The Online Test

For our sixth and final posting, we were to discuss on several things or activities that we have done throughout the course. First, in our last tutorial, which was held last week, we did an online test to test our knowledge in the computer learning and skills. As for me, I only managed to get, 21 over 30 quite a disappointing score compared to my fellow friends in the class. When Datin mentioned about a test, it was already quite nerve-racking for me. That was in the lecture hall when she mentioned about the online test. However, once entering the lab and after being right in font of the computer screen looking at the questions, I didn’t feel nervous at all. It was even quite funny for us because the questions were in Bahasa and some of the terms seemed so weird and alien to us. Not to say that we’re really good in English and use high-sophisticated words but they were simply weird and we had to ask Datin to translate the words for us. To be honest, I really didn’t know the answers to some of the questions even if it were in English.

Now, to discuss on the ability of the test; there are a few things such as the test gave immediate feedback on the results after completing it which is good because we don’t have to wait or worse receive emails just to be informed on the result. Plus, the test has been set to randomization which means that everyone in the whole lab or even if all the students in the Language Centre do the test at the same time, each will have different sets of questions for them to answer. This can definitely make sure that the students will do the test seriously for they cannot get away by copying other peoples answers. On the other hand, one of the security features is the students must insert their identification number and password before they start the test. This security system however could not make sure that the person doing the test is truly the person whose I.D number was filled in. Therefore of course being the sneaky students that we are, some of us can just ask our friend to do the test for us. Besides that, a few things that I would like to suggest to improve the online test is that the test should include ways to check on the answers that we have gotten wrong and also make an English version. It could definitely benefit in many ways.

With that, on a scale of 1 to 10 I give the online test a six meaning being informative but could be more informative and friendly. To write a comment on the course, I think it is already good and has definitely given many information but the problems with the server in the lab classes could really effect the learning process.

I want to thank Datin Norizan for all the knowledge and support that you have given to us and I really hope to be under your class soon once again soon.

Online Quiz Results
Top of Form
Results Summary


Online Quiz Results :: Kemahiran Asas ICT
Your Score : 21/30

Online Quiz Results Summary

Your #Attempts
: 1
Total Class #Attempts
: 374
Your Quiz Score
: 21/30
Your Highest Score Ever
: 21
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

The Online Language Proficiency Assessment

My fifth posting is based on the topic ‘Online Language Proficiency Assessment’ written by Norizan Abdul Razak, Hazita Azman, Sallehuddin Abdul Aziz, Eong Fook Fei and Afendi Hemat from The National University of Malaysia. The article is taken from our Online Teaching Learning book, which contains many information and research work in the area of online applications. Here is the summary on the specific topic given.

The introduction explains us on how the mastery of English is instrumental for developing nations such as our country, Malaysia to gain competitive edge in the global market. However, at the same time, English language is never to substitute or compete with the socio cultural role that has been well imbedded and well entrenched in the national language, Bahasa Melayu.

Therefore, this article mainly introduces the online English Language proficiency test for academicians to apply English for academic and professional purposes as our University is in its efforts to remain competitive in a borderless world. One of UKM’s efforts was to ensure a least 50% of English was used by 2005. More recently, faculties have been informed that the Senate encourages 30-70% of first degree programmes to be conducted in English. These decisions are also in keeping with the university’s strategic plans for internationalization of its programmes. With that, the need for in-service English Language Training for UKM lecturers was also important to become a world-class workforce. This step is crucial and necessary as these lecturers’ language experiences as well as proficiency levels vary given that some were educated in English locally and overseas, while others who were born after 1963, and had studied locally would be the products of the national language education system. A language competency profiling of these lecturers will be useful as the information will guide and inform in their placement of language training modules. The online test can be accessed anywhere in the campus, with less anxiety and with apprehension level minimized as a very suitable approach.

With that also, the Learningcare was introduced; a web-based fully integrated e-learning solution, which provides UKM community a tool to develop, implement and share effectively the use of web-based technology for intra- and inter- organization process. Therefore, the proficiency test was constructed using the LearningCare web-based system. The article inserts the online test specifications, which are content, format and timing, criterial levels of performance and results reporting as to show the quality and facilities constructed in the test. Hence, based on the report after the test took trial, the researches summed up a conclusion that there were many limitations with the present web-based system especially in the test design and reporting on the scores. Ideally, the online test should inform on the lecturers’ general language ability, linguistic knowledge, and domain use of language, as well as some indication on oral and written ability and at the same time to also take into accounts the considerations and limitations of the academicians who are adult lifelong learners.

