1. Do you think that blogging activity improves your writing skill?
Blogging activity has improved my writing skill as I did a lot of writings for the postings in my blog. I believe that all student wanted to give their very best in their blog, so do I. For this IT and Language course, the syllabus help me a lot in writing skill. For example during tutorial class we have been given a task to explore the ESL websites. Before this, I never know that there are various interactive and interesting English websites that available on the internet. So, from all this websites, I learn something especially for my English language competency.
2. Do you think that blog is a useful learning experience for you?
Definitely, in my opinion, blog is very useful especially for me as I can convey my ideas and message via blog to others. As for me, I really enjoy blogging as I can explore any information regarding my course besides it gives me freedom to learn on my own. Moreover, the activities during tutorial class is very interesting for instance online language game, online quizzes, ESL websites etc.
3. What do you think that you need to know before you can complete the blogging activity successfully?
Before I can complete the blogging activity, I would like to know how to make my blog more attractive. I feel that, there are lots of things that I have to explore. I wanted to put some elements that can attract people to visit my blog again and again and they enjoy visiting my blog. If you have any suggestion, just post your comment to me, I will accept all your good ideas and advices in order to improve my blog.
4. What are your problems that you face using blog?
The problems that I facing while using blog is in organizing my blog. While writing in the blog I wanted my blog to look well organized especially the words and the pictures that I wanted to put together. Some of the picture I cannot arrange it properly as I wanted, may be because of the blog template that I have choose or may be I have not learn that particular skill.
5. Will you tell your friends, recommend to others about blogging?
Of course I will suggest my friends to join blogging activities by having an active blog. Blogging is not a wasting of time, as we will obtain many useful information and skill. Don't worry if you are not good in computer literacy. You can just ask your friends and teachers who are master in this skill or you can just explore by yourself. As a result you become an autonomous learner which finally will benefit you.
6. Now that you are able to blog online will you continue using it even after the SKBP is over?
I will continue using blog although the SKBP is over. If I have something to share with my friend and others, I would like to use blog. So far, this is the helpful way for me to share my experience or thought with other people.
"Beyond Concordance Line: Using Concordances to Investigate Language Development"
Hi there! For this posting I would like to discuss about the article by Arshad Abd. Samad. Arshad Abd. Samad try tell us on how by using the concordance, we can examine the language expansion. First of all, the language corpus offers a useful resource in language learning in nowadays and during the era of computer-assisted language learning (CALL). According to Woorlad (2000), the language corpus is very useful as it has been used as the basis of dictionaries and teaching material. Its use is now better as the easy availability of concordance software such as Wordsmith, MonoConc Pro and Microconcord. This software can help in analyzing language data and greatly extend the possible of a corpus in language pedagogy. Frequently, corpora assist to notify on how words and grammatical structure. Therefore, teachers, researchers and language learner typically look at concordance lines to learn how words and grammatical constructions are used. Schmitt argues that, the benefits of using corpus is to help students to “look at the systematically systematicity of language as an interesting linguistic puzzle, rather than a set of boring rules to be memorized”. RANGE is a new software that developed by linguistics practitioners has provided an additional viewpoint to corpus studies. In Malaysia, two efforts that have been done about the Malaysian learner’s corpus that collected by University Malaya and the English of Malaysian school students or EMAS corpus by researches of University Putra Malaysia. According to Arshad, the EMAS corpus consists of close to half a million word. The students that involved in this study had been asked to write three essays of different topics. Besides, the students were also consists of three age groups, which are year five of primary school, form one and form four of secondary school. From this study, they can inspect language development by comparing the performance of three age group, such as their language productivity and vocabulary use. Beside that, by using software such as RANGE, the sophistication of vocabulary also can be determined. In conclusion, this article is actually tried to concern the use of a corpus in language teaching and learning. Even though concordance software can help in analyzing the language data accessible, but many may still be easily disturb by the huge amount of data available. Besides, this article has tried to present the significance of corpus data in investigating the language development without having to analyze concordance line.
