Poem: TECHNOLOGY

Technology, Technology,

Our lives run with it,

From the morning alarm to evening TV,

Boring, Boring,

When we live without technology,

Our days are incomplete without it,

Backward, Backward,

Cave is no longer our place,

Technology makes us live better,

Knowledge, Knowledge,

What we get with technology,

To survive in the reality,

Friends, Friends,

Get connected,

And there will be more to come,

God, God,

Remember to stay in the right path,

Remember the creator of all things.

Reflection #14 - Blog Project

Praise to God, after a long hard work we managed to complete the blog and also the contents of the blog successfully. This will not be a reality if all of us did not put our efforts and dedication in finishing the entire blog. This beloved blog was built form scratch from the second week we attended the class. The guidance and comments given by Dr. Rozina was the main source of inspiration that helped us to correct and redo the part that we have done wrong.

At first, this subject was still a blur for us as this is the subject for the graduating students. Most of us still have two or three remaining semesters before we graduate. Most of the complementary subjects have not been taken by us so more efforts needed in order for us to understand the subject. However, as time flew we were showered by the blessing of God for giving a great lecturer namely Dr. Rozina. She has shed the light of understanding to us in completing this blog.

Throughout the processes of finishing this blog, we have got a lot of new knowledge which are useful for our future life later on. For example, the first task needed us to prepare a lesson plan to teach students. From this task, we learned how a teacher arranged their lesson plan by looking at the references from the websites and other sources. We made our own lesson plan where a lot of efforts were needed because we did not have the basic on it. However, after a fruitful discussion we finally managed to make one and presented it to Dr. Rozina. From the task we realized how hard the job of a teacher is.

The next assignment exposed us to the corpus that involved the medium that we use in our daily life such as the social network and many more. We realized that we have taken these social network for granted all these years. There are actually vast amount of aspects that can be analysed from these corpus. This have opened our eyes wide in thinking about all the things that exist around us.

If there is a start, the end will surely come . The task have been fulfilled by us in order to complete the course requirements. We hope that the knowledge that we got from the journey to finish this task will be the lesson that will make us more mature.

Reflection #13 - Forensic Linguistics

Have you ever wondered how important a word is? We often take things for granted on tiny matters in our lives. 

Some issues in the real world can be solved by using the knowledge of language. Language can be so powerful that its words, phrases and sentences can be studied to determine who actually uses it. Forensic linguistics is a branch of applied linguistics. It is a practical usage of language knowledge as it can be used to solve crime-related cases. Some of the areas in forensic linguistics are voice identification, author identification, and discourse analysis. Do you ever think for a second how easy for people to recognise a person's handwriting is? We might think that a handwriting has no deeper meaning to it but it definitely can lead to the identity of the owner. It will help the authority to investigate criminals and perpetrators as they can be tracked using forensic linguistics' discovery. 

There is this branch of knowledge in criminology which will focus on this knowledge. Those who frequently watch TV series like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Criminal Minds, and NCIS will definitely be familiar with such people. The jargons they utilise in finding the criminals are so interesting and can attract many people to get to know the programs better. Forensic linguistics is not a mere programme for posers to get involved into. It needs undivided passion, interest, and drive to help contribute in making world a better place. 

Reflection #12 - Computational Stylistics: Determining which era a poem is from

Today, we learnt that computational stylistics is useful in analyzing a texts, authors, genres and periods. Computational stylistics, or stylometry, is the process of applying computational approaches to assist in the distant reading of style, so that traditional approaches to critical arguments might be supplemented with quantitative evidence. It's a case of "what it says" vs "how it says it". The former is traditionally popular when someone wants to do a research of a topic covered in a text. The latter, however, is as important, if not more, when you want to study the style of a text. I mean, we all know the way people write speak so much about them. In our writing, or even in our daily conversation, the choice of words we use are always based on a reason. We might not realize this, but there's a reason we choose to say something in one way rather than the other, which will eventually sends the same message. Let's face it, "I'm not hungry" and "I'm still full" carry two different meanings pragmatically.

