Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, "She doesn't have what it takes." They will say, "Women don't have what it takes." ~Clare Boothe Luce
We found that finding the article for the first assignment is not that hard. The findings gathered from the article that we chose has been very helpful in understanding the computer assisted language learning.
After the summary of the article was done, we find ourselves more exposed to the appropriate methods in teaching language using the computer. We also learned how to handle audio system installed in the computer while using it to teach a language.
Assignment 2
The time given to complete this assignment is longer making it possible for us to gather information as much as we can and to analyze the corpus within the given time.
Even though Twitter is relatively new having made its debut in 2007, the internet made it possible for us to find articles related to Twitter and we managed to find a few articles related to Twitter.
Assignment 3
We faced a few difficulties as the field of Forensic Linguistic is quite new therefore information is scarce as compared to other fields. We also faced difficulty in finding empirical studies on Forensic Linguistic due to the field being new and most of the empirical studies we found do not provide any findings as the findings are private and confidential.
We hope that more information will be available in the future.
The time given was very limited resulting in not being able to give our best understanding of the subject. However, as the due date being postponed, we are able to present while having better understanding of the subject.
Overall Reflection
Despite facing a few difficulties in the process of doing the 3 assignments, we managed to overcome it, thanks to working in a group.
The assignments given require a lot of time being allocated in order to complete it and we are glad that we managed to do the assignments and complete them on time.
Everyone in the group plays a vital role in making sure that the assignments make progress from time to time and everyone acts a reminder to the rest.
We had problem in understanding a few things that are quite new to us such as forensic linguistic and we are glad that we were given assignments related to things that we are unfamiliar with as we are able to learn from them.
Social network is a mechanism for mediating distal interaction among people which allows people to follow the lives of friends, acquaintances and families and the number of people on social networks. One of the examples of social networks is Twitter. Twitter is the first microblogging systems that made its first appearance in 2006. Microblogging systems provide a light-weight, easy form of communication that enables users to broadcast and share information about their current activities, thought, opinions and status. Twitter users can stay in touch and keep up with friends regardless of where they are and what they are doing. People update their status or known as tweets, with a maximum of 140-characters, in the form of either spoken or written.
Spoken form differs from written form in several ways. The first one would be, spoken form is less formal than written form where language conventions are broken such as beginning sentences with but. Spoken form is much more dynamic and immediate, therefore precision is not given much attention. In addition, spoken form is more communicative where tone, intention and meaning. On the other hand, written form gives extra attention on grammar and language conventions. Furthermore, written form present ideas in a precise, well-ordered and presented in a more sophisticated way. This shows that written form is more articulate and sophisticated than spoken language.
The objectives of this study are to identify the differences between spoken and written language by analyzing the corpus available and to study the factors that might lead to such use in language. In other words, the corpus which is the compilations of the twitter will be analyzed in terms of its use either in written form or in spoken form. Some of the factors that lead to the used of those languages in the corpus will be discussed in details. The corpus contains 60 tweets from 17 people that was selected randomly.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Huberman, Romero and Wu through their article “Social Networks That Matter: Twitter under the Microscope” discuss the issue of how relevant is a list of “friends” is to members of the network. It is mentioned in the study that scholars, advertisers and political activist see massive online social networks as a representation of social interactions that can be used to study the propagation of ideas, social bond dynamics and viral marketing. The dataset used in this study contains 309,740 users with average posts of 255, 85 followers and 80 followees. Out of the number of users, 211,024 posted at least twice and they are under the category of active users. Twitter post or known can be categorized into direct and indirect posts. The findings show that 25.4% of the posts are direct which means they are directed to friends, mostly. The findings also show that users who received attention from many people and users who have more followers tend to be more active in posting their tweets. This shows that the number of friends is the driver of Twitter user’s activity.
The article “Why We Twitter: An Analysis of A Microblogging Community” by Java, Song, Finin and Tseng focused their study on microblogging phenomena, particularly Twitter. As a start, they define microblogging as a new form of commucation where users describe their current status in short posts. Microblogging mainly acts as a medium to talk about daily activities and to seek or share information. Furthermore, microblogging systems provide a light-weight, easy form of communication that enables users to broadcast and share information about their current activities, thoughts, opinions and status. Microblogging intentions varied from daily chatter, conversations, sharing information to reporting news. The authors monitor the public timeline of their samples for two months which result in 1,348,543 posts from 76,117 users. These users shared intentions of information sharing, information seeking and friendship-wise relationship.
