Graded Assignment 1 - Teaching of English Language Skills by using Computer

Lesson Plan

Location: SK Sungai Pusu 

Level: Primary Students

Time Allocated: 1 hour

Skill: Listening Skill

Topic/Content: 

Learning the sounds [c] and [ch]

Objective(s):

Distinguish between the sounds [c] and [ch]

Teaching Aid(s): 

Audio-Visual, Provided question, Power Point Slides

Procedure(s): 

Activities		Allocated Time	Teacher’s Reflection
1) Induction	Ice-Breaking -  Getting to know each other - Inform the students on the objective of today’s lesson	10 minutes	Before teaching a class, especially for the first time, we need to be familiar with the students since it could determine the percentage of students’ participation throughout the entire teaching processes.
2) Teaching and Learning Activity	- Teach the students the [c] and [ch] sounds - Show some examples in form of the audio-visuals - Ask the students to repeat after the teacher.	25 minutes	Students were eager to participate in the activities.
3)Evaluation	- Test them on a worksheet on identifying the words reflecting the sounds [c] and [ch] - Test the student orally by making them say which words start with [c] and [ch]	20 minutes	Students have difficulties of differentiating the sound [c] and [ch].
4) Reflection	- Ask the students on what they have learn.	5 minutes	Students learn to differentiate the [c] and [ch] sounds

Processes:          Teacher-Students

                           Students-Students

Visual Appealing: The Video and Power Point S

Evaluation

- Test them on a worksheet on identifying the words reflecting the sounds [c] and [ch]

- Test the student orally by making them say which words start with [c] and [ch]

Teachers' Reflection 

By using video as material for teaching the different sounds of [c] and [ch], it attracts students' attention to learn effectively. If the lesson is successful, this lesson plan can be used in the future to teach other English sounds in the sound system.

Presentation Materials

Reference

Visual Montessori. (2011, March 20). In Youtube. Retrieved April 9, 2012, from

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qugM0ZIThCg



Reflection

We love this task since it help gives us some ideas on how to create a lesson plan. The advice given by Dr. Rozina was very good since she gave us some tips on how to improve our lesson plan. For example, our lesson plan focuses on primary students. However, our materials for the lesson were not too attractive. All in all, this assignment is very motivating since it helps future teachers in finding effective materials in designing their own lesson plan.

Computer Mediated Communication

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) is defined as any communicative transaction that occurs through the use of two or more networked computers^. While the term has traditionally referred to those communications that occur via computer-mediated formats (e.g., instant messages, e-mails, chat rooms), it has also been applied to other forms of text-based interaction such as text messaging. Research on CMC focuses largely on the social effects of different computer-supported communication technologies. Many recent studies involve Internet-based social networking supported by social software. (Wikipedia)

Some of the modes of CMC 

Email -  More formal in nature (language), alert (subsciption).
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems requires that the author and the recipient both should be online at the same time, in common with instant messaging. (Wikipedia)

IRC - Chat immediately/ instantly, Short form, acronym, emoticon (language)
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a protocol for real-time Internet text messaging (chat) or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for group communication in discussion forums, called channels, but also allows one-to-one communication via private message as well as chat and data transfer, including file sharing. (Wikipedia)


Blog - A blog (a portmanteau of the term web log) is a personal journal published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete entries ("posts") typically displayed in reverse chronological order so the most recent post appears first. Blogs are usually the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often are themed on a single subject. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Online Chat - Online chat may refer to any kind of communication over the Internet, that offers a real-time direct transmission of text-based messages from sender to receiver, hence the delay for visual access to the sent message shall not hamper the flow of communications in any of the directions. Online chat may address point-to-point communications as well as multicast communications from one sender to many receivers and voice and video chat or may be a feature of a Web conferencing service.

