4th Posting: Concordance

Assalamualaikum…

This 4th posting is discuss about the concordance and how to use it in the text analysis. We have been given this task to explain about how the concordance software can help us in doing an analysis on the text base on the purpose of the text analysis.

What is Concordance?

CONCORDANCE

 According to Brittannica Encyclopedia, concordance is define as literally agreement, harmony, hence derivatively a citation of parallel passages, and specifically an alphabetic arrangement of the words contained in a book with citations of the passages in which they occur.

A concordance’s function is basically to bring together, in other words, to ‘concord’ passages of text which show the use of a word. It’s a type of index arrangement, working in a similar way to the verbal index found at the back of textbooks, in other words, it searches for instances of a word or phrase and comes up with each case of it. Whereas an index in the back of a book will show words in alphabetical order but only refer to them, the concordance will show each instance of each word together in the context from which it came.

The term ‘concordance’ is usually applied to literary and linguistic studies, but it is an extremely useful tool which enables students to access a piece of text non-sequentially or to study the ways in which it uses language. Concordances are not only used for literary purposes, but also as cross-reference systems for computer programmers, which enable teams of programmers working together to keep track of all references to, for example, a variable name, across all the files which make up a project.

A concordance is particularly useful for studying a piece of literature when thinking in terms of a particular word, phrase or theme. It will show exactly how often a word occurs, or even if it does not occur and so can be extremely helpful in building up some idea of how different themes recur within a poem and how they relate to the rest of the poem. So if a question is asked about a certain theme or the use of certain words in a poem and what their place is within the poem, it is easy to see how often they come up by looking at the concordance. This is particularly easy when it comes to computer concordances, all you have to do is click on the relevant letter of the alphabet, a list of words will come up and it is easy to scroll down until you find the right one. From there, you can find out all occurrences of that word in the poem in question.

So, a concordance is a bit like a computer; it will find things for you, but it will not do the thinking, you have to do that. What it will do is to get you on the right track when, in this case, it comes to deeper analysis of a piece of text. Most useful are interactive concordances, such as the one here in English. An interactive concordance will also find answers to specific queries and produce lists of all instances of words or phrases, but the advantage is the speed and the fact the concordance will find all words, not necessarily possible in textual concordancing.

 

Using Concordance For Content Analysis

 

Software for Content Analysis – A Review

Will Lowe

wlowe@latte.harvard.edu

 

 

Introduction

 

Software for content analysis divides, according to its intended function, into three major categories. The first set of programs perform dictionary-based content analysis. They have the ‘basic handful’ of text analysis functions, involving word counting, sorting, and simple statistical tests. The basic handful are described in the next section. The second set contains development environments. These programs are designed to partially automate the construction of dictionaries, grammars, and other text analysis tools, rather than being analyzers themselves. Development environments are more similar to high-level text-specific programming languages than to freestanding content analysis packages. The third category contains annotation aids. While an annotation aid can often perform some automatic content analysis, it is intended more as an electronic version of the set of marginal notes, cross-references and notepad jottings that a researcher will

generate when analyzing a set of texts by hand. The next section describes the basic handful of text analysis functions, and the rest of the paper provides brief descriptions of twenty-one content analysis programs. Some recommendations are made in the conclusion.

 

1.1 The Basic Handful

The basic handful of functions consists of word frequency counts and analysis, category frequency counts and analysis, and visualization.

 

Word Frequency Analysis

Word frequency analysis provides a list of all the words that occur in a text and the number of times they occur. More sophisticated methods split the text into subparts, e.g. chapters, and create frequency lists for each part. Lists can be compared either visually, or using a statistical test such as _2, to see if their are significantly more mentions of particular words in one part than another. Another common use for the subpart procedure is to compare different sources addressing the same substantive question to measure how different their treatment of it is on the basis of the sorts of words they use. Statistically this procedure can sometimes be reasonable because the counts from one source are compared with the total counts for all words over all the sources; significant differences may then track differences of emphasis across sources1. Some packages make use of synonym lists or lemmatize before the analysis in order to merge word counts. Lemmatization removes the grammatical structure from the surface form of a word, leaving only the stem; words are then counted as identical when they share a stem. For example, a lemmatizing frequency count would treat ‘steal’ and ‘stole’ as the same word. Lists of lemma and synonyms are naturally language specific. Word frequency analysis is the simplest form of content analysis. In fact most operating systems (e.g. Unix/Linux, Mac OSX, and recent versions of Windows) have utilities to perform basic word counting and sorting built in.

