Reflection #9 - Concordancer

Suggest The Relevance of Concordance in The Course of Your Studies?

In the midst of advance technology, education field also wanted not to fall behind. Since the invention of concordance, it manage to assist many scholars and students to do their research and assessments given by lecturers.

In English Language and Literature field, concordancer do help a lot especially when students need to find sources regarding topic in their studies. It also gives students various kind of sources to choose regarding the topic.

As example, in American Literature, we need to find certain issues regarding feminism in ‘Scarlet Letter’. By using concordancer, all articles regarding feminism in ‘Scarlet Letter’ can be traced.

Suggest a Good Dictionary That You Always Refer and Why Do You Like It?

Since learning English Language in Elementary school, I always used Oxford Dictionary, and my English teachers would also recommend the same dictionary. I, personally, also prefer to use the dictionary, since it is easy to navigate the words that need to be defined and understand the use per context.

Other than that, our education system also adopted UK Standard English in syllabus at school. Due to this situation, Oxford Dictionary also prepared voice pronunciation to guide the beginner and intermediate learners to learn the right and pronunciation of the word.

Lastly, Oxford Dictionary has been very useful to me while learning English Language at school, and university.

Topic for Master Students

How concordancer can be a tool to teach University students in Research Methodology.

Reflection #8 - Corpus Linguistics

Corpus linguistics is the study of corpora, or texts, which can be obtained from the real-world samples. The emergence of computer technology has opened up the opportunity to study the texts easily. The analysis can be done to investigate the structure of texts, uses, their nature, occurrence, or pretty much everything you wish to 'see' what's in a text. The process can bring out various new knowledge that can contribute in the study of linguistics.

The computer can help to sort our, retrieve or list out the texts you wish to study. Being able to do has enabled linguists to utilise the advancement of the technology in a very meaningful way. Now, everyone can incorporate the contribution of corpus linguistics to further analyse how a text can be sorted out. The availability of corpus can enrich BENL students' studies by using the advantage of knowing how corpus linguistics works. It can help the students to find articles which are more suited for their needs. Analysing real-world samples can be more convenient as the technology of the computer will effortlessly do the job without us sweating ourselves out doing it manually.

As BENL students are expected to be so critical in their thinking, one is expected to be able to see that there's more in a text. Let's say a person wishes to see how repetitive certain words in a speech or a writing. The repetition can signify certain characteristics and way of thinking. This blog post uses a repetition of the word "anaylyse", it dawned on me maybe I should actually really start using my knowledge of corpus linguistics to broaden my style of writing.

Reflection #7 - CMC: How social media is changing language use

“I like the sound of you not talking.”

So the other day we were having a discussion on CMC – Computer-mediated Communication. When the class ended, I was asked to go home and reflect on it, and instead of dwelling on how these gadgets actually create a bridge between users instead of connecting them, I’d like to focus on how these platforms change the language we use.
From unfriend to selfie, social media is clearly having an impact on language. I’m aware of not only how fast these online platforms change, but also of how they influence the language in which I write.

The words that we use are undeniably affected by the words that surround us every day. It’s a fact. Notice how if you hang out with someone for far too long and you unconsciously pick up some of their frequently used vocabularies? This is the same case. We spend a lot of our time daily reading words from computers, smartphones to the point that language now evolves partly through our interaction with technology. We generally use informal writing to communicate with other users and the fact that most of the people communicate this way is a starting point for rapid language change. Language is nothing if it is not used.

Social media is really making its presence felt with the introduction of new words and new meanings for old words. Social media is making it easier than ever to contribute to the evolution of language. You no longer have to be published through traditional avenues to bring word trends to the attention of the masses. I mean, look at Miley Cyrus, she basically invented the word twerking and at one point it became so overused it's deafening. And Beyonce fans can take pride in making the word slay famous. Now you read the comment section on a singer's video and you'd see SLAAAYYYY everywhere. Slay used to mean literally to kill a person in a murderous way, but now in this computer-mediated era, slay means something else. Slay, now, means "succeeded".
Not entirely surprising, Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year for 2015 is...

Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year (2015) 

That's right. With this, we should expect more new words (or it doesn't necessarily be a word at all) to emerge as a result of the way people use language to communicate using computers in social media.


Reference: Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year

Reflection #6 - Basic Criteria for a Good Language Learning Site

In a language learning classroom, students will expect the teacher to provide them an interesting approach to enhance their skills. Being able to utilize technological advancement provides broader spectrum in teaching language. Teachers may choose many websites and application tools from the internet to assist them. 

However, there is still a need for the teachers to carefully pick a good language learning site before using it. There are some criteria one must adhere to while doing so. One of them is to look at the origin of the site. Choosing a website is like buying your clothes. We most definitely will buy our clothes according to the brands. A brand tells a customer the validity and quality of the clothes most of the time. Similarly, by knowing the origin of the site, we can confirm the developer's credibility in assisting a language learning process. Besides that, the accessibility must also be easy. A good language learning site should not be complicated to access. Then, the teacher must also pick an appealing site's design. Utilizing a site that is visually appealing will enhance the learning process. The students are likely to grasp the contents of the site more as well. Another criteria for a good language learning site is to look at the content itself. A teacher must know how to differentiate a good website to a bad website. The contents should be suitable to the learners and it should comply to the teaching's educational needs and goals. Lastly, to have a good language learning site to teach is by using websites that are current. As the internet is a fast-moving contents provider, a teacher needs to use an up-to-date site to fulfill the current generation's needs.

Reflection #5 - IOK: Does every single thing really have to be Islamicized?