ONLINE JOURNALS

For our fourth posting, which was quite an interesting one, we were to write a summary of the topic that we searched from the three online databases subscribed by PTSL and our experience using the facilities. It was a good thing that I had help and guidance from my respective lecturers who gave much information on how to search for journals faster and easier. Based on the topics given by my lecturer, I found several small topics related to one of the topics given which is ‘E-learning for language studies’. Therefore, here is the summary for three different journals that I have managed to search and understand more about.

First, in a source named ‘EBSCOhost’, I found a related title, which is ‘The Future of E-learning’ by Alan Clarke. The article or the author reflects on the potential benefit of electronic learning. He says that learning with technology can be motivating. It also mentioned that e-learning could offer flexible learning on demand by providing access to digital learning recourses for individual use, blending traditional and innovative methods to meet the needs of learners. He cites that learning through information and communications technology (ICT) had the extra benefit of improving the learning of technical skills.

Then, I came across an article about a company in the United States called the WestNet Learning Technologies. The article was written by Jeff Katzman and it is from ‘Proquest’. To summarize this article, it was mainly explaining or informing about the company’s initiative to remain competitive in the workplace training and development field besides introducing the e-learning. WestNet Learning consistently reassesses its information systems. In 2005, WestNet streamlined its production process to develop and publish learning products by creating a single source of content. One factor that drove WestNet to initiate the streamlining project is that there was a sense of urgency because the current learning content management system was no longer meeting the company’s long-term goals. The use of extensible markup language (XML) to develop learning objects versus course-based formats was critical for the development of WestNet’s e-learning courseware. A ‘Xyleme Studio’ provided the content into XML content, WestNet will be able to utilize its textbooks, instructor and student guides, assessments, and e-learning to achieve significant benefits such as the use of e-learning for language and other assessments.

For my third source of database that I have managed to find is from ‘Science Direct’ titled ‘Are language Learning Websites Special?’ by Lesley Shield and Agnes Kukulska-Hulme. The article focuses on the general notions and concepts of usibility and the term “pedagogical usibility” which focusing on the close relationship between usability and pedagogical design. The article examines how language learning and teaching, in particular Technology Enhanced Language Learning (TELL), has approached usability when developing technology-enhanced learning materials. Usable systems are generally regarded as being efficient, easy to learn, effective to use, and enjoyable or engaging from the user’s perspective. The authors have been investigating aspects of pedagogical usability, that is, usability as this affects educational website design and development, particularly in the context of supported open and distance learning.

A lot has been gained from my experience in learning how to search for sources using the TSL database. PTSL has definitely made it easier for students to do their research and analyze journals but a more important thing is to find large numbers of resources in a small amount of time first. After using the databases, I feel that I do not have to worry if I need to search for more articles or journals for my other courses in the coming semesters. Besides that, with this posting, I have learned how to summarize long articles but also understand them and give my own point of view. I hope that these lessons that have been well given to me could be used in the coming future.

BLOGGING

For our third post in our blog, we were to discuss on blogging, our understanding and our own experience in creating blogs. First, I will summarize on a topic introduced in the OLT book which is "Blogging and Trainee Teachers’ Professional Development", written by Malachi Edwin Vethamani. The article first wrote the introduction of blogs on trainee teachers; as part of their coursework and professional development. Trainee teachers’ had been introduced to using computer-mediated applications in the form of an e-forum as part of their coursework conducted by a researcher.
There are two main reasons for the use and application of blogs for trainee teachers’; first, to provide them a first hand experience of using the applications to develop their confidence in using the internet as a resource for teaching and learning. Second, to provide the teachers experience of reflecting on their reading and teaching text during the simulated teaching sessions. However, as stated by Vethamani, computer mediated applications are a "more recent but less conventional means of professional development".
Then, the article goes in depth on blogs ang blogging. In short, a blog is a "web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual. Typically updated daily, blogs after reflect the personality of the author". Most of the researches talked about blogging as a reflection of experiences in writing. Dewey’s defines reflection as "the kind of thinking that consists in turning a subject over in the mind and giving it serious thought".
Lastly, the research mainly concludes that the data from the questionnaire and the analysis of the trainee teachers’ blogs indicates that blogging is beneficial for their professional development.

On the other hand, from a student’s point of view, my experience in creating my own blog has been a very interesting one. I have heard of blogs for quite some time but never thought of doing one of my own until being introduced or actually forced to do one. When I think of it, it does not excite me as much as when I’m really doing it. When I actually post something or insert stuff I like, only then I could feel the excitement and think how great it would be if people do look into my blog. However, having blogs or looking into other peoples blogs does have its advantages and disadvantages. A certain advantage of having a blog of our own is that we could express our feelings and thoughts freely. What is bad about it is when people write or twist facts or spread rumors about other people in their blogs that could create controversy and war among us. Besides that, blogs can be a medium to spread information to the people around the globe the fast and easy way. It can also be used as an application in teaching and learning as explained in detail in the article that I have summarized above. Writing in blogs could certainly help with our writing skills just as any other writing lessons done in class but more fun because we can have comments from all sorts of people in many different places and write in creative beautiful pages designed by ourselves. Finally, from the blogging activity, I have managed to improve my skills not only in writing but also in typing. I have gained confidence in expressing myself and in presenting my findings in front of an audience. In a nutshell, blogging has certainly helped me a lot not only for this course, but in all my courses that I am taking.

