Week 3 Reflection: Perfectly Engaged

Perfectly engaged

I was totally appalled while going about the week’s assignment. Bewildered, I was crazily and deliriously creating my delicious site unknowing which button to press and which key to click. I felt like a little baby crying for help and nobody’s there to help me.  

Education is the progressive discovery of our own ignorance, Will Durant said it. However,Will Rogers retorted, “Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.” And I said, "Only you can make you feel better."

Webskills, you are directing me to really fall in love with you and to get me completely engaged. Week 1 was exciting and adventurous, “knowing me knowing you”, and blogging. Week 2 was amazing and fabulous, “going here and there”, and remembering.

The lessons I learned aside from the websearching and everything related that webskills have for the first two weeks, are the following:

1. Read the instructions very carefully, thoroughly and comprehensively before you do anything.

2. Use simple words and go direct to the point with style (smile)

3. Use empathy and telepathy in writing your tasks, blogs and comments.

4. Commit to webskills and have fun.

I may be delirious at delicious, but the week was delightfully and completely engaging.

Week 3- I am perfectly engaged, there’s no more turning back. I am now facing a vast ocean of ideas and mountainous search tools. I am drowning and falling hastily, but I am now standing still in awe and amazement on top of it, I suppose. To be totally engage I have to know you, to understand you, to perceive you and to love you. I love you webskills and I love you more creators and mentors of webskills.

In retrospect, third week had these thoughts in me:

Delicious.com is a must to all professionals whether you teach English or Math. I recommend this to all reading enthusiasts.

However, too much is very much. We see a lot of links, discover a lot to learn, gain so much knowledge and perspectives. We have so many things to do and too little time to do them. And in my case Flu is romancing me right at this very moment. I realized that I should go easy and stay moderate. This too much has taught me to be more organized, deliberate, and focused. The human brain is the most complex thing in existence (so far). It can make 100 trillion calculations per second and can receive only quadrillion of instruction per second.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_instructions_per_second_are_processed_by_a_human_brain

Project task 2 is beginning to lead us to where we are going and what we are supposed to be doing. All the given resources will be our gaining grounds.  It makes us perspicacious, retrospective and introspective. “What may be suitable for you may not be suitable for me.” I opt for what is practical and realistic.  

We learned about CALL Computer Assisted Language Learning and Computer Assisted Pronunciation Training CAPT. How new is new this new perspective in teaching pronunciation? 10 years, 5 years ago; to what extent did it succeed?

Some intriguing lines that bring me into retrospection and introspection are the following:

“A word of caution on new technological ad­vances is in order. Even though new technological advances offer exciting per­spectives for second-language pronunciation teaching, people are still the best teachers, evaluators and correctors of learners’ performances in L2. P.173. I am proud to say that my first English teacher was my father who taught me to memorize three to 5 words from the Longman Unabridged dictionary that he gave me when I was 8 years old and put me on the table to recite what I learned just after dinner daily until I finished college. And I was my daughter's first English teacher too.

The attainment of intelligible pronunciation is considered essential for the learner to increase self-confidence and promote social interactions outside the classroom (Morley, 1991; Cunningham Florez, 1998). This holds true, Pronunciation accu­racy may also help improve a person’s social acceptance, since a foreign accent may be socially stigmatized and contribute to negative stereotyping of some second-language learners, and thus result in social or professional discrimina­tion (Munro, forthcoming; Derwing, Rossiter, and Munro, 2002). I don’t believe on this. Just as long as you can be understood, why should you be discriminated?

“Today, language teachers and researchers generally agree that the ultimate goal of pronunciation teaching should not be to eradicate a foreign accent, but rather to promote pro­nunciation which is reasonably intelligible, as intelligible pronunciation is con­sidered an essential component of communicative competence (Celce-Murcia, 1987; Anderson-Hsieh, 1989; Morley, 1991; Lambacher, 1996a, 1996b; Stibbard, 1996).” Definitely true! I just noticed that most of the studies are geared on the improvement of Intelligent Quotient (IQ) when what matters most in life is Emotional Quotient EQ.

I reiterate what I wrote in the discussion board, that for me, the purpose of learning a language is to learn how to communicate comprehensively, effectively and understandably. Communication is an art of understanding and being understood. To be understood, you have to be understandable; to be understanding, you have to understand.

Furthermore, I am particularly stunned knowing that there is not much study on listening, when listening for me is a very important aspect of learning. According to Philologist/Statistician Paul T. Rank, “Listening occupies an average of about 27% of the average waking day. Listening is used more than talking, three times as much as reading and four times as much as writing.

Gentlemen, note this, “An average man speaks twenty-five thousand words a day and the average woman speaks thirty thousand.”  

“An average person spends at least one-fifth of his life talking. Ordinarily, in a single day, enough words are spoken to fill a fifty-page book. Over the span of one year, the average person’s words would fill 132 books, each containing at least 400 pages.”

I don’t exactly know if this is correct that the mind can process six thousand (6,000 )thoughts per minute. The links and the reading relative to it give us a spinning headache. Honestly, I thought it is just enough for the week and the links for the meantime. Anyway, Donna taught us the how to, the where to and the what, and everyone else have given their share, we can always go back and spend time reading them.

Another significant thing I gained from the past three weeks with webskills is connecting and interacting with people who do not only give you knowledge and new perspectives in life, but sharing their humanity as well. It’s like knowing who is who and what is what. With all the knowledge and materialism we gain from this world, the formation of character and integrity is still the most important. 

I seal my engagement with balance, focus, and moderation in every course that we make, in every step we take whatsoever….I swear to love you forever webskills!

http://www.persuasive.net/personality-types-analytical

http://www.personalityquiz.net/- Thanks to Livia for posting this at delicious. I took the test and enjoyed it. 
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