6.List 5 disadvantages of blogging
The disadvantage of blogging is bloggers have the intention to use short forms and abbreviations in their postings. Moreover, some bloggers will use "bahasa rojak" or broken language in their writings and some even come to an extend to use foul words just to release their anger. Other than that, some inconsiderate bloggers tried to post pornographic pictures and videos to cast negative influence to readers. There are certain bloggers who never consider about the consequences before posting their blogs as they touch sensitive issues such as racism. Last but not least, they will be too dependant to blogging and forget the main purpose of blogging thus using it in a different way.
7.Will you continue blogging after the course?
Yes, I will most probably continue blogging after the course and post my blogs in a diary form because I think it is an effective way to express my feelings in an appropriate way. I can also jot down important notes on certain lectures and feedback to share it with my fellow friends. The content of my blog postings will not restricted to language learning but it will also include my personal views and opinions on current issues such as social ills, sports, entertainment and so forth.
8.Do you think that blogging improve your writing?
Yes, I think that blogging, more or less will improve my writing skills because in the process of blogging, I have the intention to draft my outline of my postings and construct all my ideas in order to form all the ideas in a proper passage. A better quality passage will reflect my ability in pursuing this language and course. Besides, with the comments given by lecturers and acquaintances, I will be able to spot my mistakes (maybe) grammatically and that will act as a reminder to me so that I would not repeat the same mistakes in all postings to come.
9.Do you think that we should continue with blogging activity for the next batch of students?
I agree that the blogging activity should be continued so that the students would get to know more about blogging's benefits. Other than that, I would also give them some useful tips to make their blogs more interesting and appealing. The next batch of students would most probably enjoy this activity because they got to expose more to the Information and Communication Technology world.
10.Will you recommend your friend to blog?
I guess I am the last person to have exposure to blogs compared to the others. They are the ones who introduced blogs to me. However, I am most willing to share my feedback about blogs with the friends around me.
11.Can you teach a friend to set up his or her blog?
Yes, I will volunteer to teach my friends or juniors how to set up his or her blog.
Monday, April 6, 2009
POSTING 6: BLOG QUESTIONNAIRE-SKBP 1023
Age : 20 years old and 7 months
Group 2
Lecturer: Dr. Zaini Amir
1. Do you enjoy blogging?
Yes, i do enjoy blogging because this is a new exposure for me to convey my message not through diaries and essays but on a website, where there is a whole space of my own. In my own 'paradise', I feel free to spread useful information on various fields such as job market and especially language learning to my fellow coursemates. On the contrary, I will read my friends' blog postings so that we can share our ideas and opinions together. Blogging makes language learning enjoyable and fun.
2.Based on your experience what is the benefit of blogging?
Before SKBP 1023, I have only heard about blogging but I have never laid my hands on it. After starting to write blogs, I realize that it really helps in improving our writing skills. There are lecturers, friends and followers who would scan through our blogs and leave me precious comments. From their comments, either compliments or critics, I would be able to know weakness in my writing skills when they pointed my mistakes out. Besides, I would also get to read others' blogs and exchange our opinions which I think is a very interactive way of learning.
3.Do you need more assistance to set up your blog ?
Yes, I do. I faced some problems when I set up my blogs at first. The only thing I knew was the way to sign up for an account with tthe basic settings such as layout, title and so forth. However, when i got to read my friends' blogs, I will consult them the ways to add gadgets for example music player, videos, games and etc.
4.Do you have any memorable/favorite topic in your blog?
Yes, the most memorable topic in my blog is the comparison of the four search engines. It is because I get to know about other search engines such as Mamma.com and Eric Digests. By doing the table, I get to know the differences and similarities between them. I also recommended the new search engines to other bloggers.
5. List 5 advantages of blogging for you
Firstly, I am able to vent my true feelings in my blog postings. Secondly, I can enhance my writing skills by realizing my grammatical mistakes, vocabulary and etc. Thirdly, I get to know more friends from other countries with different perspectives. Besides that, I would have the advantage to gather information on social issues from other parts of the world. lastly, blogging keeps me learning in English language.
Group 2
Lecturer: Dr. Zaini Amir
1. Do you enjoy blogging?
Yes, i do enjoy blogging because this is a new exposure for me to convey my message not through diaries and essays but on a website, where there is a whole space of my own. In my own 'paradise', I feel free to spread useful information on various fields such as job market and especially language learning to my fellow coursemates. On the contrary, I will read my friends' blog postings so that we can share our ideas and opinions together. Blogging makes language learning enjoyable and fun.