My friend and I have discovered concordance on a poem 'Ode on a gracian urn' by John Keats. For example the usage of the word 'are' in this poems:
What men or godsare these? What maidens loth? (Stanza 1)
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard (Stanza 2)
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; (Stanza 2)
Who are these coming to the sacrifice? (Stanza 4)
The use of concordance in litearary work are to analyze the repetition of keywords in the prose fiction such as poems, drama, short stories etc. Beside that, it can also comparing the different usage of the same word. For example the word 'are' that had been given above, showed you the different location of the word 'are' which are in the beginning and in the middle of the lines. Furthermore, concordance can help you in finding and analysing the phrases and idioms and finally it can creates indexes and word list that is very useful for publishing.
If you want to see more about the concordance in this poem you can visit this website
Online Quiz Results :: Kemahiran Asas ICT Your Score : 20/30
Online Quiz Results Summary
Your #Attempts : 1 Total Class #Attempts : 586 Your Quiz Score : 20/30 Your Highest Score Ever : 20 Note: This may not be your final marks. Due to some of the subjective and semi-objective questions (short essay and fill in the blank). Bottom of Form
After I have done UJI ICT for the ASAS LEVEL for about 30 minutes, I felt that I need to know more about computer literacy. Actually I'm not satisfied with my mark, the problem is the test was conducted in Malay language. There are some terms that I didn't understand as I usually know the terms in English. But, UJI ICT for ASAS LEVEL is only a basic knowledge that actually each student should know. All the questions is not too difficult as compared to UJI ICT for LANJUTAN LEVEL. Furthermore, these kinds of test will give us advantages in order to improve our ICT knowledge, from here we will know which level we are in. As for me, I believed that after using the computer and it applications, we will master the skill step by step.
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is widely used by our nation and it seems to affect more aspects in our lives as ICT is developing every day. There are discussions that concerning about the computer usage in education and it had rapidly passed through a number of phases. The first phase is on the need of computer literacy which emphasized on computer awareness and computer programming. Next, the second phase is emphasized on the role of the computer as a tool, and as a method for teaching problem solving. Finally, the third phase that recently addresses issues related to computer applications in support of the curriculum. Thus, ICT in education is one of the aspects that we are common with in our daily life. It gives several impacts towards learners, teachers and teaching.
First of all, ICT in education give impact in learning and learners. For student, ICT can attract student’s interest in learning as it provides wide array of information, study guide and effective lessons. Student can more understand about the lessons besides they can spend much time by searching information and doing online activities. This will help student in order to improve their attainment in studying. There are six studies that showed statistical evidence that ICT can enhance attainment in subjects. For example, UK’s largest impact study shows a raise in subject performance through ICT use in English, science and design, and technology. Also specific ICT uses, such as interactive whiteboards in the UK, had a positive effect on pupil’s performance in literacy, mathematics and science tests compared to students in other schools. They especially improved the performance of low achieving pupils in English and impact was greatest on writing. Secondly, ICT in education make the teaching and learning session more effective.
Wellington reported that, teachers use computers in their classroom not because of the new technology but rather because of the positive results they bring to student achievement. Computer can help student by handling a wide range of activities and carried out the programmed functions at amazing speed. Student also can check exercises after they are done, move students gradually from easier to more difficult exercises according to their levels and abilities. According to Hoffman, when students fail to answer questions correctly or perform activities, the computer can simulate, drill, or explain the phenomenon in a way that makes it easier for the learner to understand.
Thirdly, ICT gives impact to teachers in increasing enthusiasm for the use of ICT. Study showed that teachers gain a positive attitude towards ICT through government interventions and training programs. As we know, job market now is searching for people who has ICT knowledge and competent in English. Therefore, this policy is to make sure that all teachers are well-equipped with ICT knowledge, so that they can teach their student effectively. Besides, using ICT in teaching can give teachers many ideas about teaching skill and new activities in class. There are many websites that provides teacher a wide range of ideas in teaching such as ESL Cafe, Englishpage.com, usingenglish.com and so forth.
