First
and foremost, we are grateful to Allah for His bounty as we finally manage to
complete our blog assignment on the given time. Thus, our gratitude and
appreciation dedicated to Madam Rozina Abdul Ghani for her instruction,
guidance and constant encouragement regarding the blog task. We find that the idea of making blog in this
particular course is really a new experience to us, as it assists us to the
process of learning in applying computer and its applications in language
studies. Throughout this course, we have learned on how to create an effective
presentation, the importance of CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) and
CMC (Computer Mediated Communication) as well as Corpus Linguistics. Thus, we
believe, this assignment integrates all the skills we learned as we practically
applied them in creating our blog.
In the process of making this blog, we
have been facing a lot of difficulties and challenges. As a matter of fact, in
our group only Siti Hajar who has her own blog before Madam Rozina asked us to
create one. In addition, she is the most high-tech and IT savvy among the three
of us. So, her knowledge contributes so much in creating and running the blog
smoothly. However, it is true that the blog work stress us at the first place
since we are not use to it before. Therefore, it takes quite some time for us
before we can actually start filling all the details in our blog as required by
Madam Rozina.
We
choose to work on Romantic and Victorian Literature course as the main theme of
our blog, because we find that the course is interesting to be discussed on.
For that matter, we decide to focus only on the Romantic period poets and their
poems since the theme of nature interests us more among all. Our primary
concern is the nature because it is one of the elements of Romanticism that has
been described widely in many of the Romantic literary works. The appreciation
of nature is comforting in a sense that one can seek tranquility by remembering
the beauty of nature. Besides that, we wish to educate people to be able to
recognize the features of Romantic writing. Moreover, we want to apply the
Islamic point-of view in the admiration of nature, in line with the concept of
Islamization of knowledge as often pointed by Madam. In our personal opinion,
we strongly believe that Islamization of knowledge is very essential especially
when dealing with knowledge derived from Western perspective. In learning
language and literature, especially in English, students and academicians will
usually encounter opinions that will not necessarily in line with our religion
that is Islam. Realising the danger Western perspective (of any branch of
knowledge) can impose on us especially on Muslim society, it is a must for us
to find out what Islam says on any issues. Hence, our blog includes some
information on the Islamic perspective in admiration of nature.
Apart
of that, this blog serves as an electronic portfolio which can record our works
for a period of time. Since it requires
little physical space, we find that the blog is very essential in sharing a
great deal of information, specifically English Literature in Romantic era with
the readers. The task turns to be more pleasing when we can add pictures,
graphics and even videos regarding Romantic poets and their poems to our blog.
Therefore, the process of learning becomes more attractive and fun as the
viewers can look at those materials instead of reading them on papers. Eventually, this course benefits us so much
as via the blog; we can share our views with other people and at the same time,
welcoming theirs and any ideas or criticisms to improve our blog.
Overall, we believe that cooperation and communication are very
important in realizing this blog. Obviously, we need to have good communication
between us in order to reach agreement upon anything pertaining to our blog.
Otherwise, the task might be harder and longer than it should be. Thus, several
meetings have been held in order to discuss and divide the tasks fairly to each
member. Eventually, this course teaches us to create our own blog that serves as
our portfolio. Indeed, we can share our views with other people and at the same
time, welcoming theirs and any ideas or criticisms to improve our blog.