Post 6- Week 2

For week 2, everything was progressing well until the last component, when I was asking my native friend to check my work. Due to personal reasons my friend was not able to attend the meetup therefore my work was not able to be checked. This has been changed to week 3. This means that I need to slightly alternate my plan. 

Previous Plan
Week 2- Using MDBG Web Translator and iphone apps to search for vocabularies and phrases that I am not familiar with and start writing my self-introduction. Have at least 3 sentences done by week 2 and give it to a native person to check and receive feedback.

New Plan

Week 2- Using MDBG Web Translator and iphone apps to search for vocabularies and phrases that I am not familiar with and start writing my self-introduction. Have at least 3 sentences done by week 2. 

This week, I have added a few more sentences to my self-introduction. After self-correcting the pretest, I have picked up on vocabularies that I have written in Japanese, and changed it into Chinese after checking up with the translator. As stated in my original plan, I have also looked up phrases and vocabularies on the MDBG Chinese Web Translator and iphone apps. 

These are pictures of my: self corrected pre-test, accumulated self-introduction and vocabulary and phrase list

Looked up some obvious errors, such as vocabulary written in Japanese, place names, and Chinese written in the traditional way, instead of simplified.

Updated self-introduction using various technology tools and apps to search for vocabulary (these technology tools and apps will be discussed later in this post.)

Vocabularies that I needed to translate into Chinese as I didn't know them in Chinese. 

When writing my self-introduction once again, I picked up on some challenges. I realised that I have a language barrier. There were some vocabulary that I could not express myself in English, but am able to do so in Japanese. An example was お菓子(okashi) which means "confection" in English. As MDBG Translation site, is a English⇔Chinese site, therefore I had to find different ways to concur this challenge. I first decided to use a Japanese⇔English Translation site, Webio to translate お菓子 into English, then went back to MDBG Translation to translate that into Chinese, however, I thought it took too much effort and time, therefore searched for an app on my ipad. 

English⇒Chinese Translation

Japanese⇒English Translation

There were 2 apps that I found throughout this week. These were Translator- Translate Text and Speech and Chinese English Dictionary Bravolo.

Firstly I will talk briefly about Translator- Translate Text and Speech. This app suited me very well as I could choose what language I would like to translate from and to. I used both English⇒Chinese and Japanese⇒Chinese. I found this app a rather interesting one as it is different to the normal translation apps or sites I have seen. The formation of this app is like a chat conversation. Though I found this app very useful and fun, however the demerit of it is that there is a limit to how much you can translate daily. Once it reaches to the limit, you need to either pay $2.99 for unlimited translation or wait till the following day. 

The second app that I tested was Chinese English Dictionary Bravolo. I would say it is a very recommendable app for translation and learning. This app gives you a number of different usages of the vocabulary. For example: I typed in "name" and it gave me possible usages such as when I want to use it as a noun, adjective or verb. It also gives an English Explanation, Example sentences and related words(including the pronunciation in English). I believe that is it good that this app gives a lot of information however, due to the amount of information given, it allows myself to think, is it actually relevant to give that much information, wouldn't it just make the learner more confused? 

The time taken to write this week's self introduction was rather smooth compared to last week. I looked up the words that I was not familiar with and wrote it on my vocabulary list. The time taken was not particular shorter but I sensed gaining improvement in my Chinese level rather than thinking why do I even not know this. Adding up all the time that I spent on doing this is 2 hours and 10 mins, this includes looking for new potential apps, browsing through to see how the app works, translating vocabularies to Chinese, and making corrections to my pretest introduction and making the original self-introduction longer. 

This week's reading and lecture recording was on dictionaries. It pointed out many things that I haven't thought of before. Such as, the features of a good dictionary. In the reading it points out two types of definitions of a gene, both having the same meaning, but worded differently.
Definition 1: The basic unit of inheritance which is transmitted from parents to offspring.
Definition 2: A gene is a DNA sequence ending in mRNA(protein), tRNA or rRNA. 
Definition 1 can be understood easily by people who are not experts in this field, and Definition 2 is using scientific terms which is simply too hard for laypersons to understand. For myself, I would classify Definition 1 as a good explanation, as it states in simple terms what are genes.