In the article “Twitter: Expressions of the Whole Self - An Investigation into User Appropriation of a Web-based Communications Platform” written by Edward Mischaud discusses the use of Twitter, its features and the people who uses it. As defined by Mischaud, Twitter is a web-based communications platform combining Instant Messaging and SMS that enables subscribers to its service to send short ‘status updates’ to other people. In this article, Mischaud seeks to investigate the extent to which users of Twitter responds to the ‘guiding’ question ‘What are you doing?’. From this question it is possible to find out whether users of Twitter goes beyond this particular question, by deviating to other ‘updates’ or vice versa. By analysing the results obtained, Mischaund concluded that the majority of Twitter users observed are appropriating the platform beyond “What are you doing?”. This article also discusses about the society’s role in shaping technology and the influence a technology’s design may have on how it is used. This research of Mischaud contributes in the understanding of the spoken and written language of the Twitter users. A line can be drawn between the two by applying Mischaud’s method of study.
ANALYSIS
From the corpus that has been analyzed, it is found that there are some differences between the spoken and written form used by the respondents. For example, in spoken- form, most of the respondents are artists or public figures of both women, and men. A few examples of spoken form produced by two public figures are“I just saw the most beautiful young girl. About 5 years old. Lovely hair, lovely smile, lovely face. A stunning girl. She has albinism” and“Soup too salty? Instead of adding more liquid, add raw cut potatoes, It'll absorb the salt. Discard the potatoes...”Artists tend to use spoken form in order to attract attention from their audiences and also to share their opinions or tips. It is because, most of these artists’ followers are their own fans, so it is very important for them to keep their tweets interesting and entertaining to their audiences. More examples of spoken form of tweets by women are “With tears I drive home... Good to do a little or a whole lot of reflection. Will be busy today... Take care everyone!”and “Left leg needs a massage :( Aching :( ”. Through these two examples, it can be said that female users of Twitter tend to share their feelings and show their emotions through the use of emoticons and punctuation marks in their tweets. This could be influenced by the fact that women are more emotional and they like to share their feelings rather than keep them inside. A few examples of spoken form of tweets produced by men can be seen through these two examples “I will be offline for the rest of the day doing some hardcore packing. Take care y'all! May peace be upon you~” and“Been reading all tweets...thank u thank u so much for all ur wonderful wishes!!! Sending our love to all out there.. :)”. On the other hand, men tend to use spoken form to show their state of appreciation. In addition, as much as the examples show the use of emoticons by male users of Twitter, the usage is pretty low as compared to female users.
Other than the spoken form, status updates or tweets by the users can also be found in the written form. This denotes that the tweets do not contain any spoken form criteria such as emoticons or punctuation marks. Written form tweets are usually produced to give advice or motivation usually in the form of quotes. Examples of written form tweets that are extracted from the corpus available are person A tweets “Knocking other's success doesn't make you more successful. It just makes you a hater” andPerson B “It’s better if someone doesn't recognize your existence rather than a person that knows you exist and yet gives you no worth.”The language used here can be categorized as a written language as it is very much formal, usually exist in books or even if it is used in a verbal-communication, people use it as or with reference. Especially users who tweet quotes, these are established words where it is printed again and again in different sources thus it has authority on its own. When one uses this in a communication, it is known that the words are not a product of the speaker but a quote in itself. Therefore if twitter users update their status by using quotes or words of wisdom, it is categorized as a written-form of tweet. It is not just formal but more articulate and sophisticated.
This idea however, does not apply to all the quote-tweets of the users because there are some users who produce their own sayings. With the intention of giving advice, motivation or words of wisdom, it is not possible that users can produce their own. An example of this is when Person C tweets, “Twitter is a river that we share. It flows us forward together. Don't pollute it with hatred, disrespect and rudeness.” This is a piece of advice given by a user who wishes that all Twitter users would not abuse the real usage and intention of Twitter. This advice can be categorized as a written-formed tweet as it is formal and very much sophisticated in its words and structure.