 

Category Frequency Analysis

Content analysis programs almost all allow the user to specify a dictionary. ‘Dictionary’ in this context means a mapping a set of words or phrases to one word; the one word is the label of a substantive category and the set describes the words or phrases that indicate the tokening of the category in text. As an example, the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) dictionary maps the word set {ashes, burial*, buried, bury, casket*, cemet*, coffin*, cremat*, dead death*, decay*, decease*, deteriorat*, die,

died, dies, drown*, dying fatal, funeral*, grave*, grief, griev*, kill*, mortal*, mourn*, murder* suicid*, terminat*} to LIWC category 59, death. The asterisks are ‘wild-card’ characters telling the program to treat ‘cremating’, ‘cremated’ and ‘cremate’, as all matching cremat*, and thus all mapping to category 59. Category counts allow a slightly more sophisticated analysis because they allow the user to provide a more explicit model of latent content in text. The implicit model of text generation is that the author of the text has some message expressed in terms of categories, and that this message is ‘coded’ into English when she writes. Coding entails picking any one of a set of English words that represent that concept, perhaps constrained by grammatical or pragmatic criteria. If the content analyst can recover or construct the word set used by the author, it can be placed in a dictionary and used to decode other texts. According to the LIWC scheme the sentence “Her suicide caused him to consider his own mortality” refers to the categories of ‘death’ and ‘metaphysics’ twice, ‘social’ three times, and ‘causation’ once: Her–SOCIAL suicide–DEATH/METAPH caused–CAUSE him–SOCIAL to consider–COGMECH his–SOCIAL own mortality–DEATH/METAPH. But according to the implicit model of LIWC, “He thought of his own death only because she killed herself” is an equally good instantiation of the underlying content because it tokens the same categories the same number of times. Of course many other sentences them these categories too, and many of the are quite unrelated in meaning. When a text is reduced to its category tokens with respect to some dictionary the same statistical analysis can be performed as with word counts. For most applications of automated content analysis, a word is reduced to a vector of category counts. Different texts can be compared either across within each category, or more usefully, by looking at high-dimensional distance measures between the complete vectors associated with each text. Most information retrieval programs, e.g. Google, will make use of a similar vector representation of texts – each query is converted into a sparse category vector by coding it as if it were a very short text, and this vector is compared geometrically to all available other vectors to find the nearest, that is, most relevant text to the query.

 

Visualization

 When a text has been reduced to vector form, either by counting words or categories, it can be visualized. Two standard methods provided by most content analysis programs are clustering and multidimensional scaling. Cluster analysis is no doubt familiar, but the multidimensional scaling bears some discussion. It appears that most scaling procedures packaged for content analysis perform metric rather than non-metric multidimensional scaling. This means that the programs are looking for the linear mapping (for visualization purposes it will be a plane) that passes through the vectors and captures most variation in their positions when they are projected onto it. Metric methods therefore enforce linear structure, which may or may not be reasonable. More computationally intensive methods are non-metric, and consider not the positions of the vectors but their distance ranking to one another. Non-metric methods attempt to preserve ranked distances in their mapping to the plane, and thus allow more non-linear structure to appear in the final visualization. Why does this difference matter? It might appear that visualization functions are an advantage in a content analysis program, and this is may be true for preliminary data exploration. But researchers will most likely end up putting their data into a regular statistics package at some point, perhaps to get a more sophisticated statistical analysis. Since most modern statistics packages have very sophisticated visualization functions, the visualization will almost certainly be better performed then. This will also be desirable in the case where the content analysis package does not (or will not) document the exact clustering or visualization routine being performed.

 

 Other Basic Functions

Several programs can generate concordances, sometimes described as KWIC (’key word in context’) analysis. The table below is a selection of lines from a small window full concordance for the word ‘content’ in the paragraphs preceding this one.

 

—         —            Software      for	content	analysis     divides     according     to
can      perform   dictionary    based	content	analysis      They           have         the
often   perform      some         automatic	content	analysis         it                is         intended

 

Although computing concordances is not really a method of automated content analysis, it can be a very fruitful way to examine the data in the process of designing a content analysis; one example use for concordance analysis would be to quickly discover, without having to read the entire text, that the presence of a particular word occurs only in a subset of its possible substantive roles, even when we might expect it to be more broadly distributed on purely linguistic grounds (e.g. that taxes are only mentioned when the text is talking about lowering them.)