2.Based on your experience what is the benefit of blogging?
Before SKBP 1023, I have only heard about blogging but I have never laid my hands on it. After starting to write blogs, I realize that it really helps in improving our writing skills. There are lecturers, friends and followers who would scan through our blogs and leave me precious comments. From their comments, either compliments or critics, I would be able to know weakness in my writing skills when they pointed my mistakes out. Besides, I would also get to read others' blogs and exchange our opinions which I think is a very interactive way of learning.
3.Do you need more assistance to set up your blog ?
Yes, I do. I faced some problems when I set up my blogs at first. The only thing I knew was the way to sign up for an account with tthe basic settings such as layout, title and so forth. However, when i got to read my friends' blogs, I will consult them the ways to add gadgets for example music player, videos, games and etc.
4.Do you have any memorable/favorite topic in your blog?
Yes, the most memorable topic in my blog is the comparison of the four search engines. It is because I get to know about other search engines such as Mamma.com and Eric Digests. By doing the table, I get to know the differences and similarities between them. I also recommended the new search engines to other bloggers.
5. List 5 advantages of blogging for you
Firstly, I am able to vent my true feelings in my blog postings. Secondly, I can enhance my writing skills by realizing my grammatical mistakes, vocabulary and etc. Thirdly, I get to know more friends from other countries with different perspectives. Besides that, I would have the advantage to gather information on social issues from other parts of the world. lastly, blogging keeps me learning in English language.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
5th posting: part 4
FEEDBACK:
After working on this topic, I found out that concordancers are more than just being useful for language learners. From article 1, concordancing might be only widely used for religion purpose back then, however it has been more and more popular among students and teachers nowadays. From article 2, we get to expose ourselves to some software for concordancing or concordancers. concordancers is helpful for language learners from every levels, amateur to advanced learners. it enhanced learners to learn language in a more detailed and accurate way. Besides, we are able to detect our weakness, writing style in certain languages. For example, if we found out that we have used the noun "huge" countless times, we will realize it and improve ourselves by replacing "huge" with enormous, gigantic, and etc. In brief, we must spread the good news around by telling all language learners that concordancers are beneficial tools to learn language.
After working on this topic, I found out that concordancers are more than just being useful for language learners. From article 1, concordancing might be only widely used for religion purpose back then, however it has been more and more popular among students and teachers nowadays. From article 2, we get to expose ourselves to some software for concordancing or concordancers. concordancers is helpful for language learners from every levels, amateur to advanced learners. it enhanced learners to learn language in a more detailed and accurate way. Besides, we are able to detect our weakness, writing style in certain languages. For example, if we found out that we have used the noun "huge" countless times, we will realize it and improve ourselves by replacing "huge" with enormous, gigantic, and etc. In brief, we must spread the good news around by telling all language learners that concordancers are beneficial tools to learn language.
5th posting : part 3
Concordance's benefits in Language Learning:
First, if the concordance is to be used for teaching purposes, it is quite possible that many of the concordance lines will contain language which is beyond the proficiency level of the learners (even though the teaching point the concordance
illustrates is at their level). Of course the teacher always has the option of editing the concordance on a word processor in order to simplify it, but if this is done then the authenticity of the concordance is reduced. Second, if single line concordances are used, not all concordance lines may provide enough context to make the meaning clear. Third, depending on the size of the corpus and the frequency of the item chosen for concordancing, the concordancer may provide too few or too many examples of the particular usage to be illustrated. Learners will quickly become frustrated if they
cannot find enough (or any) examples of items selected for concordancing; they will equally quickly become frustrated, on the other hand, if they are overwhelmed with too many examples. Finally, even where a manageable number of concordance lines are found, if a certain item has a variety of usages, then some usages might be better represented than others. None of these problems associated with concordance data is irremediable, but together they pose a significant challenge to the successful application of concordancing in the classroom.
illustrates is at their level). Of course the teacher always has the option of editing the concordance on a word processor in order to simplify it, but if this is done then the authenticity of the concordance is reduced. Second, if single line concordances are used, not all concordance lines may provide enough context to make the meaning clear. Third, depending on the size of the corpus and the frequency of the item chosen for concordancing, the concordancer may provide too few or too many examples of the particular usage to be illustrated. Learners will quickly become frustrated if they
cannot find enough (or any) examples of items selected for concordancing; they will equally quickly become frustrated, on the other hand, if they are overwhelmed with too many examples. Finally, even where a manageable number of concordance lines are found, if a certain item has a variety of usages, then some usages might be better represented than others. None of these problems associated with concordance data is irremediable, but together they pose a significant challenge to the successful application of concordancing in the classroom.
