Do you think that at a random era of our life human beings show symptoms of insanity along with remaining traces of reason?

What can be the possible reasons that could be a trigger for madness?

Do people use  insanity to remain cautious against evil deeds happening in their environment? Or can their madness be genuine, caused by all kinds of pressure from their environment that we can think about?

Last question for arousing the interest is, how can we possibly differ actual madness inside one's own soul from a well-acted, feigned, insanity? Does a human being bear both reason and bits of madness in his or her mind?



You might have noticed that from the various shapes that I used to show the issue I wanted to explore in this blog post that I wanted my readers to develop a curiosity and an interest when they see ,in their blogger dasboard, edmodo posts page or in twitter, my interest area which is  Reason and Insanity.  I particulary want my readers to enjoy the content of this post as well as make them think as they have, hopefully,  a pleasent time when reading through this post.

As you can see that I produced three questions for my peers to ponder about before they engage in my blog post and state their opinions about these questions after reading my post.  Let's start with scientific explanations and definitons of reason and insanity.

What is reasoning? The world does not give us every information we need so our intellectual capacity, in other words our reason, grants us a set of process that enables us go beyond information that is given to us. For example we can see balloons that are being set and we can assume that it would either be a wedding party or a birthday party. If you are interested to read more about reasoning you can consult this link

http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/Faculty/Markman/PSY305/PDF/Reasoning1.pdf

What is insanity? Dictionaries around the world define insanity as “the condition of someone who is senseless and extremely foolish.” However, The men have untypical but intelligent reasons as to why they are the way they are. All the reasons to the men’s problems however were brought on due to their distinctive ways and beliefs. It is unfortunate that mankind can label certain people as not good enough or too abnormal for society.  For more information about insanity look at:

http://healthmad.com/mental-health/what-is-insanity/

The definitions that I posed here are mere explanations that draw a distnictive line between reason, which is our intellectual capacity to understand our world beyond the knowledge we gained from environment, and insanity, as the source I found above states, is different ways of belief and understanding of our world that is unfortunately labeled as ''abnormal, extremely foolish'' by society.

***I wanted to show my readers that video clips from films and literary works as well as our childhood cartoons and animes to examplify the notions of reason and insanity and how they are portrayed in those works.  I thought it would be fun to watch and as well as consider the questions I provided above.***

Here is our first guest!

Our favourite bunny from all times-

Bugs Bunny, this highly intelligent rabbit became one of the cartoon heros along with his jealous and quiet comical friend Daffy Duck and the poor hunter that wants a 'wabbit' but fails miserably everytime in catching Bugs, Elmer Fudd. To illustrate how Bugs Bunny outsmarts both Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd through his high intellectual capacity(reasoning) I want to show you two scenes: 

Here, we can see that Elmer's desperate desire to kill Bugs Bunny
however, our favourite rabbit's clever tactics mocks the stupidity
of the hunter.  Bugs Bunny here uses his reasonable thinking
ability to outsmart Elmer who only has 'wabbit, wabbit' in his mind.



Here is another video that shows the keen mind of Bugs Bunny
against Daffy Duck who is jealous of the fame the bunny has.
We can clearly say that by staying calm and playing around with words
(pointing the gun to himself and saying 'rabbit season' and causing Daffy
to point the gun at himself and say 'duck season')
Bugs Bunny benefits from the temper that the duck shows through
his actions





Let us now explore the notion of insanity from a play

that 3rd year students of EFL read in their Drama Analysis course

Death of a Salesman

Most of us are familiar with the play and the themes that are mainly explored through the tragedy. American dream and a critization of its illusion. 

However, I want to explore Willy, the salesman, from the aspect of insanity.



From my own understanding as a student whom read this play I want
to state that Willy always lived in a world of dreams and hopes, constantly
thinking that despite the misfortunes that he faced with( being fired from
his job where he worked for 60 years, the problematic relationship he
had with his son Biff..)he continued to think that he could become a successful
salesman and bring his family an economical relief. Where do his insanity comes
from then? The way he began to see his dead brother's, Ben, presence and
hear his voice brought an insanity through which he could not differentiate
reality from his past anymore.

Let us continue with another play that is centered around

the notion of feigned madness and genuine insanity

William Shekspeare longest revenge tragedy

Hamlet

All of us know that Hamlet acted as though he was insane to find an evidence

that could give him signal for murdering his uncle, who became the new king of Denmark.

