CALL LESSON PLAN

Advice to Governors

By: Nizam Al Mulk

In one of the advice proposed by Nizam Al-Mulk in his work "Advice to governors", he mentioned about the roles of boon-companions. Boon-companions here refer to the companies of the king. There are many criteria needed to become a boon-companion. A boon-companion needs to be someone who is familiar, he must always be in a position of a body guard to the king, must have cheerful face, pure faith, able to keep secrets and wear good clothes. He must also be a good talker and pleasant partner to the king.

Apart from those criteria, there is another criterion that we personally feel a little bit unislamic about it which is agreeing on whatever the king says or does. If the boon-companions practice this kind of behavior in giving their service for the king it will somehow portray injustice which is absolutely unacceptable in Islam. The issue of injustice in this situation happens when the king does or says something that is not right in accordance to Islam then it is approved and supported by the boon-companions. 
As it is stated in the Holy Qur'an;



“…When you speak, speak with justice, even if it is against someone close to you…” 
                                                                                                          (Surah Al-An'am:152). 

So, what can we do in a way to Islamize the implementation of unislamic behavior practiced years ago in an Islamic country is that even if you are selected to become the company of the king you must always, by hook or by crook practice the Islamic teachings fully as how they are sent down from Allah S.W.T through His messengers. Islam is a comprehensive religion and you will not become a perfect believer of Islam if you only practice a part of it and at the same time abandoning what is it actually promoting to its believers. And from the part of the king, he should know that whatever he does or says, it must always be in line with the Islamic jurisprudence. 

Therefore, the moral lesson that can be taken from this idea about justice in governing a country in Nizam Al-Mulk's piece of work is that everyone from the king,the boon-companions and to the citizens, they must always speak the truth and practice justice in their deeds so that Islam will be seen as a just religion.

Sultanah's Dream

By: Rokheya Shekhawat Hossein


Sultana's Dream by Rokheya Shekhawat Hossein (1880 - 1932) is fundamentally dealing with 'Islamic' feminist movement which was initiated by Rokheya herself. 

This story was based on the real context of how women were treated in those days, particularly in India, women were totally secluded from the society and placed in zenana. Men neglected the rights of women to socialize with their own community. In respond to inequality in patriarchal society towards women, Rokheya came out with the idea of Ladyland as a paradox of the real societal treatment towards women. Unfortunately, her utopian idea on Ladyland is contradicting with the teaching of Islam since in Islam, man is regarded as a leader, protector and sustainer of the family.  

The injustice in Sultana's Dream:

           In Ladyland, men were kept indoor while women worked outside. Men were part of the society but shorn of power. They lived in seclusion and looked after the house and children. Women who were the dominant group did not consider men to fit for any skilled work. This reverse role of men and women is somehow unjust in Islam. 

          From the Islamic teachings that we understand, men should not be kept indoor and taking over all of the domestic works. While it is not the responsibility of the women to be the bread winners in the family because that is the duty of the husbands. Moreover, though women should do domestic works, it does not mean that they can be secluded from the society. In short, this utopian reverse role of two genders is unjust from Islamic point of view. 

          

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Major Reflection

What does each one of us has to say about this project...

Melati Md. Noor:

"It is something very fun even though it consumes a lot of efforts and time. We have learned many things through this and the most obvious one is on how to create a blog".

Naheed Azhari:

"I found that this portfolio-making project through the use of blog is very captivating and enjoyable although it takes a lot of my time and effort. Though I am a blogger myself, this task has given me more knowledge and how to go about making a creative outlook of a blog that portrays a lot about our personality and self-image. In the future I believe the skills (including teamwork and presentation skill) I gained will help me to become a more professional and interesting individual at the same time. Thanks to Computer Application and our passionate lecturer for this knowledge and oppurtunity! I really had fun doing this!"

