"The person who knows only one language does not truly know the language"

BILLY found a good article  regarding the justification of maintaining the mother tongue of a person. There's  no doubt that we can competently learn about a culture or a religion without having to speak the language (Wiki-all-the-way!) but in order to comprehend fully, we need to be exposed to it as language is something that has been living chronologically with its society. However, this does not mean we should abandon the benefits in the ability to speak more than one language.

Reflection on Task 1: Lesson Plan

When a Muslim baby comes to the world, it is necessary for her to listen to adhan. This event can be considered as a proof to how important listening is. Allah S.W.T has given fortunate human beings the ability to hear for them to use it wisely as taking care of this amanah is an act of 'ibadah. 

From the task give, we have discovered that when dealing with human to human conversation, our culture has set listening secondary after talking. Those who are vocal and speak impressively always get the name. Good listeners on the other hand, are easily forgotten. This is certainly not healthy as it takes two to tango. A society without listeners will lead to the collapse of its nation when everybody only wants to listen to themselves, their own point of views of life and others' don't matter. 

Hence our decision to prepare a lesson plan on listening skill, as we find that listening is as important as speaking. The significant lesson we learn from this task is that technology has opened up a whole wide area of opportunity to improve our listening skills, rather than using the conventional method of listening to a recoded tape and write down our answers on a given worksheet.

With the invention of voice-/video-chatting (such as Windows Live and Skype), students are able to improve their listening skills by communicating through voice-/video-chatting, as what we have prepared for our lesson plan. When we prepared this task, we found that there are so (numerous!) many websites on improving grammar, writing skills, and reading skills. Little did we know that there are also a number of websites that cater to improving one’s listening or speaking skills by communication to another leaner or teacher and this opens up students to the concept of authentic language. This gives the opportunity for students to possibly native English speakers or perhaps other dialects of English, especially those of non-native speakers.

This concludes that technology has brought boundaries closer and gives chances to people who are do not have the opportunity to be exposed to other versions of authentic English language than the one they are surrounded  by. 

               Prepared by: Illya Shahirah

Task 1: Listening Skill Lesson Plan

Most instructors are forever focusing on reading and writing when it comes to teaching English. Haven't they realized that these traditional methods are BORING? Yes, they could claim that both are fundamental stages to empower in order for Usop Santorian to be able to make Snow White understand to NOT eat the apple (imagine these two characters meet, it'd be super hihihilarious!!). But hey, don't you think listening comes first before anything else? Even if the Santorian boy could vivaciously enunciate words as how Martin Luther King did, Snow White would have been poisoned anyway if she did not listen. And in this current world with botox and plastic surgeries, no Prince Charming would come and kiss to save you. They would definitely find for other women.So no point speaking!

In order words, teaching English through listening is as vital as other ways of learning that it cannot be overlooked. Teaching a child to listen does not only help to improve her competency level in English but also to guide her to be better in dealing with the society and understand the world. Learning to listen can certainly train a person to concentrate as well as to be disciplined. And when focused, you can absolutely acquire English language - much easier!

The following table is an example of a lesson plan that can be used to sharpen the listening skills of students of the intermediate level.

Study Level	Intermediate, Grade 7 - 9
Number of students	20
Duration	60 minutes
Computer Assisted Teaching Aids	Video/voice chat  programs such as Skype Register for a language exchange partner at English Baby  Worksheet
Objectives of the Lesson	Listening for specific information Exposure to different accents and/or dialects of English Exposure to other cultures As a training to focus Encourage students to speak  To enhance student's soft skills in engaging with strangers for professional purposes
Procedure	Induction: the students will be requested to sign up. Once they've done so they'll be asked to join the chat room and search for a partner who would want to participate in the activity using Skype.	10 minutes
	They are then required to engage in a conversation with their partners (ice-breaking). The partners are required to perform a certain task that is part of the activity. Students will share the document file provided for their partners to answer.	20 minutes
	The students are to listen and note down their response after their partners have finished speaking.	10 minutes
	After the students have finished, they are to review their answers with their partners as they self-mark their worksheet.	10 minutes
	Tell the students to compare their worksheets (mass discussion). Students may also discuss on how accents/dialects may affect their listening comprehension.	10 minutes
Evaluation	The students will revise the answers with their partners. Students who answered correctly reflect their listening comprehension and understanding. The teacher will later listen to the recorded conversation and compare to their answer sheets to evaluate.
Reflection

We have also included three websites that are relevant to Computer Assisted Language Learning:

1. MyLanguageExchange.com  
2. ESL Radio and TV
3. English Listening Practice for English Learners

Online Journals on Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL)

For our very first (ungraded and easy) task was to search, compile, and post on our blog a list of online journals available that are in relations to CALL. We managed to collect ten journals and they are just a click away:

Journal 1
Computer-Assisted Language Learning Electronic Journal

Journal 2
The Internet TESL Journal

Journal 3
The Modern Language Journal

Journal 4
Journal of Computer Assisted Learning

Journal 5
GEMA Online Journal of Language Studies

Journal 6
Cambridge Journals - ReCALL

Journal 7
Language Learning & Technology

Journal 8
The Journal of Language and Linguistics Studies

Journal 9
International Journal of Learning and Media

Journal 10
CALICO Journal

Hello, hello!

Welcome linguistic and non-linguistic readers! As for those who are from our class or our department, we are sure that you would have an idea or two of what you are seeing here. But for those who have just stumbled across our blog while happily blog-hopping, let us give you a quick introduction of who we are and our objectives of being here.

First and foremost, let us introduce ourselves. Our codename is “BILLY”, since we are not just one person navigating this blog (hence the pronoun ‘we’). This blog is actually the combination of writings by four undergraduate students from the Department of English Language and Literature (DELL) of the InternationalIslamic University of Malaysia, also known as IIUM (phew! That’s a mouthful!). You can get a glimpse of who we are on the profile side bar and see what an interesting bunch we are ;-).

This blog has been specially designed for our ENGL 4740 course titled Computer Application in Language Studies (CALL). So we are basically English major students who are studying the use of computers and technology in language study. What we are doing is a required project for the entire semester, where we will be completing specific tasks given by our lecture, the ever sweet Dr. Rozina, and at the same time we are free to place our creativity and critical thinking skills by applying the Islamization of Knowledge on one linguistic theme.

And our theme is: Introduction to Linguistics

Why Intro to Linguistics? Well, because it is the introduction and we would like our blog to not only be accessible to people of linguistics alone, but also to the non-linguistic people who would be able to pick up a thing or two on the information that we have shared on our blog. Knowledge is great when you get to share it around. Though if there is any shortage or misinterpreted information on our blog, please excuse us as we are just mere humans who are bound to shortage and mistakes.

With that, we hope you enjoy our blog and find it informative for your own musings. :-)