However, Ophelia, the woman Hamlet loves, shows the genuine madness when his father was accidentaly killed by Hamlet and the way Hamlet rejected her love.





The fact that the young prince educated in a way of reasonable thinking can be shown
through his speeches(his thinking process),
in this case soliloquies, even though he feigned madness. However, here is a
question for you all, was Hamlet only acting as though he was insane or did he in course
of the play actually became mad?



Here, is the scene where we can see Ophelia's behaviors and maddened actions. When compared
to Hamlet's intellectual speeches, Ophelia words seemed to sang through an appearant
insanity she was suffering from.

Let us now leave the tragic plays and

return to the world of anime characters-

And especially see how insanity is portrayed
in animes.

I have  one favourite anime, which is roughly Japanese cartoon,
that is adapted from a popular manga called Naruto Shippuden.
The stroy main components are unique fights of ninjas and ''bonds'' that are
created between friends and students/teachers.

 I want your attention to be on the black haired boy in the picture I posted
who is named Sasuke and show how his insanity is depicted in the anime.



In order to understand Sasuke's madness we need to look at the reasons that caused
such a violent outburst from him. The basic plot for his character is shaped like this:
He has a brother named Itachi who murdered whole clan, sparing only Sasuke. 
Sasuke grew up with a hatred towards his brother,
when he actually killed he was given the truth that shedded
a light on why Itachi murdered whole clan, it was for the future of the village(Konoha) as the
the family were trying to take over Konoha, with the pain of killing his own brother( he
shared a mutual brotherly love between Itachi) and learning the truth, he became bloodthirsty
for the ones(village elders) who ordered Itachi for the massacre of his family.

1.I would definitely recommend this type of conversation activity because it is enjoyable to record an imaginary conversation with a early-recorded computer voice and also I can see the benefit of using this type of conversing activity for training of pronounciation as when students listen their speech after recording it they can spot their mistakes in pronounciate and can try to learn how to say a specific word correctly

3. Although the immediate correct pronounciation that computer generated language can give we cannot act as if the computer generated language gives the native like(authentic) prnounciation..sadly, the spoken language of computer still has to undergo development as most of time it can't give the correct pronounciation. Although, the idea of computer generated language brings an excitement in behalf of making teacher's job easier in my opinion it still needs development to achieve authentic pronounciation of a native speaker

To be honest I don't know anything specific about the teacher's pet programme, from the introduction slides though I understood it can create activities the teacher wants to use for a lesson with only a few clickings, and what is fascinated is that the teacher's pet programme bears so many different types of exercises for any teacher to use, I think I am going to love this teacher friendly programme

I may want to learn about the mechanics to use the programme for its practicality.

I enjoyed doing activity and experience of meddling around some options to create activities as though I am a teacher right now however I think before I can get more deeper into the teacher's pet programme I need more time to learn how to use each presented option deliberately. I don't quiet think experienced teachers would use this programmed however in my case, since I would be a beginner teacher, I would create activities from this programme to lower my stress level from the whole excitement and responsibilities being teacher brings.

I think , I don't know much about interactive webpages especially in perspective of educational domain, but from the example interactive webpage that I explored I found some adjectives(keywords) that explain interactive webpages, at least that is what I think from my experience such as they are informative, time-saver, practical and have various activities, short quizzes to taste your knowledge through true/false, short answered and multiple choice questions.

I may want to know the practical knowledge to use this type of nifty device in my teaching career since I thought I would have a fun time while creating testing activities for my students via internet and I thought since the program give correct answers whether you answered correctly or not, I thought the students can expand their knowledge and review their already learned knowledge.

Access to correct answer in a question immediately for the students
Practicality of the preparation of activities and quizzes for the teacher
The relatively easiness of online material preparation for the teacher

From the activity I learned that teachers can always, always rely on this material preparation tool in terms of publishing the quizzes with help of internet or even create a hardcopy to disturibute those quizzes in class with export feature of the tool. It defintely saves time for the teacher and is beneficial for the students in terms of information giving

When the phrase 'readability of texts' comes to my mind, I think about the chosen words in that reading material, are they suitable for the proficiency level of students of English, are they too complex for a beginner student or too easy for an advanced student? These questions come to my mind I always consider the usage of many, many English words that we know and the comprehension of different levelled of English language studying students.  I know that the teachers should pay extra attention when it comes to choosing a reading material that could be sufficent for a particular proficiency group-they should not be too ridiculously hard for beginner, intemediate groups or simply easy for upper-intermediate, advanced groups.