Nik Izyani Nik Nordin:

"It was a very tough work at the beginning where we had to always meet up and updated every new assignment that we have been given despite other assignments that we had from other subjects. However, throughout the process I notice that our teamwork has become stronger and we understand each other more which I believe is one of the main aspects in the success of this project. After all, it is a great idea of having this kind of project for us to become creative in sharing the knowledge."

Raihan Mansor:

" I have learned so many things through this project especially on how to integrate knowledge with Islamic point of view. It was also a great experience on how we were extremely struggling for choosing the right topic and theme at the beginning but then with endless help and support by our lecturer, we managed to be on the right track."

***

Adding up on how all of us feel about this project...

From our personal view on the idea of doing this blog for the main project of this subject, we think that it is very much an interesting experience and beneficial work in preparing us to be creative and computer literate in today's world of information and technology. It is also one of the ways to share the knowledge with people from all over the globe and showing that this is the real product created by us. With regard to all of the tasks given, they were all actually in line with the objective of this course which is to use computer applications in language learning. The academic articles chosen were all about the computer applications like CMC, Concordancer, Corpus Linguistics and how did they relate to the process of language learning.

 It will also be an unforgettable memory of doing something technical when you didn't have the skills and you needed to sacrifice a lot in terms of time, energy, emotions, etc.

In making this project a success, we would like to forward our appreciation and most gratitude to the All Knowing Almighty God, Allah S.W.T for giving us such a smooth way and good communication among us and also to our respected and very enthusiastic lecturer, Madam Rozina Abdul Ghani for always be a good listener and critic. Last but not least, we would like to thank all of the classmates for being such great people in contributing to the success of this blog too. 

May all of our hard works is regarded as an ibadah and receive blessing from Him. 

InsyaAllah.

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Reflection III

Assignment 3: Corpus Lingusitics in Language Learning and Teaching 

In the advent of technology, world today gains full access to knowledge from diverse  civilizations, cultures and places. Children are exposed to the world without boundaries. In the light of language learning and teaching, technology has given great assistance to it when it allows data of million words to be kept in a corpus that can be easily accessed and managed. 

Moreover when a corpus is being published online, teacher and learners get free access to the corpus and this opens a larger, more fun and interactive way to learn and teach a language.

We learned from this event that technology has a lot to offer to language learning and teaching. Other than giving data to be analyzed, it facilitates both learners and teachers to understand the development of language in all forms i.e. written or verbal as it is a data that has been gathered in a period of time. 

It covers various aspects  in linguistics and literature; from vocabularies to meanings and contexts. The corpora available today include corpora from literary works, articles and newspapers, radio interviews and many others.

The only drawback to corpus linguistics is that the users are not informed about the details from where the data is being collected i.e. the gender, nationality, religion and age.

From Islamic viewpoint, corpus linguistics can be seen to be the bridge to a larger outlook of the world (that is, in the realm of knowledge and virtue). It enables learners and teachers to understand a language (for example, English) better and help them to use the language appropriately (respecting others, avoiding confusion and misunderstanding, encouraging goodwill) which in the long run helps to portray good characters and create unity, of which, Islam promotes and often found in verses of the Holy Quran.

"Indeed, those who fulfill their obligations and lead a righteous life, GOD loves the righteous" [QS 3: 76]

Reflection II

Assignment 2: Computer Mediated Communication

The study is basically conducted based on Lakoff's ideas on features of women's language which claim that women use certain linguistic features in their speech. Those features are lexical hedges, tag questions, rising intonation on declaratives, ‘empty’ adjectives, precise colour terms, intensifiers, ‘hypercorrect’ grammars, ‘superpolite’ forms, avoidance of strong swear words and emphatic stress. Samples of lines (English) written by participants (men and women) were randomly collected from a few profiles of Facebook accounts and then they were analysed by looking at those linguistic features of women’s language suggested by Lakoff. The findings shows that women’s language was used in written form the same as it was used in speech form. Some of them were used both by men and women but women used all the features in both forms. The most highly used linguistic feature of women’s language was rising intonation on declaratives with 12 times used by men and 40 times used by women. The least used of linguistic feature of women’s language was tag questions where it only appeared three times which was once by men and twice by women. The main reason why women inclined to use rising intonation on declaratives in written form was probably because they wanted to convey the message as similar as it sounded in their speech as women are known to be categorized as ‘feelers’. They tend to put importance on emotions while conveying messages whether in verbal or written forms. 