5th posting :part 2
APPLICATION OF CONCORDANCE IN LANGUAGE LEARNING:
Concordancing has a variety of applications. One of the earliest of these was in the field of lexicography and dictionary making. This work has resulted in the Collins Cobuild dictionary, in which the entries make use of authentic concordanced examples. Concordancing has also been used in the field of stylistics and literary research, as well as in purely linguistic research. Typically, these applications depend upon large corpora of text which in many cases run to millions of words. To date much of what has been written about concordancing in language teaching has been programmatic or has described experimental applications which have not been widely replicated. However, there are signs that concordancing has reached the stage where it is about to have a
significant impact on the organization and practice of language teaching. This development is likely to come about for three main reasons:
1. The experimental studies are building up aliterature indicating the ways in which concordancing
can be used in teaching and curriculum development.
2. The software has become much more “user friendly” and is now capable of handling large
amounts of text very quickly and easily, whereas in the past large amounts of data could only
be handled by software which was slow and difficult to use.
3. The large publishers, such as Oxford University Press, Longman and Cambridge University
Concordancing has a variety of applications. One of the earliest of these was in the field of lexicography and dictionary making. This work has resulted in the Collins Cobuild dictionary, in which the entries make use of authentic concordanced examples. Concordancing has also been used in the field of stylistics and literary research, as well as in purely linguistic research. Typically, these applications depend upon large corpora of text which in many cases run to millions of words. To date much of what has been written about concordancing in language teaching has been programmatic or has described experimental applications which have not been widely replicated. However, there are signs that concordancing has reached the stage where it is about to have a
significant impact on the organization and practice of language teaching. This development is likely to come about for three main reasons:
1. The experimental studies are building up aliterature indicating the ways in which concordancing
can be used in teaching and curriculum development.
2. The software has become much more “user friendly” and is now capable of handling large
amounts of text very quickly and easily, whereas in the past large amounts of data could only
be handled by software which was slow and difficult to use.
3. The large publishers, such as Oxford University Press, Longman and Cambridge University
Friday, April 3, 2009
5th posting :part 1
Link to 1st article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concordance_(publishing)
Summary of 1st article:
A bilingual concordance is a concordance based on aligned parallel text. Unlike a traditional concordance, the indexed word does not have to appear in the verse. The most well known topical concordance is Nave's Topical Bible. In 1448 Rabbi Mordecai Nathan completed a concordance to the Hebrew Bible. Then followed the notorious Cruden's Concordance and Strong's Concordance. Because of the time and difficulty and expense involved in creating a concordance in the pre-computer era, only works of special importance, such as the Bible, Qur'an or the works of Shakespeare, had concordances prepared for them. Concordances are frequently used as a tool in linguistics that can be used for the study of a text, such as: comparing different usages of the same word, analysing keywords, analysing word frequencies and etc.
Link to 2nd article:
http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/phil/english/chairs/linguist/independent/kursmaterialien/language_computers/programs.htm
Summary of 2nd article:
Concordance programs are basic tools for the corpus linguist. Since most corpora are incredibly large, it is a fruitless enterprise to search a corpus without the help of a computer. Concordance programs turn the electronic texts into databases which can be searched. Usually word queries are always possible, but most programs also offer the possibility of searching for word combinations within a specified range of words and of looking up parts of words (substrings, in particular affixes, for example). If the program is a bit more sophisticated, it might also provide its user with lists of collocates or frequency lists. Some examples of well-known concordance programs are WordCruncher, TACT (Text Analysis Computing Tools), and etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concordance_(publishing)
Summary of 1st article:
A bilingual concordance is a concordance based on aligned parallel text. Unlike a traditional concordance, the indexed word does not have to appear in the verse. The most well known topical concordance is Nave's Topical Bible. In 1448 Rabbi Mordecai Nathan completed a concordance to the Hebrew Bible. Then followed the notorious Cruden's Concordance and Strong's Concordance. Because of the time and difficulty and expense involved in creating a concordance in the pre-computer era, only works of special importance, such as the Bible, Qur'an or the works of Shakespeare, had concordances prepared for them. Concordances are frequently used as a tool in linguistics that can be used for the study of a text, such as: comparing different usages of the same word, analysing keywords, analysing word frequencies and etc.
