

So,I hope we all can get benefits from these sites.Use all the informations provided wisely so that we can be better in English.Until we meet again,me Izzati signing off…..