CMC Assignments - Eizat Shahputra

Discourse Analysis of the Forum Thread

Introduction

Forum – Motor Trader Forum Malaysia

Retrieved from www.motortrader.com.my/asp/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=7328

Thread Topic – “Pls try to use english as our discussion language” posted by forumer naza710 on 9/09/2005

Summary of the Forum

This forum is a place to mainly discuss about trading cars and the specs of a car. Forum member naza710 basically brought up the topic of encouraging the use of English language inside the forum discussions and threads. Most of other members agreed with his point about improving their English by posting their comments in that language. However one forum administrator, Chips does argue that the forum caters to 99.9% of Malaysians, so they should remain neutral to this matter and not discourage the use of the national language, Bahasa Malaysia.

Analysis

Firstly, quality of the English used in the thread is basically mediocre. There are some grammatical mistakes and spelling errors made in their posts. For example, “grammer fail”, “what BM is been wriiten”, “return opening”, “any joyfull mood” and some others. These mistakes were made by the ordinary members while the forum administrator uses near-perfect English.

There are a lot of jargons recognized by their members used in the posts. Mostly involve brands of the car and their names. For example “Ria vs Innova”, “Carnival/Sedona”, “Ria is the only heavy drinker MPV” and others.

There are also some code-mixing in the posts. It is one the most common code-mixing used among Malaysians, which is the inclusion of “la” and “lah” to show importance and stress on that particular point.

The level of politeness is basically high. All of the forum members and administrator used very polite languages and the discussions are done in a very mature way. There is little to none flaming or cursing in any of the posts with even the most polite word to describe flamers, “narrow-minded people” and “troublemakers”. However, the forum administrator locked the thread when the matter is settled to avoid any further discussion. He/she mentioned that there are some immature forum members who might turn the discussion into a fight.

The usage of short-forms and acronyms are also prevalent, which is common in any of the chat rooms, blogs, forums and message boards. These are the examples, “ppl” refers to people, “BM’ refers to Bahasa Malaysia and “ORI BM” refers to original Bahasa Malaysia.

In conclusion, the forum thread is a very basic one, with the maturity level of the posters being much matured and the topic being a very general one, which is the use of English in Malaysian discussion forums.
Advantages

Internet forums are convenient tools for discussion compared to chat rooms. Chat rooms features real-time communication in which the users need to discuss at the same time but internet forums allow the posters to comment on something earlier but still get responds afterwards. Readers can also refer to older posts and threads to obtain information.

Summary of Article

Introduction

Title - Blogs in English Language Teaching and Learning: Pedagogical Uses and Student Response

By Brad Blackstone of National University of Singapore, John Spiri of Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, and Naeko Naganuma of Akita International University

Retrieved January 17 2009 from www.nux.edu.sg/celc/publications/RETL62/01to20blackstone.pdf

Purpose of Study

The paper aims to gauge the necessity of implementing blogging activities into English for Academic Purposes in a university by the method of using surveys and temporal incorporation of the blogging activities itself into the classes.

Research Questions

1. Are the students interested in blogging and associated activities?

2. Is the implementation of blogging and related activities within a university EAP and composition program justified?

Methodology

The research implemented blogging and related activities within four different English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses over four different levels of studies during two full semesters of an academic year in an English medium university in Japan. At the end of both semesters, a survey was distributed to all the participants to obtain data for analysis. The surveys were conducted using an online survey program surveymonkey.com.

Population

The participants are made up of 145 students in eleven EAP and composition classes at a newly opened English language medium university in a rural area in Japan. Most of them are first and second year students, a few are third year students and six are international students. Half of them obtained average TOEFL score of 460-499 and others obtained 500 or more.

Duration of Study

The study expands over two full semesters of an academic year in a university. The surveys were conducted at the end of spring and fall semesters, 2006. The 11 EAP classes meet three times a week, 100 minutes per class, over 15 weeks each semesters while the composition courses meet twice a week over 90 minutes per class.

Method (Research Design)

The cycle included students setting up blogs, writing activities with blogging buddies or groups, making blog posts, reading classmates’ posts and commenting on it.

1. Blog posts – the students were given blog posts assignments which is incorporated into the courses’ activities. The students first were required to read or watch some related materials, and then use it as a basis to write their short comments and essays in the blogs.

2. Peer Reviews – involves paper based peer review activities involving commenting certain criteria and quality of a blog within a group of three or pairs.

3. Peer Comments on a Blog Post – require the students to respond and comment on a number of blog posts by their classmates. This utilizes the comment functions available in the template of a blog.

4. Blogging Groups – groups of four to eight students were created and each member were required to first respond to the posts made by their group mates before responding to their other classmates.

5. Blogging Buddy – the blogging buddy method is done by assigning partners to edit each other’s posts. It focuses on review and response.

6. The survey – to gather data on students’ view towards blogging. The four main topics of the survey are students’ attitudes towards writing, blogging as a classroom activity, doing peer reviews and being paired with blogging buddies. The answers range from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”.

Findings

Most of the students find blogging activities to be useful and interesting. 81.4% answered “strongly agree” and “agree” to the statement of if they liked blogging.93.1% agreed on the item “I like reading my classmates’ written posts”. 83% is in favor of the blogging buddy system and prefer to have a blog buddy to proof read their posts. (Refer to Appendix I for graphs)

Data Analysis

The responses and data gathered in the survey underlined the important element of writing in this study. It seems that students who like writing as an activity will preferably like blogging as well, while students who dislike writing will dislike blogging. From the survey, it seems that the students enjoyed reading the posts made by their classmates and they did not ignore the teachers’ roles as well. Finally, the students realized the importance of improving their writing skills and recognized the need to have a peer to review and edit their writings.

There are a number of benefits for implementing the blogging system into the syllabus namely by motivating the students to write more, by allowing the students to edit and carefully think about their writings before posting it, and also by allocating punctuality in writing blog posts.

Some of the potential problems of using blogging activities is its public nature in which everybody around the world with an internet connection can access and read the posts. This can also be considered as a privacy problem. Another potential problem is the political “correctness” of the ideas that one puts on the blog posts, mostly due to the public nature of the blog.