USING ICT TO TRANSFORM

a paper
submitted to fulfill the assignments of Digital Technologies in Language Studies

Written by:

FITRAH AMALIA SOFYAN 2205040011

POSTGRADUATE
ENGLISH EDUCATIONAL STUDY PROGRAM
STATE ISLAMIC INSTITUTE OF PALOPO
2023
 TABLE OF CONTENT

TABLE OF CONTENT .................................................................................................... 1

CHAPTER I : INTRODUCTION ................................................................................... 3
A. BACKGROUND ...................................................................................................... 3
B. RESEARCH QUESTION........................................................................................ 4
C. OBJECTIVE OF THE RESEARCH ..................................................................... 4
CHAPTER II : DISCUSSION ......................................................................................... 5
A. THE AVAILABILITY OF TEXT .......................................................................... 5
B. PRACTICAL ROUTINE......................................................................................... 6
1. Change Audience (Different Age Group) ........................................................... 7
2. Change Audience (Similar Age Group) .............................................................. 8
3. Change Historical Style ...................................................................................... 10
4. Change of Audience (Different Gender) ........................................................... 11
5. Change Purpose .................................................................................................. 11
6. Change Tense ...................................................................................................... 12
7. Change one Verbal Element of Word Class ..................................................... 12
8. Change the Narrative Perspective or View Point............................................. 13
9. Change by Shortening ........................................................................................ 13
10. Change by Expanding....................................................................................... 14
11. Change Form ..................................................................................................... 15
12. Change Genre .................................................................................................... 15
13. Change style ....................................................................................................... 16
 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. BACKGROUND
Nowadays, it is probably difficult to find a classroom in which learners have
not been exposed to computer technology. In recent years, Computer Assisted
Language Learning (CALL) covers a range of platforms, materials, and methods.
ICT is an integral component of a learning program. Teachers can choose a
program, application, or website for use in helping learners learn English skills and
aspects. They may create activities in which learners read, respond, or interact with
other learners digitally. A school, in addition, may develop a set of learning
activities or lists of resources for learners to use outside of class.1

A radical transformation of text puts the word processor through its paces,
but more importantly it exercises the brains of the editors to the maximum. A-Level
English Language exams have for many years featured such activities using hard
copy, coloured pens, sheaves of paper, glue-pots and scissors. Now transformation
exercises are featured at GCSE too. ICT is abbreviated from Information
Communication Technology. It means the use of technology in the process of
giving information or holding communication.2 Early in the days of ICT and
English this transformative function was identified as one of the most powerful
ideas on offer because it has so much built into it, and despite the advances of
technology in every sphere it is still a key part of ICT and English, especially in the
light of the recent specification changes.

In the act of transforming a text you get to know its hidden secrets; you
begin to understand its structure, its blueprint; you look closely at the brush strokes
that create the illusion! For example, changing the intended audience of a text forces

1
Asep Budiman, “ICT and Foreign Language Learning: An Overview,” Tarling : Journal
of Language Education 3, no. 2 (2020): 245–67, https://doi.org/10.24090/tarling.v3i2.3913.
2
Aisyah Nasution and Sitti Fatimah, “The Use of Pro Writing Aid Web in Editing
Students Writing,” International Journal of English Language Teaching, 2018.
you to acknowledge what that audience is – and what changes will be required to
suit the new audience. Both come brilliantly into focus.

What makes the word processor special is that it takes the labour 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 fundamentals of the
task in hand, rather than the mechanical effort of typing out the original. There are
other benefits too; if students get into the habit-of-mind implied by the task, if they
understand the fundamental malleability of text enabled by a computer, that
approach spills over into all editing of text. With handwritten drafts, when the ink
dries that’s it – the text becomes frozen. The problem is that except for the most
dedicated writers, the mind sometimes freezes too – the mental process of working
on a text can end as the ink dries.3 In this paper, we will discuss about the use of
ICT to transform the text and help teacher and student in learning process.

B. RESEARCH QUESTION
The research question from this research is “how to use ICT to transform”?

C. OBJECTIVE OF THE RESEARCH

The objective of the research from this research is “to find out how to use
ICT to transform’

3
Tom Rank. “Teaching English using ICT: A practical guide for secondary school
teachers”, (India: Continuum International Publishing, 2011)
 CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

A. THE AVAILABILITY OF TEXT

Internet sites and CD-ROMs offer a 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.
The problem is, many people might say that text transformation is a species of
plagiarism. If we ask students to transform text, are we in fact encouraging the very
thing that we ban so vigorously elsewhere? I would argue, on the contrary, that
transformation offers us one of the best antidotes to a culture of plagiarism. The
best way forward is to face the facts – look at these world-changing aspects of
computers and, instead of banning them, exploit the power for our own purposes. I
would like to suggest that if we approach the issue imaginatively we can even use
these facilities to counteract cheating and make it far less attractive.

