Major Reflection of all

Peace be upon you

The last reflection we have to do, which is the major reflection is about the blog. From the very beginning, Dr. Rozina had asked her Computer Applications students to create a blog. The blog must contain reflections on our weekly topics, graded assignments, our profile pictures and incorporation of one of the philosophies of IIUM.

Through this creation of our blog, (www.fourundergraduatestudents.blogspot.com), we had an opportunity to learn lots of things. Starting from how to create a blog, find a suitable template for our blog, insert all the necessary things in the blog (such as suitable hadith and clock), to incorporate all the things we learned so far into the blog. Alhamdulillah, this blog creation helps us in improving our computer skill and makes us aware there are still so many things in Computer Application we have yet to explore. Through the existence of World Wide Web, we are able to get information easily and put it in our blog when needed.

 Creating a blog is not as easy as one would think. It takes days to find suitable wallpaper as a blog’s background. This blog is a fruit of our hard work. It witnesses our team cooperation, patience and creativity. When a decision regarding the blog is made, it has to get unanimous approval from all the members. If one of them disagrees with, let say, the choice of wallpaper, the wallpaper needs to be changed. It might seem ‘nitty-gritty’ and frivolous but we need to cope with it. It is our responsibility to stick with our works. The successful end result would pay off eventually, and that is the blog itself.

We would like to thank our lecturer, Dr. Rozina for giving us this task of creating a blog. We managed to go creative with our blog and think outside the box for our blog title. The Ruminative Thinkers- it is something that people rarely use. The opportunity of blog creation might be a small step for us to prepare for the outside world – the real world. Who knows, when we step into the working world, we might need this computer skill in doing our job. In this globalization era, knowing the computer skills will come in handy one day.

In a nutshell, everything that we have learned so far is beneficial to us and others. When it comes to knowledge, it is best if we spread it to others. Hence, the creation of our blog. Hopefully, as much as this blog is beneficial to us, it will be beneficial too for those who come across our blog one day.

From all the assignments and tasks given, we as a group have difficulties at first because of our schedules are not the same so it is hard for us to find the right time to complete the assignments. Thank God for the existence of CMC which allows us to communicate via email, whatsapp and etc. to ease the journey of completing the assignments. Thanks to Dr Rozina because from now on we as a group appreciate the importance of cooperation as a team.

Reflection Week 12 - Computational Stylistics

Peace be upon you

Reflection Week 12 - Computational Stylistics

In the last class, Dr Rozina explained to us about computational stylistics. Computational stylistics is a study of patterns formed in particular texts, authors, genres, periods via computational methods. Computational stylistics is a sub-discipline of computational linguistics. It evolved in 1960 and generally, it is the study of patterns formed in the process of the linguistics encoding of information. Computational stylistics is in the area of stylometry. Stylometry is the application of the study of linguistic style, usually to written language, but it has successfully been applied to music and to fine-art paintings as well. The computer is used to generate data on the types, numbers, length of words and sentences. Hence, by using computer, the results should be more accurate and explain in linguistics patterns. In fact, stylistics analysis can detect the use of language which distinguish one author from another. Dr Rozina also explained the scope of computational stylistics which consist of literary field such as plays, poems, novels, short stories and many more. Machine translation also listed in the scope of computational stylistics. Dr Rozina also gave us a question for us to ponder regarding the computational stylistics.

In all the courses you have taken, how would all the findings from these courses be of benefit to us now? If there are any, is it beneficial?

For this semester, we are taking ENGL 3830, Error and Contrastive Analysis lectured by Dr Nora Mohd Nasir. Among all the courses we have taken, this course is an example of using computational stylistics. This is because we have to determine whether the errors made by the learners are local or global errors. In fact, we have to observe the frequency errors made by the learners. For example, how many times does the learner misuse of the pronoun in her/ his speech? Throughout the interviews made, we have to transcribe the interview word by word. This is when the machine translation software of computational stylistics takes place. Hence, the existence of computational stylistics is relevant to make human's life easier. Through the machine translation, a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates the use of software to translate text or speech from one language to another. Computational Stylistics benefits human by revealing the differences of the patterns of errors made by the learners particularly second language learner. Thus, computational stylistics allows human to acknowledge the errors frequently used.