The Application of Concordance Software

Last week, our lecture was on the concordance program which is a program that could list specific words in a context. The actual name for the software is a ‘concordancer’ . The main purpose for concordance is to analyze a certain text and it is very suitable for those who want to study texts closely or analyze language in depth. Concordance has its many uses; it can make indexes and word lists, count word frequencies, compare different usages of a word, analyze keywords, find phrases and idioms and on top of all, our findings or analysis could be published to the web.
Besides that, the application of concordance includes; language teaching and learning, data mining and clean-up, literary work and linguistic, for translation, corpus linguistics and content analysis.
Therefore, after a brief introduction on the main topic, I will now write on the tutorial that was held last week, also on concordance. We were divided into groups, 3 or 4 persons per group to analyze the use of certain words that has been concorded in a certain text provided in the presentation. The first one was on the word ‘a’. We analyzed the use of the word whether it was used before a noun, an adjective, an adverb, etc. For example, ‘a minute before’. The word ‘a’ is used before a noun and after completing the analysis, we concluded that nouns is the commonest part of speech used after a determiner such as ‘a’. A determiner used before an adjective also could be found in the text, such as ‘a clever lad’. The word clever modifies or gives more information on the noun ‘lad’, therefore it clearly is an adjective. Besides that, what I just managed to learn even being in the IT for language class is that the phrase ‘a pretty quick pace’ uses the word ‘a’ before an adverb even though ‘pretty’ and ‘quick’ seems like an adjective at first. In the phrase, ‘pretty’ modifies the adjective ‘quick’ which modifies the noun ‘pace’. Then, we went through another text and this time, it was about the word ‘about’. After a thorough analysis, we discovered that the word is used commonly before a determiner such as ‘about the house’ and also before a pronoun and relative pronoun; ‘about my poor mother’, ‘about whom I had’. Nouns are also placed after the preposition ‘about’ such as ‘about 7 miles’. After doing the analysis, we had to present our findings in front of the class. Unfortunately, my name was not called to represent my group’s analysis.
Lastly, we were assigned to write a summary on the topic 'Beyond Concordance Lines: Using Concordances to Investigate Language Development'. The Emas Corpora used to investigate language development is an untagged and unedited learner corpus that contains written data in the form of three essays written by about 800 students. What they had discovered or the results they managed to collect, which indicated that the older age groups, the form4 students tend to use a wider and more sophisticated range of words were made done simply with the aid of the concordance program. In addition, what interests me was the quote in Hunston (2002) notes "The essence of work on learner corpora is comparison". Then the explanation on how the values in the study can be regarded as benchmarks against which to compare future groups of students as well as assess the developement of the language program in Malaysia in general. Its significance is to simply say how concordance could be a great help in the language study not only now but also in the thats ahead of us.

first posting

in this posting, i am supposed to discuss the differences and similarities of sms, email and chat language. first of all, i'd wish to write down the similarities between sms, email and chat language. to start, all those are electronic texts and are basically used to make the world of communication a lot more easier for people nowadays. they simply have more convertions of speech rather than writing besides that they are sort and simple. That is why so many ways of writing in sms, email and chat are introduced which mostly are the same in each. for example, we use short forms and abbreviation, new spelling, capitalization to express feelings, trailing dots, all types of punctuation marks, code switching,repetition of consonents and vowels and many more. in addition, they could also insert attachments and templates to make the mutual text more fun and interesting.

there are also some similarities between email and chat such as they both could insert smiley and emoticons while sms could only insert smiley. besides that, email and sms are similar for both can provide the specific time and date and also provide service on forwarding messages to single and multi-receipants at the same time.

what is different between sms, chat and email is that sms and chat are both synchronous services while the email is a asynchronous service. chat and email could also have hypertexts or hyperlinks but it is different with the sms because it does not provide this service.

introduction

this is my first blog ive ever done my whole life. frankly, ive never even thought of having one if not for this course. Mainly because i dont have time to connect to the internet as often and there probably arent much stuff happening in my life to talk about. as for now, i guess ill have to share my experience on making my own blog. at first, before even entering the class, i thought there sure will be some difficulties; with so many instructions, keywords to fill in and all sorts of unfamiliar words. however, with my lecturer's help, i have completed the task without any complications. now, i can start posting my thoughts and share it with the whole class. A big thanks to Datin Norizan for introducing such a fun class!