A New Start

I would like to thank Christoph and GE2216 again for giving me a chance to write a blog regularly. Writing a blog is a great experience indeed. It provides me with a platform for expression. As what I have written in my first entry entitled My Digital Life, starting blogs was not new to me but what is new to me is maintaining a blog. I wrote blogs because I wanted to practise my writing skills. I used to write an entry every day within 2 weeks but then I stopped doing so. Time is the biggest problem. I do not have so much time spending on proofreading, and no one corrected my grammatical mistakes. But after studying this course, I notice that writing a blog should not be regarded as a burden. When I read my previous entries, I chuckle at the memory. Oh! Why did I have such a view at that moment? Although this is the last entry of this course, I will continue to write a blog to record my memories.

After reading all my entries, I would choose Are Some People Too Worried About Using Online Language? as my sample post, because I think this post is the most related to my life. I have used netspeak before I took this course. But what surprised me was that I did not know the underlying reason of using netspeak, to signal the social identity. I saw my friends who studied overseas use netspeak then I imitate them and use it. And this eventually became my writing style on Facebook most of the time. I used to doubt this kind of style. But now, after having the lecture on online language and watching the videos of David Crystal, my doubts disappeared. Online language is the most impressive topic to me and this makes me want to know more about scholars' views on netspeak.

I have commented on Jill's posts such as Online writing is quite interesting !!, A test ... and her latest post. I have also commented on Wandy's posts, for example, Netspeak...Good or Bad?, Is the Internet negatively affecting our ability to think and concertrate? and Games & Me =]. By the way, reading their blogs could broaden my horizons because they wrote something from a perpective which I had never thought of. Keep it up and I hope my comment would be constructive to them.

Nine Years Ago

Thank Christoph for bringing such an interesting topic to us this week. The lecture on games, learning and literacy conjured up memories of playing an online game in my childhood.

Nine years ago, I used to play an online game called Cross Gate. I loved this online game very much! To start the game, players had to choose an avatar, together with a name, to represent them in the game. Everyone had his or her own abilities (strength, speed, etc.) and according to them, he or she could choose the most suitable occupation (archer, wizard or witch, etc.). This taught me the first thing. Things have to be well planned before action. In the game, each occupation had its own skills. Players needed to 'practise' the skills and gain more experiences in order to make their skills more powerful but this was no easy task. This taught me the second thing. Patience is needed whenever you want to make yourself stronger or skilful. In the game, players could join other players to kill monsters and bosses in order to 'up level' (directly translated from Cantonese); in other words, we could mix with different people every time we were in the same group. This taught me the third thing. In order to talk with other players more effectively, I learnt how to type Chinese characters gradually. I learnt much jargon. I learnt to tackle some important missions by reading walk-throughs first. I learnt not to trust people who I'd never met before. And the list goes on.

Cross Gate gave me 3-year time of happiness. But thanks to it, my studies got worse when I started playing it. But I didn't regret. A saying tells us: Game is like life. We can unconsciously learn a lot of practical skills which cannot be learnt in books through playing games.

Also, games can give us countless new identities. A boy in reality can be a girl in games. A student in reality can be a wizard in games. S/he can cast spells to make fireballs or bolts of lightning. Surprisingly, a girl having a boyfriend can also have a boyfriend in the game. But this boyfriend and that can be 2 different people.

Games are actually educational if players are not addicted to them. Also, learning only happens when players play games 'healthily'. Otherwise, they may go astray.

 a photo by Ian D

Has She Done Something Really Unforgivable?

After being told by Christoph and reading a journalism review by Samantha Henig, I feel sympathy for the woman known as Dog Poop Girl. People thought that she was irresponsible and I think so. It was all her own fault. I wonder who she thought would help her clean up her dog's disgusting thing. But in this incident, she was absolutely not alone. The person who shot that video and people online who made she suffered a lot were also wrong. The person could tell staff to fine her for a lack of civic virtue but he didn't; instead, s/he posted the video clip online and the woman's nightmare started.

