Task 6 (Blog Questionnaire)

This is the last task for our Skbp1023, I'm so glad that I've finished all the tasks given. But this doesn't mean that this will be the last posting from me. I will continue blogging as this is will be my new hobby. Now, let's continue to the questionnaire.

1. Do you enjoy blogging?
Yes or No?
IF YES OR NO please explains why:
Yes I'm really enjoy blogging. Blogging give me a space where I can write without feel doubt that I make mistakes as when I talk with someone. Blogging also enjoyable because it gives me freedom to show my creativity creating the blog.

2. Based on your experience what is the benefit of blogging?
As I said before, blogging gives me the freedom to me show my creativity but now I would like to say that blogging also gives me freedom to write and voice out my opinion. Based on my experience blogging could enhance my writing skill as well as increase my vocabularies. Therefore I can write unlimited topics that interest me. Blogging can gives us money if we know the way to make it. So many advantages of blogging right?

3. Do you need more assistance to set up your blog?
Yes or No?
I think for now, I don't anymore assistance to set up the blog compare to before this. Credited to all my of friends that helps me on blogging.

4. Do you have any memorable/favorite topic in your blog?
Yes or No?
If YES Please list which topic?
Yes, and it is of course the memorable moment at the conference at the PNB Darby Park. I think all of the member of group 1 will choose this topic as their favorite topic. Until now, I still can't forget the food serves for us there. I wonder is there another chance like that for me in the future.

5 .List 5 advantages of blogging for you

• enhances writing skill
• increases vocabularies
• shares thought
• makes friends
• makes money
• gain experiences
• give us our own bibliography
  

6. List 5 disadvantages of blogging

• takes too much time to spend on blog
  
• blogging is not accessible without internet
• create provocation

7. Will you continue blogging after the course?
Yes or No?
If Yes or No please explain why:
Yes, I will continue blogging as it was enjoyable, to improve my writing skill, to gain my self esteem, and to be more confident in writing.

8. Do you think that blogging improve your writing? Yes or n?
Yes, absolutely

9. Do you think that we should continue with blogging activity for the next batch of students? Yes or no?
Yes, it is not fair for the next batch if they don't this kind of enjoyable moment of blogging.

10. Will you recommend your friend to blog? Yes or no?
Yes, of course I will do so and I did recommended it to some of my friends.

Leia Mais…

Task 5 (Concordance)

Hello all, I'm back with this posting on concordance. Frankly speaking, this is my first time I heard about this. For this time, I think it is hard for me to pronounce the word. It make my twisted to pronounce it.hehehehe.. But now, I manage to pronounce the word in a right way. From my understanding, concordance is a list of words in a piece of text or a collection of texts (usually referred to as a corpus). Corpus is collection of written words.

So now, the question is what is concordance used for?
1) Study of texts in linguists

• comparing different usages of the same word
• analyzing keywords
• analyzing word frequencies
• creating indexes and word lists
• count word frequencies
• find phrases and idioms
• publish to the web

2) In other fields such as content analysis in media studies, history and etc.

There are softwares which called concordancer(in general). Below is the one of the example of the software's interface.

Here I also provide links of article that I've read about concordance.
http://www.lextutor.ca/cv/Hands_on.html
http://www.nuis.ac.jp/~hadley/publication/jlearner/jlearner.htm

From the two articles I would like to make summary on that. I found out that when language learners use concordancer, they can discover rules of usage and grammar for themselves. They learn that language is complex and that rules are seldom true. Despite of learning the language is complex, they also learn to rely on their own judgment rather than the teacher. One more thing, concordancing is also benefit to the learners in training them to pay attention to the patterns of usage in their everyday reading.

That' all for this posting.

Leia Mais…

(Task 4) Ekom National Conference 2009

Hello there, we meet again on this posting. This posting will be all about the conference that was held at PNB Darby Park Hotel on 18th and 19th March 2009. The theme of the conference was "Bridging Digital Devices" which mean to narrow up the usage of ICT between the communities in the city with the communities in villages and rural areas. This is because ICT was very important in this era which is world is now borderless. Here, in this posting I am going to share with you all the two papers that had caught my attention in that conference. But, before that I would to thank to our tutor, Assoc.Prof.Datin.Dr. Norizan binti Abdul Razak because she had invited us to the conference. I am really enjoyed with the food. hehehe..