If we ask students 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 – for instance, that the material must be adapted for
a specialized audience (e.g. to make a leaflet for 9-year-old girls) – students will be
obliged to read, think about, select from, and modify the material, a quite different
affair from simply submitting beautifully printed sheets of unread facts. So if
plagiarism is a problem, consider giving each task involving research from the
internet, a transformational tweak that makes straight copying impossible. To
summarize, transformation as a process aims:

• 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 typewriter/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

B. PRACTICAL ROUTINE
To have the text to transform, the student can do the step bellow:

• Download a text, or a section of a text, from the internet or from a CD-

ROM.
• Load the text 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 analyse and modify the text – transform it in the ways
suggested here. In so doing they will encounter a range of editing strategies

What transformations are there? Here’s a short, far from comprehensive list:
• Change audience (different age group)
• Change audience (similar age group)
• Change audience (different genders)
• Change purpose
• Change tense
• Change specified classes of words (verbs/nouns/adjectives etc.)
• Change viewpoint
• Change by shortening
• Change by expanding
 • Change form
• Change genre
• Change style
• Change historical style – to a past style or imagined future style

The next few pages illustrate the kinds of transformation you can develop
as a school resource. They all pre-suppose pupil-access to equipment. Ideally the
task should be tackled in pairs or threes, so that the activity generates maximum
opportunities for discussion. However, some tasks tend towards individual work
and in that case it may be best to book out the ICT suite for a morning.

1. Change Audience (Different Age Group)

Suggestions for activities based on this transformation:

• Technical instructions aimed at adults, rewritten for children

• Safety advice adapted for teenagers
• Children’s fairy stories rewritten with an adult audience, and adult
sensibilities in mind
• Ancient myths, rewritten (and even illustrated) for young children (Ancient
World Web; Internet Classics Archive; Perseus Project)
• An advert designed for young adults adapted for a range of other ages
(different groups in the class could work on specific ages)
• Medical advice or 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. You can transform up the

age scale or down it. Both present special difficulties and require discussion,
thought, and a thorough focus on the audience in mind.

a. Content

In some examples, you will need to transform content as well as diction and
style. For instance, it may be quite acceptable to assume that adults understand the
dangers of handling boiling water; so one could omit all references to it if you were
writing tea-making instructions for adults. You’d write simply: ‘Pour on boiling
water’. However, if those same instructions were being adapted for 8-year-olds, an
assumption like that would be wrong.

b. 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 must also be considered: the word processor allows not only control
of the typological aspects of writing, it can manage layout and illustration too,
where appropriate. How far can the form and style of the writing be preserved while
adjusting for reading level? Writing for a young audience is especially difficult –
not the easy task it might appear. This is a useful fact to establish with a class.

c. Lesson Ideas

Begin by establishing the editing parameters special to this kind of

transformation. This is best done through brainstorming, through asking questions
of the class, encouraging discussion. Record ideas as bullet points. Thinking about
age-level editing may be difficult without some concrete examples to refer to. Try
to collect as many examples as you can – look in hospital waiting rooms for
pamphlets written for children, then see if you can find the equivalent adult version.
Search the internet – which of course has the added benefit that the text comes ready
to work on – no tedious typing to do. In fact the exercise depends on having an
original ready to transform.

2. Change Audience (Similar Age Group)

Suggestions for activities based on this transformation:

• Article in the Guardian – rewritten for the Sun

• 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. Working on a word processor forces an editor to focus on the essential
elements in the task, reinforcing understanding and demanding in-depth study of
the article in question.

a. Content

Content will undoubtedly differ, though both articles may be based on the
same set of original facts. We’d expect much more detail of the fussy factual type
in the Guardian. The Sun perhaps will cut straight to the story. Thus, the first
example will be easier to accomplish than the second – where will students find the
extra facts? Perhaps a solution would be to provide a bullet list of details that can
act as a ‘quarry’ for both articles, and then students can decide what material to
include or omit.

b. Reading level and ‘treatment’

The needs and reading level of the audience must be understood. Famously,
so the legend goes, the Sun assumes a reading age of 10, but this does not mean its
editorial style is childish; far from it. Diction and sentence length are restricted, but
each article is highly crafted for wit and achieves an impact that Sun readers have
come to expect. It is thus very difficult to write for. The Guardian doesn’t aim to
entertain as much as inform and discuss. You can see that these issues about
treatment are both complex and crucial to an understanding of the papers’ purposes.