She was insulted. She was humiliated. She lost her privacy. She lost her job. She lost her dignity. Her parents and relatives were implicated in this incident. And above all, she lost everything that she didn't deserve to lose. Was she that unforgivable? Has she done some horrific crime? Was this just a patronising excuse for people to treat her like this?

Are Some People Too Worried About Using Online Language?

This week, I gained some fascinating insights into  (cropped from Netspeak - Search for Words, the best online netspeak dictionary I suppose), a particular language I am using on the Internet, especially on Facebook. I enjoy writing online in English with all kinds of time-saving skills such as minimal use of capitalisation, letter homophones and so on, for example,

. In fact, when I started writing online in English, I hated this kind of style very much, because i thought it was the poison of language inaccuracy.




But soon I realised that it was very tiresome for me to check grammar and spelling, and make sure everything was perfectly fine before I press 'enter', while I was chatting with my friends. That is why now I am using netspeak, or linguistically speaking, internet slang. We can say something like 'It's my bad!' but y cant we write sth like its my bad!!!!!!!!!!?

People cannot say netspeak is really a bad thing because I think this practice is similar to diglossia. We probably use Standard English to write formal or serious things like academic essays (or blogs in our case) and we use English netspeak to write something casual, for instance, while writing online in social networking. Writing too formally on social networking sites may give people a sense of sarcasm.

I would like to share an MSN conversation with my friend with you all:
I:               ive asked her if she can join us :D
My friend: ok but who is ive?
I:               ha ha! ive is i've, i have. its not a name

This conversation is interesting I think but not common. I would say that some people are getting too worried that netspeak worsens our language proficiency. However, we are literate. We somehow unconsciously know when to use the 'appropriate' language to write, for instance, writing 'u r v nice' on paper makes me feel very strange. Besides, language proficiency is not only confined to spelling or Morphology. We also have sentence structure or Syntax, meanings of words or Semantics and so on. From the above conversation, it is conspicuous that I know the contracted from of have is 've, I know how to write a complete sentence and I know the meanings of every word in the conversation. Do all these still mean that my language proficiency is low?

I would like to share a video uploaded by macmillanELT on Youtube. David Crystal, introduced by Christoph, shared his positive views about the language changed by the Internet, and I think what he said goes along with what I was saying. As long as we can communicate with people online happily, I cannot see any problems with netspeak. But bearing this in mind, make sure you and your friends are on the right track when you use netspeak, or else misunderstanding will crop up. :P

Photo Sharing (Classwork)

Almost ten minutes before I listened to a programme about day trips, so I'd like to share a photo of Niagara Falls by Rinaldo W.



Looking at pictures is indeed much more interesting than reading words. When I first saw this picture in class, I had many feelings of it. This photo is like portraying our life. We might have doubts about our future. We have to overcome difficulty, though it is very hard sometimes. But once you go for it, there must be something nice, like the rainbow, waiting for you.

I do agree that adding visual elements into the web design can make the whole thing more interesting.

My Digital Life

Hi! Welcome to my blog! This is not the first time for me to start a blog. I started blogs in Xanga, Jasco, and so on. I quite like blogging but life is really too busy.

My digital life started when I was about 11. My parents bought me a computer and I immediately learnt how to use ICQ. Uh-oh! I really miss it. When I was promoted to secondary school, people around me started using MSN Messenger instead. At first I was reluctant to use it as I was used to using ICQ, but I had no choice. I soon realised using ICQ was for communication between my friends. If very few, if not no, people used it, why did I bother to use it? I turned to MSN Messenger then and have been using it til now. Apart from MSN Messenger, or to be accurate, eBuddy because of my smartphone, I often use Facebook because it is very convenient for me to get my friends' latest news, talk to them, share photos with them, invite them to have gatherings and you know it. It lets me do many things that I cannot do or do not have time to do. Could I live without digital tools? No!!!

Why I chose to study GE2216 is that I major in Linguistics and Language Technology. It is something to do with sociolinguistics which I find very interesting. Also, studying something closely related to our lives is definitely fascinating.

Hope we can work hard together and if you all don't mind, I will be very happy if we can be friends on Facebook. Add me here