Okay, back to the point. One purpose of computational stylistics is to identify the period in which a work is written and I find this interesting because now you can guess the period a literature work is written based on their style of writing. For example, if the text gets really wordy when describing nature and relies heavily on emotions, you can quickly guess that it's from the Romantic era. To quote William Wordsworth, poetry should begin with "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings", which the poet then translate into writing. That's why if you notice, texts from Romantic era are always so beautiful in their choice of words, and really lengthy at describing landscape and nature too. To express these feelings, it was considered that the content of the art had to come from the imagination of the artist, with as little interference as possible from "artificial" rules that dictated what a work should consist of.

Conversely, Victorian era for example, makes use of more restrained language and dwells on social concerns such as poverty. So, naturally, if you see a text dealing with this kind of topics, chances are they are from Victorian era.

The differences between Romanticism and Victorianism are apparent in the contrasting ways in which they use language. Because Romantic literature is emotionally expressive, you have to expect to see phrases such as "Oh!" to give the impression of a sudden onrush of feeling. The language in Romanticism is always so dramatic and free-flow. Meanwhile, because Victorian literature sought to document the world as it really was, it tends to use modern expressions and language, and makes less use of flowery metaphors and images. 

Below is an example of a poem. Enlarge it. If you know each era's literature characteristics, you'll know which era is this poem from: 

William Blake's The Little Girl Found

Reflection #11 - Mdm Mazni's CMD Presentation: Everyone needs to participate for scaffolding to work

A guest lecturer came and briefed us on her research project she presented in a symposium last year. It was on CMD and she analyzed the linguistic features used in this type of discourse. Instead of recapping what she already discussed in class, I'd like to point out one interesting bit she mentioned. Apparently, what she found out from this research was, CMD propagated a kind of learning style found in constructivism theory. Piaget, the one who came up with this theory, argued that humans generate knowledge and meaning from an interaction between their experiences and their ideas. 

As you can see, the discussion and exchange of ideas happened in CMD help people build up their knowledge. It's almost like you pick someone else's brain and extract their ideas. It's smart. You don't have to learn by yourself, instead, you just let someone else do the studying and get the knowledge from them. That is, of course, if you feel comfortable being a free rider not contributing anything to the discussion. I can relate to this. Guilty as charged. Sometimes when we have a test coming up and we want to gather for discussion, it's only natural that everyone does their reading prior to discussion. But I'd usually come vacant and empty-headed, taking advantage of what my friends have to say. 

But again, this is not healthy. Imagine not knowing anything and when you listen to your friends you can't even make sense of the discussion, you're doomed. Scaffolding of knowledge doesn't work this way. Which brings me to the question: How do we make sure everyone participates in CMD so that everyone can get the benefits of building up their knowledge? Scaffolding means you build up your knowledge based on your prior understanding and background knowledge about something, but if you do not have even the basic grasp of it, it'd be futile.

Reflection #10 - Lexicography

The topic on lesson 8 is focusing on the lexicography and forensic linguistic. Both of the fields have their own unique and interesting side of them that actually give us attraction to know more about them. 

Lexicography deals with the editing, compiling, writing or making of a dictionary. There are many good quality dictionaries that have been produced. One of them is Oxford English Dictionary as the dictionary is known as the world’s most comprehensive dictionary of the English language. The dictionary is referred by people because the words covered in the dictionary are from across the English-speaking world and it also traces the development of English from time to time. Furthermore, the arrangement of the words is systematic and makes it easy for the people to find words in the dictionary. They actually don’t need much time to find the words. Moreover, the dictionary provides the meaning and pronunciation of thousands of words, both present and past. As for the students, the meaning and pronunciation of words are vital as they are still learning and the need something to enhance their learning. Because of that, the Oxford English Dictionary is the best choice for them to refer as it gives a really helpful support for the students and even for the teachers.