Updates!! and end of semester

Sorry for the lack of updates. Even though I had taken only 4 modules this semester but had been super busy leh. Shall do some recap for the modules that I had taken this semester.

The Child Language module is non-examinable which makes it super intensive but still lots of fun and manageable. Why intensive, because there were 2 presentations of two readings, 3 tests(including the prerequisite test), class and IVLE forum participation and one big project which is 40% of the entire module. The project is fun because we got to choose and “play” with the child to gather linguistic data for analysis. Our project topic was on “Investigation into tone acquisition by a non-speaker of Mandarin”. Why the project topic is interesting because we wanted to find out how the child who had some prior exposure to Mandarin would acquire the new Mandarin tones we were going to teach her. We basically teach the child two minimal sets of Mandarin tones. From this project, we learnt that the gathering of linguistic data from a child is not easy at all and we have to offer an interpretation of the data we gathered. I would also like to thank my partner for providing the child for the project, for without the child, this project would never have been able to start at all.

What other things are interesting for this module? Basically there are some theories that are behind Child Language research which is applicable to human nature itself. These include the nativist theory which states that language is innate to our brains as well as the “social” theory which postulates that our environment shapes the language that we use.

The language and internet module is basically about corpus linguistics. This module is one of the modules that I had wanted to take all along. Why is it interesting is because of the analysis of blog language as well as other languages that are used on the internet by the various virtual communities. The linguistic data I gathered and analysed show how language is creatively appropriated and used by different people or virtual communities which help to make each community distinctive. For the individual essay, I had analysed and compared Singapore Teenage blog language with British Teenage blog language. The main weakness of the essay was that I had focused too much on the Singapore side which made the analysis skewed. For the group project, we had carried out a research on the language of game forums, comparing the language used in DOTA Allstars forum with World of Warcraft forums. The results are expected because we found quite a lot of similarities between the language used as DOTA is a subset of Warcraft series of games. However, there were some distinctive language used for each forum because of the different nature for each game. The exam questions were rather difficult. The first question basically asks about ethics in corpus research – how to carry out the gathering of data naturally but not be a skilled imposter. Hmm, spent quite a long time about 15 minutes before starting on this question. The next question is about Sinclair’s semantic prosody and semantic preference which is one of the simpler questions. Finally, I also attempted the question on how not to resort to cultural stereotyping when analyzing corpus data. Basically, I quoted the examples from the Thai chat reading combined with my own arguments.

Cinematic discourse module is basically about watching films. What I like most about this module is because it’s not very technical or linguistically inclined. Therefore I also highly recommend this module to be taken by non EL majors. I like the part where we learnt about the different camera techniques used in movies to create different kinds of effects. My essay was focused on the topic of camera techniques used in the film Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. I had started the essay since Chinese New Year in February. Of course this sounds like kiasu but had to start the essay early so that can gather enough information to write a good essay mah. For the group project, our group did on Animatrix. Our group was deciding between doing a Muse MTV or Animatrix, and in the end the majority of votes go to Animatrix because many of our group members were anime fans. We did one of the short films inside the Animatrix: Program which was of course Japanese anime inspired and it was also entirely created by a Japanese anime creator.

Here's a link for the Animatrix short: Program:



For the exam, I did on question about characterization and difficulties involved with it, which also touched on the elusive issue of identity. However, I argued that identity even though it is elusive and complicated is nevertheless an important consideration for the analysis of characterization. For the second question we were shown a video clip for Citizen Kane and asked to answer how linguistics and discourse analysis are important in the study of cinematic narratives. I kinda expected that Citizen Kane would be used in the exam because it is such an important movie.

The last module is narrative structures. It’s not an easy module considering that the concepts taught to us were abstract and we had to do lots of self learning. Of course, for the essay I had talked about the use of camera techniques in the creation of cinematic space in Citizen Kane. This is one of the most interesting essays that I had written because I learnt a lot of new things in the process of writing. The group project that my group chose was on Shakespeare In Love. I was in charge of the cinematography portion for research and presentation. Incidentally, this movie won the best picture for the Academy Awards which is why the cinematography is important for this film. The exam for this module was the hardest as the questions were very vague and open ended. Just hope that the answers I gave were okie. Seems that the first question is similar to the question that was set for cinematic discourse about how important linguistics is in the study of narrative in general, including narratives that are not encoded linguistically. The second question I chose was on morality and whether it has structural consequence or only has occurrence in the contents of narrative. I argued that morality has structural consequence as I feel that morality can shape the plots of narrative. But I feel that my argument was not very strong on the whole.

That’s all for this semester’s work. Next, taking two more modules in the coming semester – GEK1500 and GEK1512

Recently I was trying out an email reading program called Emailcash Pro. Was wondering on the reliability of this program. But still trying it to see how it goes..