USING ICT TO TRANSFORM

1.      What Can You Do With a Word Processor?

At its most basic, there are three things you can do with a word processor:

·         Create an entirely new next from scratch

·         Edit an existing text to improve its quality or accuracy

·         Perform a more radical edit by loading an existing text and setting about transforming, making changes to its form, content, audience or purpose.

2.      What is Transforming Texts?

Transforming is an activity which is change the form of a text into a different text, the changes includes changing the audience, purposes, form, etc. Transforming exercises the brains of the editors to the maximum. In the act of transforming a text you get to know its hidden secrets, you begin to understand its structure, its blue prints, you look closely at the brush strokes that create the illusion. A-Level English Language exams have for many years featured such activities using hard copy, colored pens, sheaves of paper, glue – pots and scissors. But doing ‘ hard way ‘ with paper and pen means a lot of the mental energy gets diverted to the practicalities of snipping and sticking.

Some might say that text transformation is a species of plagiarism. If we ask student to transformation text, are we in fact encouraging the very thing that we ban so vigorously elsewhere? In contrary, that transformation offers us one of the best antidotes to a culture of plagiarism.

3.      Why Transforming Texts Using ICT?

Transforming a text using ICT which means using a word processor to transform the text, and it is special because it takes the labor out of the activity. The bulk of the work is done. If you have reasonable skills with the program you can apply all your energy to thinking about the fundamental of the task, rather than the mechanical efforts of typing out the original. If we ask student to amass material from the internet on the subject of smoking, we can expect a deluge of undigested, unread copying. If we then apply a transformation to the same task, the material must be adapted for a specialized audience, student will be obliged to read, think about, select form, and modify the material.  

4.      What Are The Purposes of Transforming a Text?

·         To encourage students to develop a high level of skill in editing – with all the reading, comprehension and sophisticated understanding of language that goes with it

·         To use the editing power of the word processor, rather  than simply using the machine as a type writer / transcription device

·         To establish positive attitudes of mind towards text manipulation and redrafting, so that text is seen as fluid

·         To prepare students for a world where text is ubiquitously available, transformable, and applied in thousands of ways every hour of every day

·         To give students the necessary mental skills to cope with such a world and to master it for their own purposes rather than just suffering its effects passively.

BAB II

CONTENTS

1.      The Availability of Texts

Internet sites and CD – ROMs offers wide variety of ‘ready-made‘ texts. Indeed the very availability of so much literature in electronic form forces us to consider imaginative ways of using the resource. Just having the whole works of Shakespeare at the touch of a few buttons is the start of the problem, not its solution!

2.      Practical Routine

·         Download a text, or a section of a text, from the internet or from a CD – ROM.

·         Load the next into a word processor – on a network of computers, you may wish to make the same text available to all the connected machines

·         Ask students to analyze and modify the text – transform it in the ways suggested here. In so doing they will encounter a range of editing strategies.

3.      Types of Text Transformation

·         Change audience (different age group)

·         Change audience (similar age group)

·         Change audience (different gender)

·         Change purpose

·         Change tense

·         Change specified classes of words (verbs/noun/adjectives etc.)

·         Change viewpoints

·         Change by shortening

·         Change by expanding

·         Change form

·         Change genre

·         Change styles

·         Change historical style – to a past style or imagined future.

4.      How to Transform Using ICT.

a.      Change audience (different age group)

Here is a list of suggestion for activities based on this transformation:

v  Technical instructions aimed at adults, rewritten for children

v  Safety advice adapted for teenagers

v  Children’s fairy stories rewritten with an adult audience, and adult sensibilities in mind

v  Ancient myths, rewritten (and even illustrated) for young children (Ancient World Web ; Internet Classics Archive ; Perseus Project)

v  An advert designed for young adults adapted for a range of other ages (different groups in the class could work on specific ages)

v  Medical advice for young people adapted from adult advice sheets on how to cope with ill relatives (cancer, MS, AIDS, Parkinson’s, dementia, etc.)

Changing audience is a classic transformation; the text can be transform up the age scale or down it. Here some points to be consider:

§  Content

In some examples, you will need to transform content as well as diction and style. There are differences should be carefully considered between adult and children.

§  Reading level and ‘ treatment ‘

The needs and reading level of the audience must be understood. Writing for a young audience, for instance, suggests simple diction and short sentences, font size and type also be considered.

b.      Change audience (similar age group)

Here is a list of suggestion for activities based on this transformation:

v  Article in the Guardian – rewritten for the Sun

v  Article in the Sun – rewritten for the Guardian

To accomplish this task a student will need to begin appreciating the subtleties of style that differentiate one publication from another, the rules each one works to.

c.       Change audience (different gender)

Here are some suggestions for activities based on this transformation:

v  Article written for women, rewritten for men.

v  Article written for men, rewritten for women.

Students will need to research and learn the distinctive elements of writing intended exclusively for women, and writing intended for men.

d.      Change purpose

Here is a list of suggestion for activities based on this transformation:

v  Serious writing transformed into satire or parody.

v  Description of a house designed to sell it, rewritten as the buyer’s surveyor’s report.

v  Impartial information about HIV and AIDS rewritten as moral sermon against promiscuity.

v  Bald statistical statement rewritten to form an argument.

v  Satire or parody transformed into serious writing.