Concordances are also useful representation for discovering sets of words that co-occur reliably with the keyword, and thus might be natural choices for dictionary word sets.

Finally, with the addition of some minor annotation capability the researcher may manually code each instance as being of a particular category, either as part of a ‘training set’ for subsequent automated analysis, or simply as quick confirmation that, say 75% of mentions are of a particular type. The principle advantage of concordances in all these roles is that they lighten the reading burden of the researcher, so she can work with a larger volume of text.

 

2 Content Analysis Programs

 This section describes twenty-one content analysis packages. They are divided into dictionary-based programs and development environments. A final section describes the two most popular annotation aids. Where possible each section states the platforms that the software runs on, the licensing scheme, the accessibility of the code-base and whether it is able to work with non-English language text.

Licensing cost has been distinguished from the accessibility of the code-base because although many packages are free to use, their code is not available. Being able to see the code is useful if one needs to know exactly what is going on when the program performs more complex analysis. In this respect the software is effectively proprietary. However, since there is no tradition among Windows and Mac users to make their code available even when the software is written to be given away, it may only be convention that makes the code-base inaccessible. That is, individual authors of free software may happily provide code details on request. This will certainly not be the case for the commercial packages.

 

2.1 Dictionary-based Content Analysis

CATPAC

—Homepage: http://www.terraresearch.com/catpac.cfm

—Operating Systems: Windows

—License:

Commercial $595

Academic $295

Student $49

—Code base: Proprietary (executable only)

—Languages: English (ASCII only)

Despite the bold claims of the manufacturer:

“CATPAC is an intelligent program that can read any text and summarize its main ideas. It needs no pre-coding and makes no linguistic assumptions.”

CATAC performs only the basic handful of functions. Visualization involves cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling. Cluster analysis can be interactive. CATPAC also apparently allows three dimensional visualizations with appropriately colored glasses.

CATPAC seems adequate to the basic handful. However the user interface is weak and the http: //www.galileoco.com/pdf/catman.pdf is atrocious.

 

Computer Programs for Text Analysis

—Homepage: http://www.dsu.edu/˜johnsone/ericpgms.html

—Operating Systems: MS-DOS

—License: Freeware

—Codebase: Proprietary (executable only)

—Languages: English (ASCII only)

 

These are a set of utility programs run from the DOS command line. They cover the basic handful except for visualization, and are designed primarily for literary analysis.

Concordance

—Homepage: http://www.rjcw.freeserve.co.uk

—Operating Systems: Windows

—License: $89 + $10 handling fee. $40 per subsequent license.

—Codebase: Proprietary (executable only)

—Languages: English, Chinese (See http: //deall.ohio-state.edu/chan.9/conc/concordance. htm)

 Concordance is marketed as a way of producing and publishing concordances for literary texts (See for example http://www.dundee.ac.uk/english/wics/wics.htm) However the program also performs a superset of the basic handful of word analysis and category analysis functions, including regular expressions and lemmatization. (Lemmatization involves reducing all instances of a word to its stem.) There appears to be no visualization option. The most appealing aspect of Concordance is its potential for processing text in languages other than English

(see http://deall.ohio-state.edu/chan.9/conc/concordance.htm for more detail).

It is not clear from the manufacturer’s information whether reason Concordance can deal with Chinese is because it processes all text in Unicode, or because it has been specifically designed for Chinese scripts. If the underlying processing model uses Unicode then it is reasonable to expect support for other languages. If, on the other hand, it is an ad-hoc extension then Concordance is likely to be less generally useful.

 

Understanding of Concordance as a Content Analysis

 Concordance is the software that can be use to make a text analysis throughout variety kinds of text. Most of the purposes in doing an analysis are to find out the word order and what kind of sentence structure in each text. There are lots of software that can be order or can be download at online for free.

 The uses of concordance nowadays are really important due to any aspects of uses. For example in the education sector, it is easy for the student to make an analysis in their assignments or in project paper; they doesn’t have to search manually just click at the search in concordance software and everything that is needed will come out in just a seconds. Same as in the other sector which might be use especially in the aspects of management and organize data.