Honestly I’m not proud to admit that I was one of those people who questioned the need to Islamicize everything. Being an IIUM student, you can’t run away from that. It gets really overwhelming at some point. I was supposed to sign up for Islamic elective courses, all 8 of them. And as if that’s not enough, these Islamic values were intertwined with everything I learnt for my core courses. You’d think that learning English had nothing to do with Islamic teachings. I mean, let’s face it, for literature subjects, almost all the materials were from the West, no Islamic authors and all that. But somehow, to my dismay, my lecturers just managed to turn these English subjects into an Islamic discourse. That was until I came across a poem by W.B. Yeats titled The Second Coming, which was included in my 20th Century and Contemporary Literature. 



Surely some revelation is at hand; 
Surely the Second Coming is at hand. 



The poem, of course, was not talking about the Christian belief regarding the return of Jesus to Earth. But rather, it talks about the coming and awakening of something dark and powerful. It has all these violent imagery and terrifying ritualistic language that send chills down your spine upon reading it. How does this relate to the Islamicization of knowledge, you ask? So when I was reading it, almost instantaneously I was reminded of the Day of Judgment. The similarities described were eerily unsettling. Then it dawned on me, yes, Islam is everywhere. There’s no escaping it. 


I remember hearing one of my IRK lecturers saying that Islam is all-inclusive because it’s more than just a religion or a belief; it’s a way of life. Hitherto I TRY to relate everything I see or read to Islam. I read a lot of science, especially when it involves the galaxy. It’s one of my favorite things. So recently, you know how they say the Sun is going to come out from the West instead of the East as a sign that the hour is approaching, and I was having a hard time believing that because there’s no logical explanation as to how would that happen. And then, being curious as I always am, I searched for a scientific explanation. Eventually I found this one video from Youtube and it explained away how it is possible for the Sun to appear from the West. I’ll let you into a little secret, my little secret, I've always felt a tint of joy for sort of achieving to prove that everything can be related to Islam if I dig deep enough, and that’s really satisfying. It’s a therapy. You should try it.

W.B. Yeats' The Second Coming

Reflection #4 - Lesson Plan + Assignment 1

We found that technology is immensely helpful in teaching of listening skills. It is more fun and more effective with the aid of technology. For example, teachers can use video and Powerpoint Presentation in induction to explain to the students about the today’s lesson. The assistance of technology in the classroom makes the students pay more attention to the lesson than the traditional way. The lesson will be carried out smoothly and effectively as technology enhances students’ motivation in learning.

It has been found that by using video will improve students’ comprehension and listening skill. The video would make the students attracted in learning the lesson. The video would be neither too hard nor too easy to support skill development depends on the context of the video. If the students were given complicated video as a tool to improve comprehension and listening skill, it may demotivate them in learning as the video might be too hard to some students. Hence, introducing them with the video is surely more enjoyable as compared to the traditional way of teaching.

However, there are some disadvantages in using technology as teaching aids. Some students may have been found that they are not proficient in using computer. This would distract the learning progress as teachers need to teach students how to use computer first instead of teaching the lesson as planned.

In the matter of lesson plan, we found that it took much time to plan what should be taught to students. It is tiring as we need to be more critical what students should benefit from the lesson. If the lesson plan did not go as planned, the lesson will be distracted. Thus, it may interfere the period of teaching. This is because using technology as teaching aid might be new to some people and they need time to adapt and learn this new method of learning.

The struggle of finishing this assignment makes us aware how difficult our teachers had to deal with their lesson. Their effort to make the lesson becomes interesting, fun and most important is to make us understand the subject. It has given us a thought that being a teacher is not that easy as teachers need to prepare a lesson plan to ensure that the class goes smoothly and effectively.

Reflection #3 - CALL In Language Skills

Discussion on CALL in language skills. It covers 5 different aspects of learning which are listening, speaking, grammar, writing, and literature. Many students were participating in the session in class in order to complete all those five skills. Our lecturer has briefly explained about self-concept. In my opinion, it is very amazing to know how we can use computer in enhancing our language skills.

This topic is very informative as it explain that a teacher cannot cover speaking and listening as the same way as writing because these are receptive skills. However, computer has been very useful for students to enhance their skill.

Reflection #2 - 3 Questions on CALL

BENL is a course about language and literature. Typically, people would think English majors only learn about how to write essays, read and listen. So yeah, they are definitely wrong.

Our experiences in this course have taught us a lot of things. Critical thinking is part of the result that we have gained throughout the process of learning. What more when it comes to understanding old complicated poems, functions of language and more. Sounds difficult already? Not yet, not until we have to integrate our learning with Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) techniques. Yup, now you can say, "That sounds intriguing and complicated!"

In the previous post, we have posted about what CALL is, the types of CALL and more. So, we don't think it is necessary for us to elaborate more on that topic.

It is a modern world, we could say that each course that we have taken actually has integrated the learning of language with the help of computers. For instance, one of our courses, Pragmatics, requires a lot of examples taken from surrounding of our daily life. Mr Ridzwan had done a good job in integrating the computer, the internet and teaching aids (power point presentation) to show real examples taken from the internet from all over the world. Sounds cool right?

Error Analysis meanwhile requires us, students, to conduct an interview with international students and present them as creatively as we can to the class. Yes, with the help of the computer, some video editing, power point presentation and more have helped us to get more marks. Thank you, Dr. Nora, you're an awesome lecturer.

It is almost impossible not to use CALL nowadays. Technology makes work easier and life simpler. But we hope it does not make us lazier.