In conclusion, ICT gives good advantages in education for the learners and teachers. ICT also can help student and teacher with the interesting activities that provides in the websites. The effectiveness of that kind of activities gives teachers ideas in teaching, so that student can enjoy their lesson. As a result student can more interest in studying ICT not only the activities but also the wide array information that can easily get from the internet sources.
If you still remember, our previous generation used type writer to compose their article, essays, report, books and so forth. This traditional way of composing a paper is a period before computer is introduced to people. Therefore, they have to seat in front of aging type writer surrounded with handwritten notes and once they made mistake, it is uneasy to delete, as a result, crumpled papers are scattered below the desk. But, after computer is introduced to people, writing works are easily to complete. According to Richard Hanson, there are four steps that involved in order producing a book which are:
Brainstorming: Rapid entry, development, and organization of ideas. Entry should be either textual (outlines) or graphics (rough diagrams). Structuring and adding details: Reorganizing and adding both textual and graphics detail to the outline of ideas produced by brainstorming. Formatting: Bringing all the elements (text, figures and tables) together into finished document. Output: Outputting the finished document to either a specified device or file.
Here are some tools that are readily available in computer to support each of writing steps. 1. Outliner 2. Graphics editor 3. Multitasking or equivalent operating system 4. Spreadsheet 5. Thesaurus 6. Spell checker 7. Word processor/ Page makeup 8. Grammar checker
Meanwhile, tools that are not ready available are: i. Integrated knowledge database ii. Target audience suitability analysis iii. Style/Format/Taste advisor
Mark Warschauer gives examples of computer as tool, which consists of word processor, grammar checker, concordancers and collaborative writing. For example:
Word processing: Microsoft word, Claris Works, Microsoft Works, Simple Text and Teach Text. 1. Grammar checkers: Grammatik 2. Concordancers: Oxford’s MicroConcord 3. Collabrative writing: Daedalus Integrated Writing Environment, Aspects and MacCollabrator.
Here, I would like to suggest an online activity to student in order to improve their writing skill. You can learn from the online writing activity as there is a guideline for to write an essay. For example, you can click on this website:
In this website, there is a site for student activities. For instance you can try to write a persuasive essay and there is a writing workshop that will guide you to compose that kinds of essay. It is very useful to student as you will be given tips on how to a good essay and what you have to do is just follow the tips.
ReadWriteThink offers a collection of online Student Materials to support literacy learning in the classroom. You can try the activities such as in ABC Match, Acrostic poems, alphabet organizer, Animal inquiry, Comparison and Contrast Guide, Readwrite Think Notetaker, Readwrite Think Webbing Tool, etc.
For example, readwrite think webbing tool provides a free-form graphic organizer for activities that ask students to pursue hypertextual thinking and writing. The tool provides a quick way for students to trace out options and rearrange connections. Students can use the Webbing Tool to analyze readings as well as a prewriting activity and flowcharting tool. Students can drag the circle or box shapes representing their ideas to arrange any layout and relationship that they want. Each layer on the chart will have a different color border for the shapes that you choose. Customized versions of the tool, which include additional instructions and more focused choices, are included with some lessons.
Webenglishteacher.com is one of the websites for teachers to use and explore in order to teach their student. There are many references that can be used as teaching tools as it covers resources for primary to tertiary level. Besides, this website is not only can give advantages to teacher but also to English student and other people who interested in learning English. There is much information that we could find in this website such as grammar, poet, drama, vocabulary, games and so forth. For example, you can click the poetry icon and select William Butler Yeats and there will be lesson plan and teaching ideas.
There are some properties of electronics texts in this websites such as searches, link, footprints and plasticity. For example in terms of searches, there is a word dictionary searcher in this website. We can easily type the words that we wanted to find their meaning and the definition of the words will appear after that. Besides, if we wanted to search for information, just click on the links that provided in the website. It is very easy to find the information as there are many links that relate to our searches. I’m sure all websites have the properties of electronics texts in terms of footprints. The same thing in this website, we can easily trace the page that we had visit in this website as it can record each of our searching. Next, in terms of virtuality, there is a site for teacher where teachers can share their opinion on something that is discussed in the site. You can also ask question to the online members and you can get the answer from you online members.