We think that computer has become a tool for people to communicate throughout the world regardless of age, genders, and religions. Traditionally speaking, CMC refers to those communications that occur via computer-format, for example e-mail, instant messages, chatrooms and text messaging. Other than that, social networking such as Facebook, Twitter and blog  also have become a popular channel for people to interact in the worldwide.

In teaching process, we believe that CMC can be a very good tool to assist teachers in their lesson plans. CMC seems to be beneficial in educational settings since  it  gives advantages for both teachers and students. CMC can be either synchronous or assynchronous where time and setting are independents. Both parties do not have to participate in exchanging information at the same time.  

Thus, CMC creates an opportunities for students to communicate with proffessionals which may be impossible in face-to-face communication. Besides, by using CMC in learning process, it allows students to actively participate in the discussion or by sharing experiences regarding on certain topics. It reduces shyness and increase self-esteem in students.

Personally, we feel that by using CMC in the discussion and assignments keeps us to stay in touch with each other virtually during holidays. CMC also helps us when we could not meet each other due to time constraint to make sure the assignments are completed before the deadline.

As for us, from the Islamic point of view, we believe that Islam does encourage us to make use of technology wisely. It is understandable that internet has rapidly grown as an essential source of information. CMC can be a channel for Muslims to discuss on matters concern. For example Islam.com, an Islamic portal covering wide range of topics related to Islam. There is a verse in the Quran surah Al-Baqarah ayat 231 mention that: 

                         Quran{45:13}

"He has subjected to you, as from Him all that is in the heavens and on the earth; Behold, in that are signs indeed for those who reflect"

We strongly agree that knowledge is not necessarily can be learn merely through books, but then knowledge can be found in many form, technology is one of the media that contributes in seeking knowledge.

Reflection I

Assignment 1: History of CALL

Basically, the purpose of the study chosen in this article is to evaluate out-of-class, electronic contact as an alternative to some face-to-face contact on the students who took the Spanish course at a US university. The participants are divided into two groups which are control group and experimental group. The control group is the students who use the chat room under the supervision of the teacher in completing their works. Whereas the experimental group is students who use the chat room out of the class time without the supervision of the teacher. The result shows that the experimental group engaged electronically more than the control group in completing their works. Finally, this study shows how chat room is perceived as a new way of learning that motivates students to participate in class discussion, improve writing skills and develop new ideas by using computers.

For us , we think that the use of computer to assist language learning is very crucial to understand how the integration of electronic technology can be manipulated as a medium to achieve the benefits in language learning advancement. Though computer was originated from the West, Islam welcomes and enjoys the use of technology for the betterment of human being (Previously there were a tendency to believe all Western's products were corrupted).


Then, by accumulating CALL, we could see that it further assists the role of teacher in enhancing the effectiveness of teaching methodology. 

Furthermore, as the era of technology advances, it should be clear for us to benefit what human's production has to offer. It means that the mind ('aqal') bestowed by Allah, and the product of it should be exploited to all human being. However, one must not totally abandon the traditional methods of teaching as it was all derived from human's production of mind as well. The fusion of past and present should be integrated in producing the best post-teaching methodology in the pipeline.


In a nutshell, it is best to integrate this discussion of CALL with the saying of Rasulullah's companion, Umar Ibn Khattab: "Teach your children with the era they live in." 