Computers have always been by the side of the teachers in purpose of better education and there are some nice tools for teachers to check the readability of the reading materials.  What I would love to know is, what are these aiding tools and how teachers integrate them in their profession?

From the readability testing activity I understood that this tool would be a time saver for teachers that try to find the perfect reading text for the proficienct group that they are teaching, I think, the statistic numbers that give the level of the reading text is pretty easy to comprehend.

When I was looking through the concordances of the wikipedia text about Africa I tried to look for a word that was used as an adjective in one sentence, noun in another.  After trials and errors I came across the word Green that served both purpose in that given reading. ''BC, the Sahara had again become a GREEN fertile valley'' ''suspended states highlighted in light GREEN'' where the examples I could find.  Green in the first sentence is an adjective that defines noun, valley, in second sentence green is in form of noun that is defined by light.  As a teacher after my students see these two formations of green in the text I would provide simple examples that feature both in adjective form and noun form.  For example, to definte green as an adjective-
The green dress my friend bought was very eye-catchy

To define green as noun, I would give-
The toad was colored in darker tone of green

As my examples.

From what I could gather, all of these tools such as text document readability have commonground such as all of them were designed to aid the teachers in choosing which reading material they would use in a short amount of time.
I would when I become a teacher use these tools mainly to double check my choice of reading material, although I would be aware of my classroom's English language proficiency level, I would be cautious of my own thinking, asking questions such as-what if my students know these words? What if this text is too hard for them to understand? I would use text document readability to make sure what vocabulary items my students may need and the level of the reading material

Maybe relying on too much in computer based aidance may prevent my creativity as a teacher.  Since in our contemporary period the artificial intelligence became more and more beneficial in every part of human life, I would not want to be lazy by copying/pasting the reading I choose for the lesson and find its readability level and concordances.  In tight times though when I have more than one businesses to attend to and I want to double check my choice I would use these tools

integrating blogs

To be honest, I have never heard there is a contract for the blogger to take into consideration before starting a blog for educational purposes under the light of a teacher. I think that in order to have a problem free time when I use blogging with my students, I should first and foremost ask for their honesty as their honest replies and posts to the sent assignments and to the blog posts of other students in the classroom. Although I would never doubt my students friendly behavior to other bloggers that follow their account, I would remind them to be respectful since internet world can be full of hating people

1) From the demonstration of the example text and changable coloring of the words and the explanation of how can vocabulary profling could be use effectively in teaching language department provided a light in my understanding. As the video stated we can focus on green and yellow/orange highlighted words to start with teaching as the reason the video stated uncommon words are favored by the teachers more than more frequent words or rare types. I could as a teacher before bringing a reading material to my students check for the types of the words, whether they are common or rare, I could make an assumption about my observations of students' capacity from inclass discussions then I would choose the specific uncommon or common words that I would want them to add to their developing vocabulary skill.

3)The main difference between a word cloud and  vocabulary profiler, in my point of view, is word cloud concentrates on only showing keywords of reading material to encourage students' meaningful learning through seeing a few significant words on the other hand vocabulary profile has a wider usage for mainly teachers, it lets teachers to plan a vocabulary oriented lesson and in a way provides an aidance in choosing which words students should add to their knowledge in that lesson.I would use a word cloud when an instructor of mine assigns me a research paper reading and initially I would look at the keywords the author of the research paper emphasized more, it can gvie me a starting thought about the research paper..I would use vocabulary profiler when I become a teacher to aid myself in planning a thoughtful choice of words to teach my students

vocabulary profiling

We already know that especially inm English a word can hold a thousand meaning in the context we want to use it, for example, taking the basic word 'book'-I can both use its first meaning in dictionary-'I am reading a book' or for the context I am using I can use second or third meaning-'I booked our honeymoon in France', the meanings of the words in English show a flexible nature in terms of contexts we want to put them in

I'm quiet satisfied with the knowledge I acquired for the lexis of English for the moment but I may have a question for word frequencies in english language-Do the word usage or its frequency change from person to person, if so how can we make definite generalization about frequency of words?