 

-This task was done in pair with Syahirah Bt Said

3rd Posting: The Impact of Using ICT Technology in Education

hi…..we met again…Assalamualaikum…this 3rd posting was the hardest and challenging task that i have done which have taught me a lot about how using  an e-journal in the correct order.Thanks to my beloved datin Norizan because gives me this great opportunity…i’m choosing the title ‘the impact of using ICT technology in education’ because i know that i will learn something that have huge benificial to me in guidance me through learning onward.. InsyaAllah…

THE IMPACT OF USING ICT TECHNOLOGY  IN EDUCATION  

            There is widespread believed that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can empower teachers and learners make a change appropriately through the development of ‘21^st century skills. According to the article of Knowledge Maps: ICTs in Education, “transforming teaching and learning processes from being highly teacher-dominated to student-centered, and that this transformation will result in increased learning gains for students. That are creating and allowing for opportunities for learners to develop their creativity, problem-solving abilities, informational reasoning skills, communication skills, and other higher-order thinking skills”. In depth, if we take a look at the benefits that the ICTs technology gave towards the learning process, it is tremendously great in enhance the capability of the education in terms of giving all kinds of people getting more knowledgeable.

First of all, the impact of using ICT technology in education is it is successfully created a kind of learning system which is called a distance education. It is increasingly uses combinations of different communications technologies to enhance the abilities of teachers and students to communicate with each other. From the same article we have found that with the spread of computer-network communications in the 1980s and 1990s, large numbers of people gained access to computers linked to telephone lines, allowing teachers and students to communicate in conferences via computers. Other than that, distance education also makes use of computer conferencing on the World Wide Web (www), where teachers and students present text, pictures, audio, and occasionally video. A conferencing method known as one-way video/two-way audio uses television pictures that are transmitted to particular sites, where people can reply to the broadcasters with a telephone call-in system. Television pictures can also be transmitted in two directions simultaneously through telephone lines, so that teachers and students in one place can see and hear teachers and students in other places. This is called video-conferencing. Each medium of distance education have played many of advantages. For example, a student may watch an instructor’s lecture on a video monitor, gives feedback with responding to the questions through electronic mail (e-mail) on a computer, and then participate in class discussions through telephone audio-conferencing. On that matter usually this kind of learning are include a highly amount in terms of cost; so, it is generally has been made at the place which has relatively large audiences and wide geographic areas. As a result, distance education opens educational opportunity to the unreached community. It also enables more people to extend the time of their education from a limited number of studying years to a lifelong learning process. In addition, it changes power and authority relationships between teachers and learners, often encouraging more equal and open communication than occurs in conventional educational settings. Because distance education enables institutions to reach students all over the world.

The second impact of ICT technology through education is enabling a knowledge network for students. Knowledge being as the crucial input for productive processes within today’s economy, the efficiency by which knowledge is acquired and applied reflect to the economic success.  Effective use of ICTs can contribute to the timely transmission of information and knowledge, thereby helping education systems meets this challenge. With the use of variety software and hardware students could manage their learning process more informative way and lots of fun without worrying about the teachers who is actually have emotion that change over time and the students have to controlled and limit their ability according to the traditional way of learning system. On that way, engagement of ICT in learning alters traditional teacher-student relationships, and, as a result, there are changes in the roles of the principle educational actors. Change of organisation in the classroom appears to be caused by the combined effect of the media being used and the teaching approach being applied that of placing emphasis on the learning processes rather than the outcomes, and on social learning rather than individual learning. The strategies are oriented due to; collaborative learning, project-based learning, self learning, and communicative strategies to learning. According to Gibson (2004, 17) asserts that educational leaders have a narrow view of what constitutes IL(ICT literacy) they instruct students in how to find, evaluate, and manage information, but that they miss, in his words. “The sense of how information is experienced.” .

Training teachers is one of the best results that technology has created. The impact on the way teacher nowadays teaches completely different which it is being more effective and enjoyable. Large numbers of school teachers will be needed to meet the Millennium Development Goals for education.  The use of ICTs can help in meeting teacher training targets.  Moreover, ICTs provide opportunities to complement on the job training and continuing education for teachers. Positive impact more likely when linked to pedagogy. It is believed that specific uses of ICT can have positive effects on student achievement when ICTs are used appropriately to complement a teacher’s existing pedagogical philosophies. There is an important tension between traditional versus ‘new’ pedagogies and standardized testing Traditional, transmission-type pedagogies are seen as more effective in preparation for standardized testing, which tends to measure the results of such teaching practices, than are more ‘constructivist’ pedagogical styles. Learning environments in schools typically involve one or more adult teachers connected

with a number of students, usually in well defined physical settings. These people interact

and form a variety of relationships, creating what Salomon (1994) calls “a system of

interrelated factors that jointly affect learning in interaction with (but separately from) relevant individual and cultural differences” (p. 80).

