ASSIGNMENT 2 - CMC Corpus

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

LITERATURE REVIEW

Apparently, users of blogs are booming from time to time. Various types of blogs such as academics, business, sports, religion, etc. are created based on users’ interest. Hence, many researchers have been studied about blog usage in terms of various aspects. Research on blog has been done by Shu-ming Wang and Judy Chuan-Chuan Lin entitled “The Effect of Social Influence on Blogger’s Usage Intention”. The purpose of the study is to explore relationships among social influence, blog platform qualities and usage intention for improving the understanding of the effect that social influence exerts on blogger’s usage intention. 

The findings show that in term of technical perspectives, information quality, system quality and blog functions quality influence blogger’s usage intention. In term of social perspectives, social influence affects blogger’s usage intention directly and indirectly through blog platform qualities. Moreover, the findings revealed the differences between blog readers and writers in the perceptions of blog platform qualities and the intensity of path coefficients among factors in the conceptual model. 

In the study entitled “The Corporate Blog as an Emerging Genre of Computer-mediated Communication: Features, Constraints, Discourse Situation” written by Cornelius Puschmann focuses on corporate or enterprise blogging used by business professionals to further organizational goals. It shows the purpose of corporate blogs which serve for extra-organizational such as marketing, public relations, customer relationship management as well as knowledge management.

Puschmann’s method is to describe corporate blogs empirically via a text-typographic corpus study. He conducted both qualitative evaluation of individual texts and specific linguistic construction in them. Moreover, he also approached the corpus data holistically using scalar statistical measures such as lexical density, f-score and propositional idea density, as well as degree of dimensional variation.

In Murray L. ,Hourigan T. , and Jeanneau C. research entitles “Blogs writing integration for academic language learning purposes: towards an assessment framework”, it aims to identify pedagogical roles for blogs in language teaching and learning besides the ways of assessment language learner writing in terms of their creativity also improvement. Students at Third level Institution were asked to write a blog for five months and they can only write about language learning strategies and experiences with the declared aim of improving student language learning strategies through self – reflection and self – expression.

To conclude for this research, they found that most students understood the potential of blogs are as a reflexive tool on LL and the benefit thereof. The blog writing also represents aspects of a post – process method with opportunities to rationalize as reflect upon the “expressions of the self”.

INTRODUCTION

Blog is a frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and Web links (marketingterms.com). It has been used widely for individual to express and share their interest and thoughts to the world. Today, blog has also being used as a medium to promote and sell products as well as service. These features are called as ‘Corporate Blogging’ or business blogging.

For this task, the blog that is going to be focused on is business blog that offers photography service which is Anna Rina Photography. Anna Rina is a Malaysian photographer whom offers service in shooting weddings and lifestyle portraits. Her services cover not only locally but internationally such as in Perth, Singapore, Bali and Krabi. This shows that she is a well known talented photographer. Moreover, her blog was nominated as the Best Photography Blog for Blogger’s Choice Awards.

Therefore, in completing this task, we will be studying on the blogger’s usage intention of corporate blogging. In dealing this element we will be focusing on two linguistic elements which are social distance and politeness through text, links, graphics and the structure of the blog.

ANALYSIS

In Anna Rina’s blog, we can see the intention of the blogger is to offer and promote her photography services in shooting weddings and lifestyle portraits. Therefore, there are a lot of pictures that are being used to portray her services. Moreover, in this blog, there are many pictures from different concept. The blog show various concepts for example in the wedding shots, she uses concept such as romantic, traditional and modern weddings. From all the concepts, the blogger’s intention can be conveyed in which shows that she is a professional in her field.

The blog also uses links in order to make it more organized and clear for viewers. There are six major links which are consists of Home, About Me, Services, Categories, Testimonials and Contact. Moreover, the blogger also uses sub-links to narrow the categories. Photo links are also used as an image to portray her interests. For example, the image of weddings is used for wedding categories. Whilst, the pictures tells that the blogger build and maintains her solidarity with her clients. 

In addition, the blog’s structure is well organized in which every posting has a unique format. The structure of every post must contain title, description texts, pictures, and comments. She updated her profiles into specific categories and dates are inserted as an indication to the events. The blog is also being organized vertically in order to ease of use by viewers. 

To analyze the text, we will relate it to main linguistic aspects which are; social distance and politeness. This is due to reason that the blogger uses words that symbolize her solidarity with the clients. Therefore, we will be focusing in three parts in the blog which are; the introduction, the description of every post, and every comment of the postings. 