c. Setting Up the Activity

• Go online: www.thesun.co.uk and www.guardian.co.uk

• Find a news item that features in both online papers. It should exhibit some
of the contrasts in style and approach discussed above and ideally be
reasonably compact. Copy and paste both articles to separate word-
processor pages.
 • Get the word processor to count the number of words used in each headline
(you may be able to do this by eye!) and the number of words in the main
text of each article. You can select the text of the Headline and then select
the Tools menu and then Word Count for this (there is a keyboard shortcut
for this in Word: hold down both the Control and Shift keys and press G).
• Write these numbers down at the foot of each article.
• Create a third document containing the summarized facts in a bulleted list.
• Set up the task by presenting the Guardian text, with its word counts, and
asking students to edit the text into a form suitable for the Sun (supply the
Sun’s word counts but not the text).
• Students attempt the task using a word processor, without accessing the
internet!
• Finally they are able to look at the Sun’s version and compare their efforts
with it.
• End the lesson, if you can, by displaying these files on an interactive
whiteboard, discussing any points that occur to you or the class when the
various articles are compared – the professional versions and the students’
work.
• What was omitted in terms of facts? What was included? How did the
writers appeal to the emotions of the reader? Were there any political points
scored? How did the papers make use of pictures?

3. Change Historical Style

Some suggestions for activities based on this transformation:
• Past styles brought up to date: for example Shakespeare modernized
• Present writing transformed into a past style: for example, contemporary
prose rewritten in Dickensian style (see Leon Garfield’s Smith, and William
Golding’s Rites of Passage trilogy for examples of modern writers
emulating past styles)
 • Imagined future styles: for example contemporary prose rewritten in the
style of AD 2220 (cf. 1984 (Newspeak), Riddley Walker, Clockwork
Orange?)
This process can be practised by ‘translating’ suitable examples into the
target style. However, some students may prefer the freedom to compose freshly
generated material, without reference to existing text – especially if the task is to
write in a future style. I would recommend both, since the structure of a piece of
text-for-translation provides everyone with a good starting point! When translating
into past or future styles, the rule is to choose translation pieces that are short,
clearly and progressively structured and where the features of language that the
translators will need to emulate are very clearly on view.

4. Change of Audience (Different Gender)

Here is a list of suggestions for activities based on this transformation:
• Article written for women, rewritten for men.
• Article written for men, rewritten for women.
What are the distinctive features of gender-specific writing? To change a
piece from one form to the other, students will need to research and learn the
distinctive elements of writing intended exclusively for women, and writing
intended for men.

5. Change Purpose
Here is a list of suggestions for activities based on this transformation:
• Serious writing transformed into satire or parody. Description of a house
designed to sell it, rewritten as the buyer’s surveyor’s report.
• Impartial information about HIV and AIDS rewritten as moral sermon
against promiscuity.
• Bald statistical statements rewritten to form an argument.
• Satire or parody transformed into serious writing.
 Try Swift. Here the attention falls on the audience and the inner workings
of the text, its mode and tenor. 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 reader. The outcome is a greatly enhanced understanding of
how text work, what words in particular steer the text. Sometimes simply changing
one or two words profoundly alters the purpose of the text.

6. Change Tense
Some suggestions for activities based on this transformation:

• Experiment with the present tense – see what it does to the feel of the writing
(examine examples)
• Experiment with future tense
• Try modal tenses.
This transformation is relatively simple to set up. Select a prose passage –
especially one that focuses on action, with prominent action verbs. It should be
written in classic past tense. Display the text using a projector and as a whole class,
identify the verbs – main verbs and auxiliaries.

7. Change one Verbal Element of Word Class

Here is a list of suggestions for activities based on this transformation:
• Nouns: experiment with power nouns – choose between a range of
alternatives, between generic and specific nouns
• Nouns: examine how lists work in writing
• Proper nouns: investigate the effect of accumulated proper nouns
• Adjectives: see their effect on surrounding text
• Adverbs: how do they modify verbs and adjectives?
Experimenting with one grammatical element can lead to a fuller
understanding of the part it plays in shaping the impact of a text. The word processor
allows you to skip through a piece and very swiftly identify and alter selected
words. Allied to a study of effects used by professional writers this sort of exercise
can be invaluable in helping to improve style. Students will become aware of these
effects and it boosts their appreciation of literature: the relative power of individual
words can be discussed, their impact and associations explored.