             Furthermore, broadening the availability of quality education materials Network technologies have the potential to increase the availability of quality educational materials.  Their interactivity and global reach allow for customized sharing of knowledge, materials, and databases, quickly and cheaply over long geographic distances.  Furthermore, online resources offer teachers access to a vast and diverse collection of educational materials, enabling them to design curricula that best meet the needs of their students. Many aspects of contemporary connectivity (e-mail, chat sessions, interactive games and simulations, multiparty projects and research) will help schools overcome impediments to quality education for all. Connectivity is benignly blind, often more forgiving than an instructor, willing to repeat something until the learner masters it, and always ready. It also encourages branching out into related topics. A connected school has much to offer students who speak little or no English. While English may be the dominant language used in international connectivity, a non-English speaker can become just as proficient by navigating the abundant non-English World Wide Web resources. Due to the report from How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School Schools and classrooms must be learner centred (p.23); to provide a knowledge-centred classroom environment, attention must be given to what is taught (information, subject matter), why it is taught (understanding), and what competence or mastery looks like (p.24); formative assessments – ongoing assessments designed to make students’ thinking visible to both teachers and students are essential. They permit the teacher to grasp the students’ preconceptions, understand where the students are in the “developmental corridor” from informal to formal thinking, and design instruction accordingly. In the assessment-centred classroom environment, formative assessments help both teachers and students monitor progress. (p. 24); Learning is influenced in fundamental ways by the context in which it takes place. A community-centred approach requires the development of norms for the classroom and school, as well as connections to the outside world, that support core learning values. (p. 25). 

Finally, enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of educational administration and policy also affected by the assist of technology facilities. New technologies can help improve the quality of administrative activities and processes, including human resource management, student registration, and monitoring of student enrollment and achievement. It is also will help small and remote schools produce graduates ready to compete in technological job markets or in postsecondary studies. As usual technology nowadays is like a compulsory to a students have the skills literacy in handling any of the ICTs technology equipment as the necessity in the work sector.

 In conclusion, Information and Communication Technology played a very important role in today education world. Without technology we don’t have the ability to conquer the world and make the way how the knowledge evolves more interesting and effective. The impact that we have found are ICTs technology has created a distance education, enabling a knowledge network for students, training teachers, broadening the availability of quality education materials, and enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of educational administration and policy. In my personal opinion we must always support and keep shaping our skills towards master in ICT literacy to ensure the flow of education always goes parallel with a new technology in the future. 

References:1.      Education full text; Wilson web; ICT and Education2.      MSN Encarta; distance education; ICT and Education; Measuring The Impact of ICT Use          in Education.3.      www.cnet.com; ICT in Education.4.      ProQuest Dissertations & Theses; Knowledge Maps: ICTs in Education5.      EBSCOhost; The Impact of ICT on Learning and Teaching6.      SCOPUS; Impact of ICT.

Computer Assisted Writing

Assalamualaikum….this is my second posting…we were asked to find out an example of computer assisted writing in terms of the activities that include software or the URL address that related to assist students in writing. The software must have the criteria which student can used to enhance their ability in writing skills more effectively.

 Computer-Assisted Instruction and Writing

Download this document:  Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF

What Is Computer-Assisted Instruction?

“Computer-assisted instruction” (CAI) refers to instruction or remediation presented on a computer. Many educational computer programs are available online and from computer stores and textbook companies. They enhance teacher instruction in several ways. Computer programs are interactive and can illustrate a concept through attractive animation, sound, and demonstration. They allow students to progress at their own pace and work individually or problem solve in a group. Computers provide immediate feedback, letting students know whether their answer is correct. If the answer is not correct, the program shows students how to correctly answer the question. Computers offer a different type of activity and a change of pace from teacher-led or group instruction. Computer-assisted instruction improves instruction for students with disabilities because students receive immediate feedback and do not continue to practice the wrong skills. Computers capture the students’ attention because the programs are interactive and engage the students’ spirit of competitiveness to increase their scores. Also, computer-assisted instruction moves at the students’ pace and usually does not move ahead until they have mastered the skill. Programs provide differentiated lessons to challenge students who are at risk, average, or gifted. *

What Does CAI Look Like for Writing?