The texts used in the introduction are meant to attract people. She first briefly mention about her profile with her experience as being one of professional photographer. Other than that, the blogger share her passion in her blog. She cites her solidarity with the audience and viewers by indicating the ‘smiley-mode’ in the texts. 

Throughout her posts, she always tells the stories about every couple and their sweet memories. The blogger and her clients are both shared common ideas of their interest. She also captures the images by inserting her expressive text from romantic lyrics. As in to strengthen their bond of solidarity, the blogger not only used expression such as (:-D) in the introduction, but also in the posts written. Despite of that, it shows close social distance between her and the viewers by using words like ‘yummy’, and expressive spellings like ‘cuteeee’ , ‘enjoyyy’, ‘kiiidd’. 

When it comes to commenting parts from the viewers, the politeness shown through the viewers comment instead of her own but the social distance between the blogger and the viewers cannot be seen because there are no responses from her own party. This might due to the fact that she assumes the commentary as only a complimentary and regular feedback.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion politeness and social distance are used in personal business blogging as shown in Anna Rina’s blog. This can be shown through pictures, wordings, and symbols throughout her blog. Her organizations of the blog are very friendly user and structured because it shows her professionalism. Her words and how she writes also shows her personality which is friendly, outspoken and carefree.

Her style of writing also managed to influence viewers to visit her blog and at the dsme time promoting her skill and business. In other word, she succeeds to portray her intentions and passion. The blog is very interesting that it manages to get nominated as the Best Photography Blog for Blogger’s Choice Awards.

Corpus: 

http://www.anna-rina.com/

References:
THE EFFECT OF SOCIAL INFLUENCE ON THE BLOGGERS’ USAGE INTENTION
by Shu-ming Wang and Judy Chuan-Chuan Lin
THE CORPORATE BLOG AS AN EMERGING GENRE OF COMPUTER MEDIATED COMMUNICATION by Cornelius Puschman
LANGUAGE LEARNING PURPOSES: TOWARDS AN ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK
by Liam Murray, Tríona Hourigan & Catherine Jeannea

ASSIGNMENT 1 - Computer Assisted Language Learning

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

ORAL COMPUTER-MEDIATED INTERACTION BETWEEN L2 LEARNERS: IT’S ABOUT TIME 

by Inigo Yanguas

PART A 

Inigo Yanguas, an assistant professor of Spanish and director of the Spanish Language Program at San Diego State University proposed his research paper regarding ‘Oral Computer-Mediated Interaction Between L2 Learners: It’s About Time!’ explored about task-based, synchronous oral computer-mediated communication also known as CMC among intermediate-level learners of Spanish. 

In this research study prepared by Inigo Yanguas, the participants consist of two parts of 15 Spanish L2 Learners mostly from public university in Southern California. Those participants were being recorded their conversations throughout the process after given the questionnaire about their background. These participants were randomly selected to do one of the three which are; video-conferencing (VidCMC), audio-conferencing (AudCMC) and face-to-face (FTF). They were assigned to their own labeled computer where they need to listen to a recording explains about the procedure for this lab session, then to read and signed a form such an agreement for them. Once it is checked by the researcher and both party understood they were given ‘Skype’ to call their assigned partners. Both parts of FTF control group were seated together and computer microphones were used to record their conversations. 

The tasks begin with limited time of 20 minutes where each group completes a jigsaw style task; that force learners to share their information to achieve a particular goal which extensively used in the type of literature. The other task they used in this study is ‘genuinely interactive and student-centered’ where it had a connection to the real world. For example, the researcher use such program as ‘The Amazing Race’, a reality show which required participants to interact in pairs to prepare for a race in Latin America. 

Inigo Yanguas was one of the scholars that had done his investigation upon the assessment of second language (L2) learners interactions based on computer-mediated communication (CMC) in the context of second language acquisition (SLA) which has existed since the early 1900s. 

Qualitative analyses of the conversations of the VidCMC, AudCMC, and FTF dyads were carried out to investigate how learners in these three groups negotiated during task-based interaction. Findings for the amount of negotiation in all groups showed that VidCMC and FTF were quite similar but for AudCMC was somewhat higher from those two. It is still a fact that learners negotiated for meaning of the lexical items regardless of the group they were in. The research explained the target lexical items triggered the vast majority of negotiation routines in both VidCMC and AudCMC (OCMC). AudCMC dyads were different from others and also from FTF that they did not seem to be able to negotiate the exact meaning of the target words negotiated. 

Global indicators are found in which it occurs when the trigger is not specifically identified. In addition, the types of response given by speakers were the vital element in the negotiation routines. Thus, these responses are the key to develop language accusation to occur. The use of visual cues (like signs) in the AudCMC dyads seems not to be ideal for L2 learning. 