8. Change the Narrative Perspective or View Point

Here is a list of suggestions for activities based on this transformation:
• Rewrite from the viewpoint of another character
• Swap gender of the main protagonist (try a typical romance scene of the sort
you get in Mills and Boone, a famous story, a biblical parable, folk tale or
ballad). What other things need to be changed to make a gender-swap work?
• If the text is written in the first person, experiment with changing it to third.
What is lost and what is gained?
• If the text is written in the third person, experiment with changing it to first.
What is lost and what is gained?
• Try changing to second person – familiar to anyone?
• What does using first person plural do to our sense of the text?

Applied to strongly gender-biased texts, the ‘swap-gender’ exercise can be

surprising in what it reveals about some of the underlying assumptions of language.
When we encourage developing writers to experiment with different narrative
perspectives, allowing them to feel the effects directly in simple transformations
like this can assist their understanding of the process. The trick is very neat because
the amount of editing is very light, but the transformation is radical in its effect.

9. Change by Shortening
Here is a list of suggestions for activities based on this transformation:

• Condense copious notes into a haiku of three lines.

• Boil down flowery prose into a much-reduced poem.
• Work on a wordy poem to reduce the word-count.
 • Trim down a long news article to fit an editor’s restricted specifications
without losing information.
• Read a persuasive article such as an editorial, and extract bullet points.
• Cut a play (or scene from a play) down to the bare essentials without losing
the gist (scene from Shakespeare). This is an excellent task in that it relates
to the rea cutting of plays being prepared for the stage, and provides us with
an immediately accessible activity when you have large quantities of text in
electronic form – the whole ‘works’, for instance.

Work on text experimentally. Create a prototype text on screen. Remove some

verbs. Cut back unnecessary words. How far can you go before the integrity and
readability of the text is undermined?

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 for you in a fraction of a second. The last example can be used to
discuss how far one can go with pruning a text before it becomes rhythmically
awkward and as ugly as a hacked-back hedge. Do we gain on impact as we lose
some of the verbal music?

Example:

From: It was dark and the roaring wind made her shiver violently as she
stood waiting for the bus. (18 words)

To: Darkness and roaring wind. No bus. She shivered violently. (9 words)

10. Change by Expanding

Example

• Starting with a set of bullet points, or notes, expand into full sentences and
fill out the writing to compose a complete article
Creating the bullet points can be an extremely useful precursor to this
writing task – perhaps through the time-honoured 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, so to speak. You can also use the Slide
Sorter View facility in PowerPoint to arrange thoughts. It’s easy to drag sides into
new orders, to copy and delete them – and all this is usefully legible on an
interactive whiteboard. Interactive whiteboard software offers similar facilities to
rearrange pages.

11. Change Form

Here is a list of suggestions for activities based on this transformation:
• Nursery rhyme to short story
• Fairy story to newspaper article
• Newspaper article to fictional prose
• Fiction adapted to a play script (for radio?)
• Play script turned into fiction (exactly the origin of Of Mice and Men)
• Poetry to prose
• Prose to poetry
To achieve success with this sort of task requires a thorough, explicit
understanding of the stylistic features of the selected forms.

12. Change Genre

Example:
• Cowboy fiction to Science Fiction
• Romance to crime etc. Altering genre requires an understanding of
complex rules and the ability to pick up subtle (or not-so-subtle!)
verbal clues.
13. Change style
Here is a list of suggestions for activities based on this transformation:
• Formal Bible passage to an informal version aimed at young people, or
formal Bible passage transformed to a narrative in the style of a novel
(recent attempts at this transformation can be referred to)
• Highly descriptive flowery style to a plainer style and vice versa
• 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 practise.
 CHAPTER III
CLOSING

A. CONCLUSION
The transformations listed here are all immensely enhanced by the use of
ICT:
• The text already exists in an electronic, adaptable form,
• Students get to grips immediately with the task itself, rather than spend time
in mechanical operations like transcribing and physical cut and paste
• Editorial changes can be made and remade without excessive effort
• Global changes can be made to a text with the Replace function
• 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.
 REFERENCES

Budiman. Asep, (2020) “ICT and Foreign Language Learning: An Overview,”

Tarling : Journal of Language Education 3, no. 2: 245–67,
https://doi.org/10.24090/tarling.v3i2.3913.
Nasution. Aisyah and Sitti Fatimah, “The Use of Pro Writing Aid Web in Editing
Students Writing,” International Journal of English Language Teaching,
2018.
Rank.Tom. “Teaching English using ICT: A practical guide for secondary school
teachers”, (India: Continuum International Publishing, 2011)