Social Networking - A social networking service is an online service, platform, or site that focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, who, for example, share interests and/or activities. A social network service consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Most social network services are web-based and provide means for users to interact over the Internet, such as e-mail and instant messaging. Online community services are sometimes considered as a social network service, though in a broader sense, social network service usually means an individual-centered service whereas online community services are group-centered. Social networking sites allow users to share ideas, activities, events, and interests within their individual networks.

References

Blog. (2012). In Wikipedia. Retrieved May 25, 2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

Computer Mediated Communication. (2012). In Wikipedia. Retrieved May 25, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-mediated_communication

Email. (2012). In Wikipedia. Retrieved May 25, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email
         
Internet Relay Chat. (2012). In Wikipedia. Retrieved May 25, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat

Online Chat. (2012). In Wikipedia. Retrieved May 25, 2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_chat

The Social Network. (2012). In Wikipedia. Retrieved May 25, 2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Network

Graded Assignment 2 - CMC

CMC Part 1 (Research Summary)

Introduction

This study investigates the differences in language use by female and male Malaysian teenage bloggers who use blogs as a diary to express their daily issues about life.

Herring (1993, p. 8), in her discourse analysis of a Computer Mediated Communication

(CMC) bulletin board described the features of women’s language as "attenuated assertions, apologies, explicit justification, questions, personal orientation and support of others", whereas some features of men's language were "strong assertions, self-promotion, rhetorical questions, authoritative orientation, challenges and humor.”

Research Instruments

            This study uses the data taken from the blog of the four teenagers. They use their blog to express all the things that happen in their daily lives. There are two instruments used to analyze this study; a word counting tool and a checklist. The students chose the blogs from "BlogMalaysia.com" because it is free and  the fastest growing blog directory in Malaysia. This website allows bloggers around Malaysia to promote their blogs. It also provides a list of blog links in Malaysia with many categories. In the participants’ posting,s a word counting tool is used to count the frequency of words. The frequency of occurrences of the characteristics in blog posting is counted using Character and Word Counter with Frequency Statistics Calculator. This tool is very useful to improve the websites as well as writing skills for the students. In this particular study, this tool is used to count the frequency of words that are listed as having the characteristics of the language used by males and females. Other than that, researchers use the checklist to identify the occurrence of each language characteristics in the blog postings.

Methodology

Using a qualitative research design, this study uses a case study which is restricted by time and activities. The main participants of this study were selected from BlogMalaysia.com which is open to any Malaysian blogger who wants to promote their blog. Since the focus of this study was to observe any gender differences in language use by Malaysian teenagers following types of blogs found in BlogMalaysia.com were excluded from this study such as blogs with multiple authors, blogs with pictures only, and blogs with commercial and organizational purposes only. Three criteria were used in selecting participants following that the participants should be university undergraduate students majoring in any field, the posts should be written in English and the blog must have accumulated more than 50 posts since it started. Finally, the participant has been a blogger for more than one year and frequently updates the blog. The participants of the study  consist of two male and two female bloggers.

Results

Five categories of language features emerged from the data analysis: intensifiers, hedges, tag questions, empty adjectives, and adverbs.  This section presents the data showing the differences in language features used by male and female bloggers.

Discussion

Women and men use the language according to the society’s values of how both sexes should communicate.  The findings of this study seem to support Lakoff’s (1975) theory that women use intensifiers more than men. The usage of both features (intensifier and lexical hedges) happens to be higher in female bloggers language use because of their nature as women. In Malaysian society, women are sometimes constructed as subordinate and submissive to men (Bresnahan et al., 2001). Thus their language reflects the attitude and nature which is constructed by society. Furthermore, female bloggers make use of tag questions more than male bloggers and it also helps in pushing readers to communicate on the blogs. Moreover, it has also been noticed that empty adjectives are widely used by female than male bloggers due to the fact that women have the tendency to include feelings and emotions into their expressions. Lastly, there is an insignificant difference found in the use of initial adverbs between male and female bloggers.