Computer-Assisted Writing Instruction

Computer programs for writing help students with developing ideas, organizing, outlining, and brainstorming. Templates provide a framework and reduce the physical effort spent on writing so that students can pay attention to organization and content.The example at the right, similar to the program Inspiration, demonstrates how a student has organized her writing. Her topic is the Chesapeake Bay. She thinks about three main ideas for her topic: food, fun, and jobs. Next, she adds supporting details for each of her three main ideas. Now she can compose her paragraph. Programs like Inspiration or Kidspiration are fun because students can use pictures, change the shape or colors of the circles, and change the chart into an outline.

Computer Programs for Writing

Word prediction

• Student-specific programs that identify words that student uses repeatedly; when the student types the first few letters, the program lists frequently used words that start with those letters
• speeds up the typing process

Speech-to-text

• student speaks into a microphone and the program types the words
• program must be “trained” to the student’s word pronunciation and speech style
• student must be taught how to use the program
• increased speed from thought to text

Text-to-speech

• student can hear what she has typed to check if it says what she wants it to say
• good for editing

Spell-checker

• helps student identify misspelled words
• automatically corrects words if the teacher set the program that way

Thesaurus

• offers student other words that mean the same as the word he or she is using
• adds variety to student’s writing and increases student vocabulary

Word processors are excellent tools for students who find handwriting tedious. Often, students with disabilities have difficulty with all the requirements for the writing process. They have trouble organizing their thoughts and then retaining those thoughts long enough to put them on paper. Their handwriting must be neat enough and their spelling and grammar correct enough to convey their message, tasks that they may find difficult. But before word-processing can save time during the actual writing process, students must know how to type and how to use the computer. Typing speeds may be slower without proper instruction in typing; slower typing may lead to less quality and shorter length in writing assignments (MacArthur, 2000; MacArthur, Ferretti, Okolo, & Cavalier, 2001). If students cannot type fluently or must search for letters and numbers, the process may be slower than handwriting. Examples of computer programs that assist students in the writing process are listed in the box at left. If students are taught to type early in elementary school and taught to use these programs, the writing process can become less frustrating. This is not to say that students should not be taught how to spell and to use proper grammar. Students can learn to use these programs to increase the speed from thought to paper to make the process less stressful for them. It can increase their vocabulary and their attitude toward writing. Students with disabilities may actually find they enjoy the writing process.

How Is CAI Implemented?

Teachers should review the computer program or the online activity or game to understand the context of the lessons and determine which ones fit the needs of their students and how they may enhance instruction.

• Can this program supplement the lesson, give basic skills practice, or be used as an educational reward for students?
• Is the material presented so that students will remain interested yet not lose valuable instruction time trying to figure out how to operate the program? Does the program waste time with too much animation?
• Is the program at the correct level for the class or the individual student?
• Does this program do what the teacher wants it to do (help students organize the writing, speed up the writing process, or allow students to hear what they wrote for editing purposes)?

Teachers should also review all Web sites and links immediately before directing students to them. Web addresses and links frequently change and become inactive. Students might become frustrated when links are no longer available.Writing programs are beneficial to writing instruction because they allow students to learn in a variety of ways and can speed up the writing process. With proper training, students can learn to focus on the message instead of the mechanics.

References and Resources

Castellani, J., & Jeffs, T. (2001). Emerging reading and writing strategies using technology. Teaching Exceptional Children, 33, 60–67. Graham, S., Harris, K. R., Fink-Chorzempa, B., & MacArthur, C. (2003). Primary grade teachers’ instructional adaptations for struggling writers: A national survey. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95, 279–292. MacArthur , C. A. (2000). New tools for writing: Assistive technology for students with writing difficulties. Top Language Disorders, 20, 85–100. MacArthur , C. A., Ferretti, R. P., Okolo, C. M., & Cavalier, A. R. (2001). Technology applications for students with literacy problems: A critical review. The Elementary School Journal, 101, 273–378. MacArthur , C. A., & Graham, S. (1987). Learning disabled students’ composing with three methods: Handwriting, dictation, and word processing. Journal of Special Education, 21, 22–42. Vaughn, S., Schumm, J. S., & Gordon, J. (1993). Which motoric condition is most effective for teaching spelling to students with and without learning disabilities? Journal of Learning Disabilities, 26, 191–198. Wong, B. Y. L. (2001). Commentary: Pointers for literacy instruction from educational technology and research on writing instruction. The Elementary School Journal, 101, 359–378.