Assignment 3 (Summary of Empirical Studies)

STUDY 1

ESL STUDENT ATTITUDES TOWARD CORPUS USE IN L2 WRITING
BY: HYUNSOOK YOON & ALAN HIRVELA

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY, USA

•          PURPOSE:  To describe corpus use in ESL academic writing courses and to examine students’ corpus use behavior; perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of corpora as a second language writing tool.

•          METHOD:

•          PARTICIPANTS: 22 students from intermediate or advanced level ESL writing course at a large American university (majority from East Asia continents).

•          INSTRUMENT: Collins COBUILD Corpus http://www.titania.cobuild.co.uk (how to construct prototypes of words, i.e., descriptions or portraits of common usage patterns involving keywords (based on frequency of use information provided by the corpus database)).

•          DATA COLLECTION: study 10-week term- informal / semi-structured interview-questionnaires.

•          RESULT: SURVEY:

-          Computer use: personal purposes (91%) as opposed to schoolwork (59%).

-           Reported that more than half of their total computer time (68%) was in their L1.

-          The students’ assessment of the usefulness of the corpus: majority of students class 1 (intermediated) 100%; class 2  (advanced) 93%.

-          The corpus use was the most helpful for learning the usage of vocabulary and phrases. 

•          ANALYSIS:

•          Overall, the students perceived the corpus approach as beneficial to the development of L2 writing skill and increased confidence toward L2 writing.

•           These figures (survey) illustrates students’ access to technology impacts their prospects for independent work with corpora--a preference for using a computer in their language learning--interest with respect to feelings about corpus-based activity.

•          In general, the students reported positive attitudes toward corpus use in relation to writing. There was a particularly strong belief in the idea that the corpus use improved their general writing skills/build confidence in L2 writing.

STUDY 2

ELISA – A Pedagogically Enriched Corpus for Language Learning Purposes 
By: Sabine Braun

University of Tübingen

Purpose:  To introduce/suggest methodological solution for the design and exploitation of relevant corpus that is dedicated to pedagogical goals.

Methods:  ELISA, (English Language Interview Corpus as a Second language Application), a small corpus of spoken English -video interviews (about careers).

Level: Secondary school students.

Result:

One of the major problems learners face when working with corpus data such as word lists or concordances is that they do not necessarily have the analytical skills required for the interpretation of this type of data. It is, therefore, crucial to give learners very focused and manageable study tasks and to design tasks which are communicatively relevant (or authentic).

Advantages of using ELISA in DLL (Data-driven Language Learning):

• The visual, gestural and intonational clues in the video clips greatly help to contextualise and clarify problematic utterances.
• Audiovisual corpora open up entirely new ways of exploitation--can be used for listening comprehension activities.
• The division of the interviews into sections and the possibility to call up the corresponding video sequence for each section facilitates more detailed comprehension tasks.
• The integration of comprehension questions and exercises into the corpus further increases the efficiency of comprehension training with the help the videos.
• Since ELISA includes interviews with speakers of different national origin, it can also be used to train learners in understanding different varieties as required e.g. by the German teaching curricula (syllabus) for English in secondary schools.

Analysis:

·         The corpus design solution suggested here caters for a range of learner needs and interests, and supports a variety of teaching methods. 

·         It enables learners and teachers to access a corpus from different but pedagogically appropriate 'entry points' and explicitly supports the possibility to choose and combine different methods of exploration. 

·         A corpus designed according to this method is a pedagogical resource which can be exploited more comprehensively than has traditionally been possible with corpora in language learning and teaching.

Bibliography

Braun, S. (2006). ELISA – A Pedagogically Enriched Corpus foLanguage Learning Purposes. Corpus Technology and Language Pedagogy , 25- 47.  http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/1292/1/fulltext.pdf

Hyunsook Yoon &  Alan H. (2004). ESL Student Attitudes Toward Corpus Use in L2 Writing. Journal of Second Language Writing , 257-283. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science

Assignment 3 : Presentation on Corpus Lingusitics in Language Learning and Teaching

APPENDIX : Assignment 2