Link to 2nd article:
http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/phil/english/chairs/linguist/independent/kursmaterialien/language_computers/programs.htm
Summary of 2nd article:
Concordance programs are basic tools for the corpus linguist. Since most corpora are incredibly large, it is a fruitless enterprise to search a corpus without the help of a computer. Concordance programs turn the electronic texts into databases which can be searched. Usually word queries are always possible, but most programs also offer the possibility of searching for word combinations within a specified range of words and of looking up parts of words (substrings, in particular affixes, for example). If the program is a bit more sophisticated, it might also provide its user with lists of collocates or frequency lists. Some examples of well-known concordance programs are WordCruncher, TACT (Text Analysis Computing Tools), and etc.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
4TH POSTING (PART 3)-ARTICLE 2
TITLE: Assessing metacognitive knowledge in web-based CALL: a neural network approach
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VCJ-4BRB62C-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=c06412ffae45effe15a7f73cc44cfcd6)
SUMMARY:
The assessment of learners’ metacognitive knowledge level is crucial when developing computer-assisted language learning systems. Currently, many systems assess learners’ metacognitive knowledge level with pre-instructional questionnaires or metacognitive interviews. However, learners with limited language proficiency may be at a disadvantage in responding to verbal-report interview or questionnaire probes. The goal of this study is to present a neural network model that assesses automatically the learner’s metacognitive knowledge level by observing his/her online browsing behavior. The model is implemented through a multi-layer feed forward neural network. An experiment was conducted to examine the suitability of this model in different Web page structures. One hundred and forty-six college students were categorized into three groups according to three Web page structures: networked, hierarchical, and linear. The experiment results verified the suitability of the proposed model, and the MSEs of assessment of the three groups showed no significant differences with respect to the Web page structures.
FEEDBACK:
In this 21st century, people are racing towards the highest level of information technology such as E-bay, E-learning, E-mail and so forth. However, I still prefer reading books. I admit that online reading might be fun and beneficial but there are still something lacking inside. I love to flip through the pages of books instead of scrolling down pages with a mouse. I love the smell of those frill, old pages of a book instead of the monitor. I enjoy developing and wander into wild imagination instead of staring hard at the eye-hurting screen. How can a forwarded e-mail convey better feelings and messages than a hand written letter? Of course, this is just my perspective and others might think the other way. What do you think?
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VCJ-4BRB62C-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=c06412ffae45effe15a7f73cc44cfcd6)
SUMMARY:
The assessment of learners’ metacognitive knowledge level is crucial when developing computer-assisted language learning systems. Currently, many systems assess learners’ metacognitive knowledge level with pre-instructional questionnaires or metacognitive interviews. However, learners with limited language proficiency may be at a disadvantage in responding to verbal-report interview or questionnaire probes. The goal of this study is to present a neural network model that assesses automatically the learner’s metacognitive knowledge level by observing his/her online browsing behavior. The model is implemented through a multi-layer feed forward neural network. An experiment was conducted to examine the suitability of this model in different Web page structures. One hundred and forty-six college students were categorized into three groups according to three Web page structures: networked, hierarchical, and linear. The experiment results verified the suitability of the proposed model, and the MSEs of assessment of the three groups showed no significant differences with respect to the Web page structures.
FEEDBACK:
In this 21st century, people are racing towards the highest level of information technology such as E-bay, E-learning, E-mail and so forth. However, I still prefer reading books. I admit that online reading might be fun and beneficial but there are still something lacking inside. I love to flip through the pages of books instead of scrolling down pages with a mouse. I love the smell of those frill, old pages of a book instead of the monitor. I enjoy developing and wander into wild imagination instead of staring hard at the eye-hurting screen. How can a forwarded e-mail convey better feelings and messages than a hand written letter? Of course, this is just my perspective and others might think the other way. What do you think?
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