Web sites *

http://www.suite101.com/links.cfm/teaching_computers#top ― This site has information and programs for teaching typing and other topics. Although it is directed toward parents, teachers will also find it useful. http://www.inspiration.com/home.cfm ― This is the Web site for Inspiration and Kidspiration, which are organizational writing programs. http://www.brighteye.com/texthelp.htm ― This site reads text out loud and gives students a word predictor, a homophone locator, a thesaurus, a spell checker, and a dictionary. A Word Wizard guides students to the word they are looking for. * The programs cited in this discussion are based on research; however, it is not the purpose of this report to evaluate the rigor of the research supporting the programs themselves.* Few Web sites are dedicated to computerized writing assistance.This strategy is identified as a Promising Practice. View the Access Center Research Continuum.For additional information on this or other topics,
please contact The Access Center at accesscenter@air.org.

The Access Center: Improving Outcomes for All Students K-8
The Access Center is a cooperative agreement (H326K020003) funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs, awarded to the American Institutes for Research 1000 Thomas Jefferson St. NW, Washington, DC 20007
Ph: 202-403-5000 | TTY: 877-334-3499 | Fax: 202-403-5001 |
e-mail: accesscenter@air.org website: www.k8accesscenter.org  

Want to know more about computer assisted writing, just click here….

computer assisted writing

http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-928/computer.htm

www.bowiestate.edu 

http://computersandcomposition.osu.edu

 

Software of Computer Assisted Writing:
http://www.softwareforstudents.com/SoftwareMainPage.htm

www.daedalus.com

www.softwareforstudents.com 

http://www.whitesmoke.com/landing_flash/grammar.html?d=3&a=2&r=0

http://english3.fsu.edu/writing/?q=book/export/html/285

This software will help the English students in a very effective way because it contains not only the writing skills, also completed with a sounds and helps student to develop their writing and thinking skills where students can learn more easily and with full of fun. Hopefully you will enjoy this new writing space…

lovely

[rockyou id=104819883&w=426&h=319]

Reading For Information

NewsMiami styles for the world

18/02/08

Yvonne Yoong

Once known as the “cradle of condominium civilisation”, Miami in Florida, the United States, is now producing blueprints for modern residential and commercial highrises and hotels that could determine the shape of things to come all over the world.Ever since the 1980s TV series Miami Vice shone the spotlight on Miami Beach’s pastel Art Deco rehabs, there has been a surge in demand for the city’s architectural styles that capitalise on lifestyle aspirations.“Miami has become a brand. It has a buzz,” said a recent news feature in the Miami Herald.“People have a strong image of Miami as cutting-edge … it’s almost like you’re prequalified if you’re from Miami.”With the trend leaning towards “snazzy Miami designs”, it said even Los Angeles in California is looking to put up Miami-style buildings in its skyline.That may be why the daily said its native architects are highly sought-after all over the world, with many saying they are “not limited anymore to being regional practitioners” and that they can now “explore all over”, thanks to the exposure they attained in the Sunshine State’s high-rise condo boom.The magic, said Miami Herald, can be attributed to the fact that the city’s unique architectural expression smacks highly of “understanding lifestyle”.“Our architecture, especially the residential, is about lifestyle … it’s been that way since the founding of the city,” the feature said.“It’s always been about this kind of allure; it’s Eden. It’s about pleasure and fulfilling desire.”

 ___________________________________________________________________________________ 

 READING FOR INFORMATION

             Reading comprehension can be defined as a process of  receive or take in the sense of (as letters or symbols) by scanning; to understand the meaning of written or printed matter; to learn from what one has seen or found in writing or printing. In the context of using reading comprehension for getting information, the reading materials must have character of explaining, reveals, and introduce new ideas. This article was written by Yvonne Yoong in online New Straits Times sites, the articles mentioned about the United States plans in producing blueprints for modern residential and commercial highrises and violets that could determine the shape of things to come all over the world. With the trend leaning towards “snazzy Miami designs”, recent news said even Los Angeles in California is looking to put up Miami-style buildings in its skyline. In conclusion, Miami styles for the world are all about pleasure and fulfilling desire. 

This 1^st posting is completed by Maisarah Abdul latif (A118886), Syahirah Bt Said (A119613), and Azlin Hazreena bt Zahri (A119485).

 

  

Reading Comprehension

Reading is the active search for answers!