Reflection week 11 - Corpus Linguistics, Forensic Linguistic, Concordancer & Lexicography

Peace be upon you

Reflection week 11 - Corpus Linguistics, Forensic Linguistic, Concordancer & Lexicography

In week 11, we have learned yet another four interesting topics which are Corpus Linguistics, Forensic Linguistics, Concordancer and Lexicography. These four topics are very much related to one another as they both involve with data or text gathering and analysis.

Let’s start with Corpus Linguistics. Corpus linguistics is one of the branches of linguistic studies. It is the study of language as expressed in sample (corpora) or ‘real world’ text. Corpus is a huge amount of text collected as a sample either in written or spoken form that will be used to study certain aspect of language such as language acquisition, language variation and so forth. Since corpora is a large collections of readable text, it is obvious that it cannot be analysis manually by hand thus needing a machine to assist the process of analyzing.  This is the part where computer plays its major role. Computer not only capable storing huge amount texts but it also able to retrieve word or phrases very fast and efficient. Other than that, it increases reliability in searching, counting and sorting linguistic items thus making research more reliable and valid.

However what interest us the most is when we found out that there are many corpus-related researches. Some of them are very intriguing such as corpus related to forensic linguistic, cultural studies, lexicography and social psychology.

Reaction: 

Forensic linguistic is quite interesting as it deals with language used in the context of crime investigation, homicide and judicial procedure. We thinks it is fascinating to learn on how language associates to suicide note, threat letter, legal document and so forth.

Threat letter

        

Suicide letter

Despite that, the course is not very extensive here in Malaysia. Based on our research, we found out that Univeristy Malaya (UM) is the only university that offers this course. According to Professor Dr Azirah Hashim from UM, forensic linguistics in this country have not been widely established, thus requiring the cooperation of various parties to develop it. Even though forensic linguistics may help to unlock few criminal cases, its validity in solving the cases is still seen as inconvincible as it lacks of experts in the area of studies (Berita Harian, 2012). Due to this, students who are planning to further their studies or work as a forensic linguist in this country should think twice before venturing in it. It is much better to study or work outside Malaysia as the course is widely acceptable especially in the west.

Anyhow, let’s go back to corpus analysis. In order to analyze huge amount of data or texts, a special tool is needed. Concordancer is a tool that make indexes and word lists or phrases. It offers the possibility of searching word combination with a specific range of word and also provide with collocation and frequency list. Using concordancer, we are able to find translation, phrases and idioms and even count frequency of certain words.

Reaction:

Dr Rozina had asked us to go through to some of the available concordancers in the Internet and choose which one is the best. After going through a list of concordancers, we think WebCorp software is the most efficient and practical. The reason is because it is free and user friendly.  The interface of the software is not complicated for beginner to use it. Search engines like Google, Bing, FAROO and Blekko help in retrieving more result for your search. WebCorp actually visits each one of these pages, extracting concordance lines from them thus making your search more reliable and valid. Other than that, when the search has finished the Search Results page provides an option to analyse the collocates of your search term such as words which appear most frequently in its vicinity. Due to its simplicity and practically, we think WebCorp is the easiest concordancer to be used.

WebCorp

Lexicography on the hand is the editing, compiling, writing or making of dictionary. It is divided into two related discipline that is practical lexicography and theoretical lexicography. Practical lexicography deals with compiling, writing and editing dictionary whereas theoretical focuses deeper on analyzing and describing linguistics aspects such as semantic, syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationship within the vocabulary.

Reaction:

From this topic, we know that making a dictionary is not a simple task. It is not merely putting words and provide meaning but there are more to it. We need to know how to shape the dictionary according to its intended user, we have to run a test and analyze the frequency of a word to determine its place on the dictionary and so forth. This is a very tedious work and not everyone can do it. Only those who are good in dissecting and analyzing trivial matters will able to pull this off. But then, we need to bear in mind, if we believe that we can do it and we have passion in it, no matter how hard or tedious it may sound, we are going to enjot the work. Insha Allah.