CONCLUSION Through the analysis, it can be seen that spoken form of tweets are mainly determined through the use of emoticons and punctuation marks. This is due to the fact that emoticons and punctuation marks replace tone, body language and intention in spoken language. The purpose for the use of spoken form in tweets are mainly to share feelings, thoughts and information, to show emotions as well as to share tips. The tendency to use spoken form could be because the Twitter user wants to address people from different background and the tweets carries less-serious tone. On the other hand, written form of tweets are seen to be influenced by the intention of the Twitter user and the intended meaning. As written form carries a more serious tone, tweets of written form are largely dedicated to the purpose of giving advice, words of wisdoms and to motivate.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Huberman B. A., Romero D. M., Wu F. (2004). Social Networks That Matter: Twitter Under The Microscope. Retrieved on 11 February 2011 from http://www.arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0812/0812.1045v1.pdf
Java A., Song X., Finin, T., Tseng B. (2007). Why We Twitter: An Analysis of a Microblogging Community. Advances in Web Mining and Web Usage Analysis. Retrieved on 4 February 2011 from http://books.google.com.my/books?hl=en&lr=&id=8me70KLsvw4C&oi=fnd&pg=PA118&dq=twitter&ots=x4uBcpsg-m&sig=R2kSPvMFkjRdpcVvDMm0GHBRrE8#v=onepage&q=twitter&f=false
Islamic feminism is a form of feminism concerned with the role of women in Islam. It aims for the full equality of all Muslims, regardless of gender, in public and private life. Islamic feminists advocate women's rights, gender equality, and social justice grounded in an Islamic framework. Although rooted in Islam, the movement's pioneers have also utilised secular and European or non-Muslim feminist discourses and recognize the role of Islamic feminism as part of an integrated global feminist movement.
Advocates of the movement seek to highlight the deeply rooted teachings of equality in the religion, and encourage a questioning of the patriarchalinterpretation of Islamic teaching through the Quran (holy book), hadith (sayings of Muhammad) and sharia (law) towards the creation of a more equal and just society.
Muslim majority countries have produced several female head of states and prime ministers: Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, Mame Madior Boye of Senegal,Tansu Çiller of Turkey, Kaqusha Jashari of Kosovo, and Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia. Bangladesh was the first country in the world to have one female head of state follow another, those two being Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina.
Interactive Patterns in an English Audio-Video Speaking Class
in CALL Environments
Part A:
The research article, Interactive Patterns in an English Audio-Video Speaking Class in CALL Environments (2009) by Zhihong Lu, Ping Li and Peifeng Du suggested that the world today is in need of modern education updates. Particularly in College English education, both its teaching objectives and practical approaches have gone through tremendous change. In China, the present objectives of the College Education focuses on improving students’ communication skills through increased listening and speaking practice. The department has adopted the method of communicative language teaching (CLT) in computer-assisted language learning (CALL) environments. With this method, students have more chances to participate and practice through interactive patterns which improve their language and communicative skills. Research has proved that the use of computer in classrooms to facilitate the students is certainly a necessity. Lu, Li and Du have reviewed literary works by various writers which have relations with communicative language ability, interaction and interactive patterns and group work. All those key components are based on the research done by Lu, Li and Du. They reviewed an article from Bachman, entitled Communicative Language Ability (CLA) model. The article explained about the communicative language ability. It clarified that language competence, strategic competence and psycho physiological mechanism are what determine an individual’s facility with a language. Bachman said that English audio-video speaking class’s main purpose is to create as many opportunities as possible for students to communicate with one another in the target language in a nearly authentic environment. Lu, Li and Ding also reviewed an article by Ellis (1985) on Interaction and interactive patterns. Ellis defined the term ‘Interaction’ as the discourse jointly constructed by the learner and his interlocutors. She said that interaction is essential to one’s language acquisition. Other articles reviewed by them are by Krashen (1985) and Vygotsky. The method used in this research paper is through research question. In the research question the author will analyze the correlated data from the author’s own classes at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT). This study used quantitative and qualitative approaches and lasted from September 2007 to January 2008. The subjects of the study consist of 30 non-English majors in their junior year of college, randomly chosen to those who scored above 545 of 710. The classes were conducted with the aid of the CALL environment with the help from the CD of the course book Learning English Through Culture: Viewing, Listening, Speaking (Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2007). The author supervised and monitored the students’ performance through a touch screen LCD control panel. The instruments used in this research were questionnaire and exams. A questionnaire was distributed at the end of every semester to evaluate the effects of learning and teaching. There were 34 questions covering the teaching materials, in-class activities, teaching approaches, the teacher’s roles, and effects of learning and teaching. Meanwhile the exams were done at every beginning of the semester, a pre-test was conducted through a pair-work dialogues and three person group discussions on certain topic in order to access the students’ spoken English proficiency. The findings are categorized into a few sub-categories which are favored interactive patterns and students’ speaking ability, the use of CALL to improve students’ English, the change of teacher’s roles and the organization of group work. The result shows that a total of 96.61% of the students chose that pair-work dialogue and small group discussion, of not more than 5 people), as the optimal speaking activities in English audio-video speaking class. Besides that, 96.61% of the students acknowledged that communicative activities and oral presentations are helpful in improving their speaking ability. In addition, a total of 93.22% agree that computer-assisted language learning environment is helpful in increasing their oral production. Furthermore, the result shows that teacher’s roles are expected to change from the role as an instructor to multiple roles such as activity organizer, coordinator and facilitator. To sum it up, small group discussion consists of 3 to 5 people on a group, in a CALL environment can better facilitate students’ English learning and communicative abilities.The findings of the study have a few implications for teachers in language learning such as the center of EAVSC should be shifted from the teacher to students, the teacher should play multiple roles to facilitate student’s learning and improve their communicative abilities, the teacher should be capable of utilizing the CALL environment to optimize teaching effects and lastly, the teacher should continue further research on better interactive patterns in different contexts.
