Fifth Posting

A concordancer is like a search engine that can be used for studying language (corpus linguistics). You simply enter a word or phrase that you want to know about and search in the normal way. Concordancers are a tools for corpus linguistics. Since most corpora (bodies of text) 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. The results are presented in a different way: instead of giving you a list of files or websites containing the search word or phrase, you'll get a list of phrases or sentences with the search word or phrase centred. This allows you to look for patterns, such as whether the word usually or frequently comes at the beginning of sentence or whether it is followed by certain words, like prepositions.

The first article that I have found is http://dspace.wul.waseda.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2065/1391/1/02.pdf. This article is about Candle Project which is uses various corpora and NLP technologies to construct an online English learning environment for learners in Taiwan. To enhance the Taiwan learners English proficiency effectively, Candle project provides English-Chinese parallel corpus, Sinorama, online bilingual concordancer, TotalRecall, and a collocation reference tool, TANGO, many online lessons, including extensive reading, verb-noun collocations, and vocabulary and an online collocation check program, MUST. The first subproject provides essential and advanced NLP tools and activity tracking mechanisms for the other three sub-projects to facilitate and monitor online learners. The second subproject focuses on construction and assessment of an intelligent self-access reading environment that adapts to learners’ English levels. The third subproject works on exploring the potential of learning English based on writing and translation exercises. The fourth sub-project uses the bilingual corpus to enhance culture-based English learning, an area that has not been fully explored yet. All four subprojects are innovative for natural language processing and English learning.

The second article is http://www.sfu.ca/~heift/Ling480/coursematerial/week4.pdf. This website talks about the meaning of concordancing which is accessing a corpuss of text to show how any given word or phrase in the texts is used in the immediate contexts in which it appears. Besides that, it tells us about corpus and corpus size which is the bigger the better for the study of lexis and collocation. There are basically two characteristic objectives for classroom concordancing, which are the teacher and the learner. For the teacher, concordancing is a source of input for teaching and input for material development while for the learner is for the error analysis and serendipity learning which like allow learners to use the concordancer as and when they wish for whatever purposes they wish and provides three benefits for the learner. Concordance material can be applied to both inductive and deductive reasoning. Concordancers also can be applied to testing and to error analysis or interlanguage studies. As a conclusion, there is more advantages than the disadvantages using concordance as concordance might be beyond the proficiency level of the learner.

The benefits of after distributing the concordance sheet, teachers can ask students to choose several examples that are meaningful to them and keep those examples in their language diaries. The purpose is to engage learners in exploring and noticing the language contexts; during the process of writing down those examples, learners are expected to undergo a cognitive process of digesting the language input. By engaging students in searching for answers from a corpus to solve problems, teachers can encourage students to devote more time to the learning activity.Moreover, the task-based learning can also develop learners' confidence in their ability once they accomplish the task. More importantly, it allows examples-of-use concordances to become available to many teachers and learners, enabling innovative uses of concordances in language teaching to be implemented. Concordance encourages students to realise the benefits of inducing their own rules from language data while the use of a teacher-chosen examples-of-use concordance is an effective teaching technique, it reinforces the erroneous viewpoint that the language points to be learnt are best chosen and presented by the teacher and may even encourage some students to believe that the only language points learnable are those presented to them by the teacher.

My Pictures during Za'Ba's Dinner Night

Sixth Posting

Do you enjoy blogging?

Yes, I enjoyed blogging because the process of blogging teach me a lot from the beginning to the end . Frankly, before this, I don't know how to create a blog and I even don't know the usage of the blog itself. Blogging also improve my language learning through reading and writing on my blog. Besides that, blogging help us to view and express our opinions and thoughts through a particular subject. Everyone can drop their opinion and view on whatever we write on the blog. Through blog, we can strengthen our relationship and communicate with other people throughout the world.

Based on your experience, what is the benefit of blogging?

Through blogging, we can share our opinions, views and thoughts while people from over the world can also share theirs and if you have something interesting to say it can be a forum to exchange ideas. Other than that, blogs give you an increased presence on major search engines, like Yahoo! and Google and help promote yourself and your skills to a much wider audience that could end up bringing new opportunities to your door. Sometimes students in large classes can spend all year studying with the same people without getting to know them well. A blog is another tool that can help bring students together. Another aspect of blogging is the promotion of higher order thinking skills. Students have the choice to organize their ideas and content in their own ways, leading to divergent and creative thinking.

Do you need more assistance to set up your blog?
I think I need more assistance to set up my blog because I'm not very familiar with blogging and the new technology. At first, I really have difficulties on creating a blog and posting on blog. Besides that, some of the posting given is difficult to understand and these makes student confused in their blogging. So, I hope in future the lecturers can help the juniors more on blogging and etc.

Do you have any memorable, favourite topic in your blog?
Actually I find that the third posting is my favourite topic and quite memorable for me because I can put up my memorable picture and interesting videos on my blog. I found some interesting and useful videos when I'm doing researching for this posting. I found 4 videos which I think very useful for learners. The videos are reading speed, what is a blog, online reading and basic spanish vocabulary. I hope everyone enjoy with the videos I've upload.