Let's move on to the paper works:

1) Online Practicum Placement System(OPPS)

This paper was presented by Mr.Wan Husin bin Wan Ishak from Universiti Utara Malaysia(UUM). This is all about one of the system that has been used by UUM to place all their practicum students without using the old system. This system only been used starting last year(2008) after undergoing all the research on it. This system is very useful because students do not have to find a place for their practicum by themselves but university will choose it for them. In addition, by using this system they can send students to the right agency because the agency will choose students that they want to be in their agency. By using this particular system also can reduce the time of every process regarding to the placement of the students compared to the old system. Believe it or not, if we use this system we can also help our earth because the use of paper were reduce as the system were all online and paperless. I think our university also need to apply this system in finding a place to the practicum students.

2) Reducing Writing Apprehension Through Blogging Activities

For this second paper work I think we were all attracted with the topic right? Because it is related to what we were going through now, BLOGGING. So, here I am going to talk about this paper work that was presented by Madam Azianura Hani binti Shaari from Uitm Penang. Even though she said that she was nervous and need to sit down while presenting, I think she had present the paper work clearly. If I am not mistaken, this topic is the most popular among other topic because there are arguments had been at the conference on this topic. First of all, let's the define the word "Apprehension" as the word was the keyword of what is the paper all about. "Apprehension" is defined worry or fear that something unpleasant will happen. In this context, "Apprehension" can be define as the negative feelings or perceptions regarding to the writing(usually own writing) such as afraid to make mistake, anxiety, and so on. The paper were telling us about the symptoms towards writing apprehension which are scared to write, hands cramp, hate writing, produced shorter essays, and ideas hardly to be developed. The paper also provided us with the factors that lead to writing apprehension, culture-face saving, proficiency level, lack of confidence, examination, teacher's comments, lack role models, and audience.
And the paper showed the advantages of blogging in reducing writing apprehension. First, blogging was the student-centered. Second, we do not need to show our face which call face-saving. Third, huge audience and mostly all the audience is the native speakers. Next, boost up confidence and motivation. Nevertheless, blogging also increases involvement of the passive students and the last but not least, promote brainstorming and peer review activities. You know what, I am very interested of this paper work because it is related to me. I am a apprehensive students that will think more than twice before writing something. But by blogging, I feel very comfortable because I do not have to face the people that going to read my writing. I think this activity(blogging) really helps. So, don' stop blogging.

Leia Mais…

(Task 3) The Search Engines

For the third posting, we were required to browse through these four search engines which are Mamma.com, Google Scholar, Yahoo.com, and Ericdigest.org. We have to classified them between similarities and the differences. Frankly, before this I just know only two search engines which are Google and Yahoo and I considered that Google and Yahoo was the only search engines in the world. But, I've been told from our tutor Assoc.Prof.Datin.Dr.Norizan binti Abdul Razak that there are many search engines instead of Google and Yahoo. So now, we only need to discuss four of them.

For the first one is Mamma.com. Mamma.com is a meta search engine with wide range searching for all webs that we search. It is suit enough with the tagline, The Mother Of All Search Engines.
Using Mamma.com was like using ten search engines at the same time. The results that we got is form several other search engines. But, we need to give specific name of something that we searching as the result will be too many for us to find the exact one if we do not give the specific name.

Second, Google Scholar. I've already know Google.com but I never know about this Google Scholr. One thing that comes in my mind when I heard the name, I thought this search engines just for students. But, it is also useful to the teaching team such as teachers, lecturers and so on because we can simply find scholarly articles, books, literatures and etc by using this search engines.

The third one is Yahoo.com. This is the very famous search engine among others because we already get use to it. When I was a child, I only this one type of search engine and I was thinking that this search engine is the same like windows in our computer as it the software that we need to have if we want to surf the internet. It sounds silly right but that was my thinking when I was first expose to the computer and internet. hehehehe...Just like other search engine, it provide us link to the web that related to what we have type on the search box. I like to use yahoo.com and I'm stiil using until now because it will remind to the first time I using the internet.

The last but not least, Ericdigest.org. This type of search engine is little bit different from the others above. This search engine provides access more on for educational purposes. In other hands, we can call this type of search engine as online library because we can search for the full text scholarly books, journals and so on by using it. But, if I given a choice, I prefer to use the other search engines from the above because the interface is not interesting for me.

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