Conclusion

In conclusion, language features such as intensifiers, lexical hedges and empty adjectives are very closely related to gender and socialization. However, the use of adverbs as indicated in this study as well as in earlier studies do not seem to be related to gender since the number of usage of adverbs among male and female bloggers were slightly different. The findings of this study indicate that there are some gender differences in language use among Malaysian teenage bloggers.

Reference
Zaini, A., Hazirah, A., Saadiyah, D., & Kemboja, I. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.ukm.my/ppbl/Gema/GEMA%20vol%2012%20(1)%20Special%20section%202012/pp_105_124.pdf




CMC Part 2 (Corpus Analysis)

Introduction

One of the modes of Computer Application Communication (CMC) is blog. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with subsequent entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or videos. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. Most blogs are interactive; allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other via widgets on the blogs and these features distinguishes blog from other static websites (Wikipedia). In this study, we have chosen a blog by Harmony (www.healthblogspot.com) who has a Master degree in nutrition and is currently working part time as a nutritionist and also working part time as a fitness instructor.

Purpose of Corpus Analysis

By using some samples of corpus (4 posts) from the blog, we aim to analyze the textual metafunction in the corpus selected to show the important aspects of cohesion in language writing.

Description of corpus

The corpus is taken from one of the CMC which is a Blog. The corpus was taken from www.healthblogspot.com. The corpus was quite small and four posts contained in it are selected to be analyzed.

Framework of Study

The framework of this study focuses on textual metafunction. From the four posts, we analyzed theme, rheme, given, new, and adjunct.

Halliday (1985a) claimed that all language simultaneously realizes three different kinds of meaning (metafunctions): a representation (experiential metafunction), a message (textual metafunction) and an exchange (interpersonal metafunction). The clause is taken as the basic unit of analysis, and the goal of SFL analysis is to identify how each of  the three metafunctions are realised in one single clause. In this study, analysis was restricted to the textual metafunctions. Textual metafunction help to organise the message within and between clauses.

In the textual metafunction, a clause is analysed into Theme and Rheme. According to Halliday (1985a:39) Theme is the component which serves as “the starting-point for the message; it is what the clause is going to be about”. Theme usually has familiar or “given”, information, i.e. information that has been mentioned in the text, or is familiar with the context. Theme can be identified based on order. Theme is the element which comes first in the clause.

Rheme can be defined as the part of the clause that is developed by Theme (Eggins, 1994). Rheme contains unfamiliar or “new” informations. It is easy to identify the Rheme; everything that is not the Theme is the Rheme.

According to Eggins (1994), there are two main types of textual elements which can get to be Theme. They are Continuity Adjuncts and Conjunctive Adjuncts. Conjunctive Adjuncts can be classified as words which are used in spoken dialogue that show the speaker’s response to what a previous speaker has said. For examples, oh, well, Yea and no. Another adjunct is the Conjunctive Adjunct. Conjunctions, which are the elements that link clauses or sentences together, were described as Conjunctive Adjuncts. Conjunctions can occur whether in first position in the clause or in other positions. Examples of conjunctions are and, but, however and therefore. (Eggins, 1994)

Findings of Analysis (table)

	Post 1	Post 2	Post 3	Post 4
Theme	39	16	19	40
Rheme	40	17	19	40
Given	40	18	21	49
New	41	20	22	45
Adjunct       a)      Conjunction       b)      Continuity	16 none	5 none	2 none	13 none

Conclusion

Textual metafunction relates to the cohesion in a text. From the data gathered from the corpus selected, sentences are found to be linked together. The findings of given and new within the corpus proved that the structure organization in the author's blog uses the features of textual metafunction in her posts. As a result, her posts are organized neatly and the cohesiveness in her sentences makes her posts easier to understand.

Appendices

Post 1 - Lose 7 pounds in 7 days.

My friend is still waiting for her “magic diet pills” to come in the mail, for those who want to lose weight without the use of pills or other substances, there is some good news.  I am going to tell you how to lose 7 pounds in 7 days.  Everyone can do this, here is how:

Eat Breakfast - I am sure you have heard this before but this is one of the best ways to jump start your metabolism and get your body ready to start burning fat for the day.  Eating breakfast also helps to balance your sugar levels and helps you go into a carb craving binge later on in the day.

