Preparation for Image Management Workshop(17/4/2013)

On the 17/4/2013, the School of Education has organised a workshop for the UG First-year students and Second-year students. This workshop is carried out by Teo, Jimmy Hui Thian, and  it focus on the external appearance of an individual and also the inward appearance that helps us discover our strengths and weaknesses, project confidence and develop charisma. The talk start around  2 p.m. until 5 p.m. All of us are required to dress in our formal clothes before attending the talk. Some of our lecturers attended the talk as well.

During the talk, the speaker introduced himself and tells us a bit of his background on how he started his career in the banking sector before he decided to follow his passion to become a teacher. This award winning teacher pursued his further education in University Malaya and graduated with MEd TESL. After being in the education sector for almost eight years he decided to yet again pursue a different interest. He joined an American organisation dealing with universities and multinational companies in Malaysia and abroad. He also worked in the recruitment environment for almost 10 years in his career.Then he currently a Senior Lecturer at The Faculty of Education and Languages, Open University Malaysia. Now, he is working in education engineering, where he designs and builds online learning tools for the university.

The speaker then talks about personality profiling: learning about youself. He then gave us a questionaire to fill up to find our characters such as golds, greens, oranges and blues. In order for us to fill up the questionaire, the speaker shows the list of  attributes, values and personalities and encourage us to fill up the two word clusters. After we complete our questionaire, we need to calculate the total score for each question.




From the questionnaire, my colour is gold and a little bit of blue. I feel the colour gold really tells me the person i am, except i don't think im right all the time, that's is not me.

     

 

The characteristics of gold are punctual and dependable, respect rules, like routine and orderliness, have a strong sense of right and wrong, are very loyal and don't like a lot of change in their routine. The moment when the speaker mention  about some of these characteristics, i turn my head to flora, hahaha. Because she has these qualities in her when working with her in the group assignments especially the part on having strong sense of right and wrong. She said " Really, I have those?." She is so funny.

 

 

However, the characteristics of blue in a person are social and work best in group settings, are imaginative, are senstive to critique, like to be valued and reassured, and enjoy being included in decisions. All of these characteristics really tells me the person i am today.

 

Other colours like green really suits How, because he is logical, problem solver and work best independently and the colour orange really suits Kathryn because she is competitive, are 'hands on' type, and of course can handle many tasks at one time.

 

It is so interesting that we could identify the colour and the characteristics that explains our personal attributes.

 

Later on, the speaker talk about how to become a person who has self-confidence:

 

1. Groom yourself, shower, and for boys, they need to shave.

2. Properly dress

3. Kill negative thoughts(aware of your self-talk).

4. Get to know yourself

5. Get prepared

6. Learn from others

 

The speaker also talk about putting biz card in holder. He talks about the values of people from different countries. He gave an example of a country which is Japan, and he tells us that the people of Japan do not scribble on the empty space give according to the person's rank, in this case the senior. Then, take time to read and memorise detail. He also talk about the handshake. When we are introducing ourselves to other people or organisations. We need to have warm handshake, and extend your hand slit and also lock our eyes( but caution: not more than 3 sec).

 

Etiquette on the table.

 

 

 

Etiquette on the table is when we are invited to a dinner party by our boss or manager in the company/ organisation. It is important that we dressed formally to dinner and not to forget our table manners.

I learnt a lot of things such as  how to hold the napkin, and put it gently on our lap. When we need to leave the dinner table, we have to put on the chair, fold the napkin and put in on the left side of the plate. I also learnt that when your collegues or boss want only pepper, we still have to give salt as well.

 

I also learnt how to dress well and to have a hair that matches with our face cut.

 

Men

 

Women

 

 

 

 Mine is a heart shaped face

 

What's more interesting about this talk, is when he shows us pictures of different people, who has different face cut. He gave us a little bit of advice that we should have a hair that suits our shape of the face. If you have a heart shaped face, you need to give short curls for your hair and make it wavy.

 

This has been a wonderful experience for me, where i learnt about personalities, how to dress smartly to work, etiquette on the table and when meeting people. Also, finding the right hair that mathches with your face cut.

 

With that, I end my writing here.

 

 

Sonia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This Week: Issues in First Language Acquisition

Date: 2 April 2013

This week, I learned about the issues in first language acquisition. This phrase is something new to me and I found it hard to read all of these terms in the textbook. The first thing, is the language, and the use of vocabulary in the book were complex and can't get the message across. I had to keep on reading many times as I can, to make sure that I understand what it really means.

What I understand about this chapter, is that language acquisition is where children acquire their first languages. All humans have the innate ability to acquire more languages. Therefore, children can learned one or more first languages. Upon my personal experiences, I grew up in an environment in which only English is spoken and heard will acquire English as my first language acquisition. I basically come from a family of English teachers. Nevertheless, there are quite a number of children who grew up in which English and Tamil or English and Chinese are spoken and heard equally. This is also known as bilingualism. For example, there are two of my classmates who grew up in a bilingualism environment. One of them spoke and heard English and Tamil, so she also acquire both English and Tamil as her first languages. Other classmates of mine also share their personal experiences regarding their first languages and how they acquired them.

Then, we learned the Issues in First Language Acquisition. We were assigned to work in pairs and explore the issues in the first language acquisition. We asked to choose three issues that affect us when we are growing up and acquiring our first language.

As for me, the three issues that suits me are imitation, input and practice. The first issue is imitation, where I imitate my parents, where I hear them  speaking, telling stories and singing to me in English. For me, I can easily grasp some of the  I also get to learn English grammar by memorizing the words and sentences of the language. I also tend to make consistent errors that cannot be attributed to mispronunciation and still not heard the way the adults uses grammar. I sometimes make errors like "drawed" instead of drew.  Back then, I was  really confused with these two words. For me, I really can't memorize all the words that is used in the English Language, and so as other children.

Moreover, input is another issue in acquiring my first language acquisition, the form of input that I get at home is my parents, uncle, aunts and grandparents seems unlimited, constant and variable in terms of quality and quantity. Sometimes, it is a formal language, chatty, and also informal language. I remember that my mom used to correct my grammar and sentence structure, where I was confused when to use the terms  ' has' and 'have'. My mom will always keep on reminding me when to use these terms correctly. So as I constantly practice using these terms correctly, I slowly became competent in using the language, where I gained new skills and also when I interact with my peers and teachers in school.

The third issue is practice. You know kids, they just love to play with the languages they acquire when they do  with other objects and events around them. I remember that my mom use to buy me the Seven Dwarfs from the Disney movie "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". She used to read to me every night until I get to grasp the words that is being used to describe the story. As I get older, I practice telling stories using the "Seven Dwarfs" toys that my mom got me. I was not using it to tell the same story, but I created on my own. It is like a make- believe play. From there, I started to use some of the simpler words in English to describe my story, by using the objects " Seven Dwarfs" toys. When I get into my primary school, I learned to practice my English is through comprehension practice, read, and do lots of English exercises.


To conclude, I have gained a lot from this week class. New knowledge, share your experiences with your classmates and teachers and I start to understand this chapter well with a help of my peers. I learned something from them and how  they acquire their first language acquisition.

  

Sonia :)

  Imitation

 

 

 

 

Parental Input

 

 

 

 

Practice