So, if you wanted to explore for an interesting teaching skill or you are interested in learning English, do visit all these websites as it may give you ideas of teaching and learning:
There are many games that you should try for instance night before christmas, high tide, pool, Hansel and mining co, Mr. Carrot face, spider solitaire, gold miner’s holiday haul, Belle’s beauty boutique, spades, gold miner Vegas, bejeweled 2, the black knight and serf’s up.
I would like to say that all these kinds of games are suitable to play for children and teenagers. The games are mostly suitable for children aged 7 to 12 as it very easy and need your efficiency in handling the keyboard or mouse. Not only children can play the games, but teenagers also can enjoy playing it to fill their free time.
But all these games are not for entertaining only, it is also can educate people as there are lesson when you play it. For example, the black knight game is a game that requires us to read the instruction before you start the play. It is because each level of the game has target that player must achieve. Besides, the usage of old English words also had in this game. So, player must read carefully in order to achieve the target and the reading during the play is what I said earlier can educate children in reading and improve their English.
Besides, I would like to share another website that could give advantages to all kids in order to learn English. Just click at http://www.free-english-games.com/ but before that, you must sign in to this website, so that you can play the free game. All the games in this website are suitable for primary student as it can help students to improve their grammar, pronunciation, spelling and sentence structure.
For instance, you can try the Coco Nuts game, where it requires you to listen carefully the words and match it with the correct spelling as it has two similar sound words.
Furthermore, if you want to practice your listening and spelling skills, try Spelling Bee game by listening to the words and spell it correctly within time given. Other games such as Jungle Guy, Space cat and The Swap Game are also will help you in frequently misspelled words, irregullar verbs and sentence structure. So, teachers can also introduce all these games to their student as online teaching activities that will make the teaching and learning session more interesting and effectively.
For your information, I have joined dance club at my college, we are well known as Artis’z and we have our own dance club named ‘Senandika Tari’. What I’m going to say here is we have an invitation that asked us to perform cha cha dance during their faculty annual dinner. So, I have to search about cha cha dance information as we never perform those kinds of dancing.
Therefore, I have searched for many websites that relate to cha cha dance. These are the following websites that I have visited:
For example at http://www.thedancestore.com/ you can find the information about cha cha dance as there are explanations about the moves, the music, and history. There are also some tips for the beginner to improve their skills of dancing. Besides providing online text that allows us to get some information, it had free video instruction as an introduction to cha cha that we can watch in various types of media player such as real player, windows media, quicktime and flash. At this website you also can buy cha cha videos and DVD’s via online.
Here, I would like to share with you the cha cha video, and I hope you enjoy watching it. For those who also has same interest with me, let share your experience with me Do visit to this website as you can watch more videos about cha cha dance besides you can learn how to cha cha. http://www.learntodance.com/
We meet again for my second posting. Today I would to talk about my task that was given by our beloved lecturer, Datin Dr. Norizan. Our task for today is about reading comprehension that includes restructuring of text, matching or jigsaw reading, and problem solving. Besides, we have to do some online reading such as reading for pleasure, reading for task completion, reading for instruction, incidental reading, and reading for information.
Before I visit this website, I don't know what is jigsaw reading but I found it interesting after trying some of the activities. First of all, I have tried the cubism: a different way of seeing. There are ten questions that you can answer after you read the paragraph of cubism. After answering the multiple choice answers you can get the marks and apart from that you can evaluate yourself in reading for comprehension. During the activities, the online reading that involved are reading for information, reading for task completion, reading for instruction and incidental reading.
Besides there is also matching picture with the exact word that you can try.Therefore, this kind of website is beneficial and informative to all of you. So gain something new as there are lots of fun activities there.
Hello, I am a new comer here. What a relieve at last i manage to create my own blog. Actually, this blog is for my SKBP 1023 course. Hopefully by getting involve in blogging I could improve my English and computer skill.