Protein and no carbs.  I am not telling you to give up carbs forever, but if you stay away from them for a week and replace carbs with protein you will lose at least 7 pounds in 7 days and probably much more.  Carbs are bad for a lot of reasons, obviously we know that they turn to sugar and then fat but they also are “empty” in the sense that they will not provide us with the feeling of being full and satisfied.  Protein on the other hand, is more satisfying and fills us up.  Protein also takes more energy for our body to digest so we actually burn more fat by digesting the protein.

Snack, Snack, Snack - You have my permission to snack often, you should eat healthy snacks every 2 hours.  This will boost your metabolism and also help stop you from overeating during your main meals.  The key here is”HEALTHY” snacks.  Don’t kid yourself here, you know what is healthy and what is not.  My favourites are peanut butter and apples, sometimes together.

Pump up your work outs.  You do not need to work out like a crazy person, but you do need to work out.  Three 30 minutes sessions per week should work well.  The trick here is to make these work outs intense.  You should be moving constantly during these workouts to pump up your heart rate.  Here is what I do.  I do the elliptical for 10 minutes to get things going, I then rotate between push ups, crunches and jump roping for the next 20 minutes straight.  It is not as hard as it seems.

If you follow this advice, you will lose 7 pounds in 7 days.
    
Post 2 -Acai Diet

I am happy to report that I am feeling great, it did take me a little while to recover from the colon cleansing situation.  I have been getting back into the flow of exercising regularly and have been getting back into Yoga in a big way.  I am actually thinking about becoming a certified Yoga instructor.  I am starting to seriously look into it but I am not sure if I have the time right now.

Anyway, the point of this post is to let you know that my friend has finally selected the brand of ACAI “pills” to buy.  I was very surprised as I looked into her that there were some many choices out there.  I naively thought that there was one source to get the berry.  There are literally over a hundred different companies that market this product.  I looked at the ingredients on many of them and they all seem to contain the same active ingredients.

Here is a link to the product that she selected:
Acai Berry Select 

She based her decision on some positive reviews and the fact that she was able to get a free trial.

Nothing else to report, she ordered it yesterday.  I will let you know when she starts the program so you can follow along.

Post 3 - Acai Diet - Does it work?

As a nutritionist I have been inundated with questions about ACAI berry, what is it? Does it work?  Is it safe?  I have decided to write about this topic for the next 30 days on my blog.  I will not be partaking in the acai diet, I instead will be using my good friend Julie as the human guinea pig.  I figured it would make sense for me to start off with the basics.

ACAI berry is a berry that is indigenous to the Brazilian rainforest.  It has become all the rage lately thanks to the book by Dr. Perricone and Opera.  As you know if Opera is behind it, it will be a winner (think, Obama!) This berry is being touted as the most nutritious food on Earth.  The berry is supposed to help aid weight loss and it is now the latest diet craze out there right now.   Does it work?  I am not sure, but I will have a better idea in 30 days.

Post 4 - Colon Cleanser Experiment – Final Evaluation

It has been 30 days since I started this crazy experiment and all I can say is Thank God.  It has been a very unpleasant 30 days and I am really glad it is over.  Let me start with the last couple of days and then I will conclude with a final evaluation.  The last couple of days were pretty eventful as more toxic sludge has exited my body.  Some of the movements were very large in length while others were very loose.  It seems like stuff was just coming out in all shapes and sizes.  As a final evaluation, I can say that it does work.  I have excreted stuff from my body that would still be in there had I not taken this product.  What I will also say is that it was one of the most unpleasant months of my life.  I experienced stomach pains and discomfort more days than not.  My bowel movement schedule was all over the place.  Sometimes I would go 8 times a day and then not at all the next day.  Instead of being filled with energy, I was exhausted most of the time.  I drank plenty of water but I always felt dehydrated.  I just drank 32 ounces of water and I am dying of thirst right now.  As far as the weight loss is concerned, I lost just under 4 pounds.  My jeans are definitely looser and my stomach is noticeably flatter. 