This is how this transformation works. Students examine the text given them on the screen and work on the key elements that determine its impact and purpose, changing the way it works for the readers.

The outcome is a greatly enhanced understanding of how text work, what words in particular steer the text.

e.       Change tense

Here is a list of suggestion for activities based on this transformation:

v  Experiment with the present tense – see what it does to the feel of the writing

v  Experiment with future tense

v  Try modal tense.

f.        Change specified classes of words (verbs/noun/adjectives etc.)

Here is a list of suggestion for activities based on this transformation:

v  Nouns: experiment with power nouns – choose between a range of alternatives, between generic and specific nouns.

v  Nouns: Investigate the effect of accumulated proper nouns

v  Adjectives: See their effect on surrounding text.

v  Adverbs: How do they modify verbs and adjectives?

Experimenting with one grammatical element can lead to fuller understanding of the part it plays in shaping the impact of a text. The word processor allows skipping through a piece and very swiftly identifying and alters selected words.

g.      Change viewpoints

Here is a list of suggestion for activities based on this transformation:

v  Rewrite from the viewpoint of another paragraph.

v  Swap gender of the main protagonist.

v  Change the viewpoint from the first person to third person.

v  Try to changing to second person

v  Using first person plural

h.      Change by shortening

Here is a list of suggestion for activities based on this transformation:

v  Condense copious notes into a haiku of three lines.

v  Boil down flowery prose into a much-reduced poem.

v  Work on a wordy poem to reduce the word-count

v  Trim down a long news article to fit an editor’s restricted specification without losing information

v  Read a persuasive article such as an editorial, and extract bullet points.

v  Cut a play down to a bare essentials without losing the gist

v  Work on text experimentally. Create s prototype text on screen. Remove some verbs. Cunt back unnecessary words.

Summary, Concision, directness – these are admirable skills to encourage. A word processor takes the pain out of the process, and incidentally can count the number of words in a fraction of a second.

i.        Change by expanding

Here is a suggestion for activities based on this transformation:

v  Starting with a set of bullet points, or notes expand into full sentences and fill out the writing to compose a complete article.

j.        Change form

Here is a list of suggestion for activities based on this transformation:

v  Nursery rhyme to short story

v  Fairy story to newspaper article

v  Newspaper article to fictional prose

v  Fiction adapted to a play script

v  Play script turned into fiction

v  Poetry to prose

v  Prose to a poetry

Creating the bullet points can be an extremely useful precursor to this writing task – perhaps through the time – honored process of brain – storming.

A word processor allows text to be moved around easily. Bullet points can be ordered into categories or arguments, the structure of the expanded piece explored in skeleton form before the flesh is put on it.

k.       Change genre

Here are some of suggestions for activities based on this transformation:

v  Cowboy fiction to Science Fiction

v  Romance to crime, etc.

To achieve success with this sort of task requires a thorough, explicit understanding of the stylist features of the selected forms.

l.        Change style

Here are some of suggestions for activities based on this transformation:

v  Formal Bible passage to an informal version aimed at young people, or formal Bible passage transformed to a narrative in style of a novel

v  Highly descriptive flowery style to a plainer style and vice versa

v  Formal passage translated into the vernacular and vice versa.

Changing the style of a passage demands a degree of mastery over the language. It is a skill that all writers need to practice.

m.    Change historical style – to a past style or imagined future.

                                   i.         Past style brought  up to date: For example, Shakespeare modernized

Modernizing Shakespeare can be a way into understanding both the shifts in culture that make Shakespeare seems sometimes alien to the modern sensibility.

                                    ii.      Present writing transformed into a past style

This process is really difficult. It requires intense close analysis and research. Because there’s a whole world of subtle discoveries to make, whether the outcome succeeds or fails.

To reduce the stress, and make the task more palatable, you may consider introducing humor – a parody or crude pastiche based on a specific style.

                                     iii.   Imagined future styles

What will happen to language in 200 years? What events in human history may intervene to influence the process? This is a fascinating speculation.

ü  Will testing become the norm? What will be the abbreviation? Will the writing habits of online chat gradually infiltrate other written forms?

ü  Will there be some variation on Orwell’s Newspeak, a simplified vocabulary?

ü  How will online social networking affect writing?

BAB III
CLOSURE

3.1  Conclusion

            The transformations listed above are all immensely enhanced by

     the use of ICT:

v  The text is already existed in an electronic, adaptable form.

v  Students get to grips immediately with the task itself, rather than spend time in mechanical operations like transcribing and physical cut and paste.

v  Editorial changes can be made and remade without excessive efforts.

v  Global changes can be made to a text with the replace function.

v  The shared screen allows local cooperation in editing and network connections allow extended forms of collaboration, between pupils, classes, schools and even between countries.

And self-evidently, the activity itself employs the full range of English skills, with a stress on comprehension and writing, but also including speaking and listening.

3.2   Reference

Teaching English Using ICT, Chapter 5 Using ICT to Transform.