The vocabulary profile's main intention, in my point of view, is to show the readers or students the most stressed and continuous use of words in a text, 'vocabulary profiler is like a 'prism' for lexis' statement can be through, because of the coloring and font size the 'word cloud' provide to us we can see with naked eye which word to focus on in a particular reading.

I don't quiet think so, lets think this way, in a reading that concentrate on education the word 'teach' or 'learning' are mostly stressed words however if we take these two concept to the field of science we could assume that the word 'teach' would fade away compared to sceince related things, though 'learning' can still maintain its emphasis point

vocabulary profiling

I thnik  between non-native and native speakers both parties can be successful in a vocabulary test because there can be a non native student that has a vast knowledge of vocabulary as well as there can be a native student that is absolutely terrible in acquiring their own vocabulary. We can never predict as there are extraordinary cases between the capacity and knowledge of words in English

I was not too surprised when I see the frequency of an unpredictable word because language is like a deep sea that we can explore, we can find that what we previously thought about a word to be actually other way around. That is how mystical the languages are. The frequency of words definitely vary between American English and British English

vocabulary profiling

It makes the teaching process more easier for both students and the teacher if common words of English are known to both sides, if teacher finds out her students proficiency in knowing the commonly used words she would have almost no problem in teaching the reading skills, as the students would know most of the vocabulary in that text teacher can focus on the essential skills like skimming, scanning in reading

Although the words are 'common' teachers still need to present those words especially to non native students as the students wouldn't be brought up in English culture and language I can't see how non native students would acquire those words without an initial exposure

Students need to learn the words in English language in order to understand what they read and listen, to voice their thoughts when speaking to a foreign friend..I think that words are like the foundation of a language so explicit exposure to vocabulary would bring students relief and increase their motivation in learning English language because if they feel they can really understand the foreign tongue they would be more happier to continue

vocabulary profiling

As all with every student that learns English, I too almost everytime struggle with an unknow word and predicting its meaning through the sentence it was used in. I think the language learners are all prone to have some difficulties in guessing a word through context, like me.

I don't quiet remember that my coursebook whether they had strategies or activities for 'guess the meaning from context' but I can generalize it like this in my own point of view, sometimes 'guessing the meaning of an unknown word' can be depended the vocabulary knowledge of that student, the more a person knows words, the more increased it becomes for them to guess right.

data-driven learning

Benefitting from vocabulary profile and concordance in my teaching profession can be like these in following:

• Personally speaking, from my experiences as a student and the emphasize my instructors put on the deep learning lead me to looking for the keywords that can make me remember the whole topic, it certainly is more easier than to memorize a whole text  and remember the sufficient answer in examination time by just seeing a keyword. So, as the vocabulary profile has lot to offer in a short time, in future I as a teacher would encourage my students to use 'word cloud' that will no doubt aid the students in understanding the topics and made their life more easier in time of an exam
• I don't think that I understood what concordance was quiet about however I think its more developed version of a word cloud with KWIC(keyword in context). I think this feature can  be used in teaching profession like this-I as a teacher after my students created a vocabulary profile with keywords from a long text would ask the students to click on a random word and want them to see in what type of contexts that the word is used as in English a word can be used in countless different meanings in countless different contexts, I think by experiencing this kind of thing on internet would develop their vocabulary capacities.

Blog Teaching Ideas

As a student I could use my blog about learning in a couple of ways;

• I could use my blog to interact with my class friends about a course discussion or a group project and share our ideas and comment on our ideas about a specific topic
• Blogs are interactive platforms on internet so I can interact with my friends out of the classroom and become productive in our studies even after the school time

As a teacher I can use blogging system in my teaching as following;

• As a teacher I could answer any questions that my students ask me through the blog posts or replies and immediately return return to them regardless of day time or night time
• I could post the assignments for my students through a blog post so that I can encourage my students repeatedly check their blog and icrease their knowledge and practical ability on using their blogs especially for the beginners

My expectations of CTE 319

My primary expectation from this course is that we can use compulsory media such as twitter or blogger to make our teaching professiom more easier and effective.

 

 

We are going to use EDMODO