Reading Is Important:

A 1993 investigation revealed that 40 to 44 million Americans had only the most basic reading and writing skills (Kirsch, Jungeblut, Jenkins, & Kolstad, 1993). Another 50 million Americans not only lacked the skills to function successfully in a literate society, but also were not aware of their inadequacies. These statistics make it obvious that we have to look for new approaches to prepare students for the millennium, especially in light of current job market trends.The job market now demands a workforce that is more highly educated than ever. For example, assembly line workers must interpret manuals in addition to operating machinery. These workers must be able to read, write, analyze, interpret, and synthesize information (Hay & Roberts, 1989).In summary, people just aren’t reading as much anymore and yet the need for reading, comprehension, and communication skills (verbal and written) has increased. The need is great for strengthening the following skills:

• Your ability to read a variety of materials (e.g. textbooks, novels, newspapers, magazines, instructional manuals).
• Your ability to understand and remember what you read.
• Your ability to effectively communicate what you’ve learned from your reading.

Motivation Is Necessary:

Engaged, active readers have deep-seated motivational goals, which include being committed to the subject matter, wanting to learn the content, believing in one’s own ability, and wanting to share understandings from learning. However, most people, children and adults, do not spend any significant portion of their free time reading. Without committing time to reading, no one can gain the reading skills or knowledge they need to succeed in school, at work, or in life in general. The best way to improve your reading efficiency is to read a lot.

What is Reading Comprehension?

According to Webster’s Dictionary, comprehension is “the capacity for understanding fully; the act or action of grasping with the intellect.” Webster also tells us that reading is “to receive or take in the sense of (as letters or symbols) by scanning; to understand the meaning of written or printed matter; to learn from what one has seen or found in writing or printing.

Comprehension = understanding!

Identifying words on a page does not make someone a successful reader. When the words are understood and transcend the pages to become thoughts and ideas then you are truly reading. Comprehension therefore is the capacity for understanding those thoughts and ideas. Applying what you have read and understood becomes the successful conclusion.When you comprehend what you read it is like taking a trip around the world, staying as long as you like, visiting all the places you wish, and you never even having to pack a suitcase! Reading can be an escape that takes you outside the bounds of your existence. Reading is your ticket to whatever you choose to do and become. Reading is your future as well as your past. Don’t be a reader who reads without thinking or who reads without a purpose.

Comprehension Regulation:

You can become an active, effective reader through comprehension regulation. This is a method for consciously controlling the reading process. Comprehension regulation involves the use of preplanned strategies to understand text. It is a plan for getting the most out of reading. It allows you to have an idea of what to expect from the text. Most importantly, it gives you techniques to use when you are experiencing difficulties.As an active reader, you can get an idea of what the writer is trying to communicate by:

• Setting goals based on your purpose for reading
• Previewing the text to make predictions
• Self-questioning
• Scanning
• Relating new information to old

Determining your Purpose:

There are many different purposes for reading. Sometimes you read a text to learn material, sometimes you read for pure pleasure, and sometimes you need to follow a set of directions. As a student, much of your reading will be to learn assigned material. You get information from everything you read and yet you don’t read everything for the same reason or in the same way or at the same rate. Each purpose or reason for reading requires a different reading approach. Two things that influence how fast and how well you read are the characteristics of the text and the characteristics of you, the reader.Characteristics of the text:

• Size and style of the type (font)
• Pictures and illustrations
• Author’s writing style and personal perspectives
• Difficulty of the ideas presented

Characteristics of the reader:

• Background knowledge (how much you already know about the material or related concepts)
• Reading ability – vocabulary and comprehension
• Interest
• Attitude

Skills for being an effective reader and for increasing comprehension are:

• Finding main ideas and supporting details/evidence
• Making inferences and drawing conclusions
• Recognizing a text’s patterns of organization
• Perceiving conceptual relationships
• Testing your knowledge and understanding of the material through application

When comprehension fails, or your understanding seems limited, you can use a plan that includes:

• Using structural analysis and contextual clues to identify unknown vocabulary words (e.g., look at roots, prefixes, suffixes). If this fails, keep a dictionary close by and look up words you don’t understand
• Reading more critically – ask questions while you read
• Summarizing or outlining main points and supporting details
• Rereading the material
• Do a “think aloud” and/or try to explain what you’ve read to someone else

Although, reading means different things to different people and skills vary with every individual, reading is a skill that can be improved. Students from various backgrounds are in reading courses for a variety of reasons. Weaknesses in vocabulary, comprehension, speed, or a combination of all three may be the result of ineffective reading habits. Active reading is engaged reading and can be achieved through comprehension regulation strategies.