List 5 advantages of blogging
-The consumer and citizen are potentially better informed and this can only be good for the long-term health of our societies and economies.
-Blogs have potential to help the organization develop stronger relationships and brand loyalty with its customers, as they interact with the ‘human face’ of the organization through blogs.
-Blogs, in an intranet environment, can be an excellent way of sharing knowledge within the organization.
-Blogs can be a positive way of getting feedback, and keeping your finger on the pulse, as readers react to certain pieces, suggest story ideas, etc.
-Blogs can build the profile of the writer, showcasing the organization as having talent and expertise.

List 5 disadvantages of blogging
-Most people don’t have very much to say that’s interesting, and are unable to write down their ideas in a compelling and clear manner.
-I have often found that the people who have most time to write have least to say,and the people who have most to say don’t have enough time to write it. Thus, the real expertise within the organization lays hidden, as you get drowned in trivia.
-Like practically everything else on the Web, blogs are easy to start and hard to maintain. Writing coherently is one of the most difficult and time-consuming tasks for a human being to undertake. So, far from blogs being a cheap strategy, they are a very expensive one, in that they eat up time. As a result, many blogs are not updated, thus damaging rather than enhancing the reputation of the organization.
-Organizations are not democracies. The Web makes many organizations look like disorganizations, with multiple tones and opinions. Contrary to what some might think, the average customer prefers it if the organization they are about to purchase from is at least somewhat coherent.
-Need to keep it constantly updated otherwise you lose potential readers.

Will you continue blogging after this course?
Yes, probably when I have free time. I can express my feelings and thoughts everyday through blogging and share it with other people. Maybe through this way, I can relax myself throughout the day. Hopefully so.

Do you think that blogging improve your writing?
I feel that blogging truly improve my writing as I can learn new words, vocabulary and grammar. Besides that, I learnt from my mistakes in writing by blogging. Blogging is a kind of writing practises for the learners too.

Do you think we should continue with blogging activity for the next batch of students?
Yes, definitely because it teach them a lot of things especially those who never do blogging before. It is important to keep the students updated with the new era technologies so that they won't left behind and keep improving everyday.

Will you recommend your friend to blog?
Yes because I think we have to updated and stay alert to the new technologies nowadays. Through blogging, we get a lots of advantages and benefits too.

Can you teach a friend to set up his or her blog?
Of course I can because I found that it is easy and simple to create a blog which we should sign up for Google mail first. Then, we can straight away create our own favourite blog easily.

First Posting:-Online Reading

http://www.bibliomania.com/

This website contains
Free Online Literature with more than 2000 Classic Texts
Literature Book Notes, Author Biographies, Book Summaries and Reference Books
Read Classic Fiction, Drama, Poetry, Short Stories and Contemporary Articles and Interviews
Study Guides to the most read books and Help for Teachers
Research our Reference Books, Dictionaries, Quotations, Classic Non-fiction, Biographies and Religious Texts

Bibliomania has thousands of e-books, poems, articles, short stories and plays all of which are absolutely free. You can read the world's greatest fiction by authors such as Dickens and Joyce, Sherlock Holmes mysteries, all Shakespeare's plays, or just dip into some short stories by writers such as Mark Twain, Anton Chekov and Edgar Allan Poe.

An example of poetry by William Blake

To my dear Friend, Mrs. Anna Flaxman

This song to the flower of Flaxman's joy,
To the blossom of hope for a sweet decoy;
Do all that you can, or all that you may,
To entice him to Felpham and far away.

Away to sweet Felpham, for Heaven is there;
The Ladder of Angels descends thro' the air;
On the turret its spiral does softly descend,
Thro' the village then winds, at my cot it does end.

You stand in the village and look up to Heaven;
The precious stones glitter on flights seventy-seven;
And my brother is there, and my friend and thine
Descend and ascend with the bread and the wine.

The bread of sweet thought and the wine of delight
Feed the village of Felpham by day and by night,
And at his own door the bless'd Hermit does stand,
Dispensing unceasing to all the wide land.

Fourth Posting:-Summarizing Articles

Women & ICT

Stepping through the research and interpretation implications of each framework, Sue Rosser develops a rich set of insights and questions around an examination of three areas: women in the technological workforce, women as users of technology, and women and technology design. Four authors deal specifically with educational implications and workforce participation in technological fields. Cheryl Leggon finds analytical purchase in examining the intersection of race and gender, finding evidence of a complex digital divide in both access to, and use of, information technology. Barbara Katz Rothman’s analysis of the cultural meaning of genetic technology. Rothman suggests that the fundamental construction of ideas around reproductive and breast cancer technology carry gender differentiation. Linda Layne drills more specific and addresses the complicated effects of new reproductive technology and early fetal diagnosis on women’s pregnancy and miscarriage experiences.

Carol Colatrella’s analysis of two science fiction film narratives examines the interplay of the attitudes about gender and technology design through the films’ depictions of woman-designed robots. James Fenimore’s chapter introduces the relevance of technology in the religious domain and suggests that new worship technologies embody and are shaped by commonly held beliefs of gender.

Across all chapters, the reader will appreciate insightful points that help provide a contextually rich background on how gender permeates the technological terrain.