I guess I am glad that I took the product, but I do not think that I will take it again, certainly not for a long long time.  My advice would be to use it if you really think you need to.  If you do not, I would stay away because the discomfort and the impact on your life may not be worth it.  I will leave it up to you to decide.

References

Blog. (2012). In Wikipedia. Retrieved April 9, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

Eggins, S., 1994, An Introduction to Systemic Functional Linguistics, Pinter Publishers:

            London.

Halliday, M.A.K., 1985a, Introduction to Functional Grammar, Edward Arnold: London.

Harmony. (2009, March 8). Lose 7 pounds in 7 days. Retrieved from http://healthblogspot.com/lose-7-pounds-in-7-days/

Harmony. (2009, March 4). Acai Diet. Retrieved from http://healthblogspot.com/acai-diet/

Harmony. (2009, February 26). Acai Diet - Does it Work? Retrieved from http://healthblogspot.com/acai-diet-does-it-work/

Harmony. (2009, February 26). Colon cleanser experiment - final experiment. Retrieved from http://healthblogspot.com/colon-cleanser-experiement-final-evaluation/

Graded Assignment 3 - Corpus Linguistic (computational stylistic)

Assalamualaikum readers,

This is the link for our presentation slides.
http://www.slideshare.net/syila239/computational-stylistics-ppt

Thank you for your time.

Reference
Murphy, S. (2007). Now I am alone: A Corpus Stylistic Approach to Shakespearian Soliloquies. Retrieved from http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/pgconference/v01/Murphy.pdf

Overall Reflection

Assalamualaikum,

Alhamdulillah, we have reached the end of this course. Throughout this course, we have done a lot of reading and research related to CALL and its relations to our theme which is American Literature in general and slavery in particular. We have looked at slavery through the Westerners' perspectives and also from an  Islamic perspective. To sum it all, below are the things that we have learn throughout the semester...

Acquire new knowledge

• We gained more information on Slavery in both perspectives (Westerners and Islam). 
• We learnt new terminologies such as CALL, CMC and many others related to this course.
• We learnt how to used CALL. For example, searching online journals for our references in research, and many others.
• We also learned how to use one of the CMC modes which is a blog, where we learned how to draft, edit, insert gadgets and many other things. 
• We were able to practice what we have learn immediately in our graded and non-graded assignments.

 Acquire new skills.

• Throughout this course, we were trained to incorporate Islamic values in our assignments. Thus, this activity serves as a preparation or guideline for us to adopt in our future research.
• Unconsciously, we were also trained to be patient in doing our assignment, especially the part where we have to find online journal sites.
• Through cooperation between group members, our relationship grew stronger as friends, teammates and as soldiers in our own battlefield.
• This course also enhanced our leadership skills

Problems faced

• In looking for online journal sites on CALL. We misunderstood Dr Rozinah's instructions and a lot of findings turned up as article or research paper on CALL.
• In finding research paper related to our mode of CMC (blog).
• In summarizing the research findings, since they used lots of numbers to represent their findings.

Solutions

• We tried countless of time, differentiating between online journal sites on CALL and articles. In addition, some of the online journal sites required us to pay in order to access it. Finally,we selected only those(online journal sites) that were relevant and accessible. 
• Dr Rozina has stated that we do not necessarily need to find a research paper related to our mode of CMC (blog). However, we would like to test ourselves and search diligently for researches that have been conducted and those related to our selected mode of CMC.
• In summarizing the findings of the research, we tried our best to explain it in simple language rather than showing lots of numbers that might cause problems in understanding to our readers. 
• Above all, the key to solving all of these problems is patience and hard work.

That's all from us, and we pray that may Allah bless us, our acquired knowledge and our readers to become people among the blessed. InsyaAllah.