Emphasizing the importance of material sources (like computer, headset, etc) play an important role in the CMC context. Students using CMC tends to use more complex and longer text than FTF as they have more confidence expressing their ideas as their identity remain unknown rather than using FTF. However, the use of visual cues such as sign does not appear to lead to success in the negotiation outcome. Eventually, OCMC provide learners with input modification, feedback and opportunities to produce output through negotiation. 

PART B 

Computer as Tutor, Tool and Pupil 

Since 1960s, computer has been used for language teaching and within these years, there are three stages of Computer Assisted Language Learning which are Behaviouristic CALL, Communicative CALL and Integrative CALL. However, based on understanding and research, the journal written by Inigo Yanguas on Oral Computer-Mediated Interaction between L2 Learners shows that the structure is an Integrative Call in which computer is used as a tool. 

This is because the study is a task based, synchronous oral computer-mediated communication also known as CMC in which real time communication are accomplished using special chat software programs, Skype. The task given was to complete a jigsaw style puzzle that drive learners to communicate and share information to achieve the goal. Another task is interaction between students to prepare for a program such as ‘The Amazing Race’. The entire task is done via computer in which computer is used as a tool of communication. Basically, the research emphasized on learner-learner interaction. 

Based on the research, Audio CMC is less efficient for interaction between learners because non-verbal cues are unavailable to be used unlike Video CMC and FTF which learners are able to see and interpret non-verbal cues. However, it is said that learners like to stay anonymous by using Audio CMC. These processes are ideal because people can now communicate and learn from native speakers around the world through video-chat software such as Skype, Yahoo Messenger and MSN. 

Product Vs Process Oriented 

When it comes to writing, there are two prevailing theories which are process oriented and product oriented. Process oriented focuses on own understanding whereby product oriented are when writing are used as a way of communicating in which clarity to readers. Basically, in the research by Inigo Yanguas on Oral Computer-Mediated Interaction between L2 Learners, there are no used of writings. However, when they produce idea, the message they used must be product oriented in order for the receiver to easily understand and interpret the message. 

Based on the task given, learners are needed to share information to complete a jigsaw and also produce idea on how to conduct a program. Therefore, the idea they produce and the information that needed to be share must be transmitted to the receiver with a product oriented method so that receiver are able to interpret and understand the message. 

Discovery Learning

This principle was first outlined by a psychologist and cognitive learning theorist Jerome Bruner (1967) in a book about how people construct knowledge based on prior experiences. The goals of discovery learning are to promoting a “deep” understanding, developing meta-cognitive skills, and encouraging a high level of student engagement.

In related to this research, participants are needed to solve problems using three ways and this is suitable with discovery learning theory because in discovery learning theory learning is active and students must participate in hands- on and problem – solving activities plus the need of encouraging mastery and application .Therefore, learners learned from failure and the most important part is feedback because it will allows learners to develop deeper understanding.

The participants given the method to communicate with their partners which is oral CMC and the task given was about solving problems and experience, it matches well with the characteristics of discovery learning. Plus, using oral CMC, participants can give their response and feedback about the task with their partner and this can improve their knowledge and their language at the same time.

Learner- centered

This principle focus on the development of a learner’s comprehension and expertise where it is important to learner to be expert or familiar with tools that will be used in dealing with the task given to them where in this case, those participants will use oral CMC like VideoCMC, AudioCMC and also FTF. They need to familiarize themselves with those tools so that they will be able to solve the problems. The benefits of learner- centered are learners will have to give extra focus in language they used so that their partners will understand them.

Besides, this research also fulfill what is needed in learner –centered characteristics where students can evaluate about their progress themselves and they also can answer to each other’s questions and this suits well with this research where these participants need to focus on language and tools given to them so they can gain benefits by being an expert relating to technology and at the same time maintain their interest in language they learned. 

Authentic Use of Language 

Language is very important because it functioning as a tool to spread the message from sender to the receiver. Language can make each other become much closer and language also can tear apart one relationship, so it is very important to use authentic language because everything is depends on the language. When Inigo Yanguas assigned those participants with their task which is to solve the jigsaw, indirectly it means that those participants need to use the correct language or terms so that their partners will understand what their message is. 

In this research however, there are participants that used visual cues in order to give signals or message to their partners and this action would not give benefit to them because they do not have to use language even though there are in language class but that percentage is not high and only AudiCMC ables to do that and overall finding for this research is that oral CMC is good to be used in teaching language.