Part B:
One of the theoretical approaches of the Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) is the integrative approach. In general, “integrative approach is the idea of integrating or combining all or some aspects of several different schools of thought to promotewellness” (Wisegeek.com). However in CALL, integrative approach is integrating the use of technology with language learning. The two main ideas propagated by integrative approach are computer as a tool and authentic use of language. These ideas are present in the research article that we have chosen to analyze. The idea of computer as a tool is used to facilitate the language learning process of students in class. For example, the use of the CD of the course book Learning English Through Culture: Viewing, Listening, Speaking (Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2007) written by the first author and an American educator. This course book discusses the daily lives of American as experienced by Chinese international students. This method improves learners’ English competency and communicative skills, as well as broadening their cultural horizon.
Besides that, the teacher uses a touch screen LCD control panel to supervise and monitor students’ performance. Another focus of the integrative approach is the authentic use of language. This approach includes task-based, content-based and project-based method. In this research it can be seen how the teacher has conducted the interactive activities through oral presentations, pair work dialogues and discussion within the group of 3 to 5 students, to make sure the students take part in the activities mentioned. These activities are carried out with the aim of developing students’ communicative language ability. Their oral responses in the interactive activities were recorded for evaluation by the teacher. Another evaluation is made by the teacher by carrying out a pre-test at the beginning of the semester to assess the students’ spoken English proficiency. The test was done through pair-work dialogues and 3 people group discussion on certain topics. A post-test on similar topics was given to the students at the end of the semester to assess the students’ achievements and the impact of the teacher’s teaching.
In our opinion, the benefit of integrative approach would be the fact that learner is being put at the centre stage of language learning (LL). Besides the use of computer and technology as a tool, students are encouraged to interact with one another as computer is used for interactive communication. The interactive communication between students contributes to the improvement of the students’ speaking ability. However, the integrative approach demands a lot from the teacher as the teacher is required to change from a single role instructor to multiple roles. This may affect the performance of the teacher and leads to the slow progress on the part of the students.
Based on our experiences of learning using computer and technology, we are given the chance to enhance our language skills such as through presentations, group work and assignments. CALL environment encourages interactive communication between students, grabs the attention of the students through visual presentations or audio-video materials. As the students are required to participate in the interactive activities, they become active participants in the class. Therefore, the students are able to improve their language skills and communication skills. With the help of computer and technology, students are given more room to show their creativity, such as through visual presentation and at the same time making learning fun and interesting.
One suggestion on how the integrative approach can be applied in the process of teaching and learning language is through the application of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC). CMC is the process by which people interact through computer networks in online environments. People can create exchange and perceive information through email, video, audio, chat, bulletin boards and etc. The consistent use of CM supplies teachers with more effective and enjoyable teaching experience and cater students with more opportunities for communication, collaboration and information. CMC promotes freedom in communication and language practice. Teachers and students can discuss and communicate with each other anytime or anywhere that is convenient for everybody. Students gain more opportunities to practice their English language as the freedom in the communication motivates students to communicate with a high amount of writing. Besides that, the application of CMC does not limit the teachers and students to the traditional classroom experience. They are exposed to the experience of discovery and exploration of more topics and language functions outside the classroom.
References
Li Xiao, Cao Ru-Hua. (2006). Integrating Computer-Mediated Communication into and EAP Course. ProQuest Educational Journal. Retrieved from Retrieved from http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=2&did=1941248661&SrchMode=1&sid=3&Fmt=6&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1295317418&clientId=39685
Zhihong Lu, Ping Li, Peifeng Du. (2009). Interactive Patterns in An English Audio-Video Speaking Class in CALL Environments. Proquest Education Journal. Retreived from http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=31&did=2011796511&SrchMode=1&sid=1&Fmt=3&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1295317006&clientId=39685
What Is An Integrative Approach (n.d). Retrived on 16th January 2011 from http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-an-integrativeapproach.htm
