Language Lab - Survey: Dell Software

Dell Software:

Advantages:

• Development of basic skills like: Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing.
• Teacher can easily assess and monitor the students work.
• Ease of operating the software.
• Convenient for group work.
• Students can easily listen to the native speakers and can learn the language.

Disadvantages:

• Inconvenience of time and place.
• Affordability and availability issue of the digital tools.
• Lack of awareness regarding the usage of the software and the digital tools.

Learning outcome:

• It helps in learning new words and phonetics very easily.
• It also helps in learning basic Grammar.

Five New Words:

• Czech
• Veneer
• Liaison
• Silhouette
• Bureau

     

Comparison:

Comparatively, the Namo-Tab can be considered as more convenient than the DELL software; since the tab is user friendly. The learner is not bound by any restriction of time or place when it comes to language learning through Namo-Tab. Neither is there any barrier of the condition of the digital tools. The language lab software in the Namo-Tab appears to be well updated than that of the DELL monitor. As far as the speaking skills are considered though, the DELL software has an advantage over Namo-Tab. DELL software allows the learner to practically test their speaking skills, whereas in the Namo-Tab the learners can only listen to the correct pronunciations and cannot practically test them

One Night @ the Call Center

One Night @ the Call Center is a novel written by Chetan Bhagat and first published in 2005. The novel revolves around a group of six call center employees working at the Connexions call center in Gurgaon, Haryana, India. It takes place during one night, during which all of the leading characters confront some aspect of themselves or their lives they would like to change. The story uses a literal deus ex machina, when the characters receive a phone call from God.

The book was the second best-selling novel from the award winning author after Five Point Someone.

(1) Globalization:

Chetan Bhagat has written that his “call-centre cousins, sisters-in-law and friends” inspired his tale, “providing information, stealing various training materials and arranging meetings” (317). But in One Night’s framing story, a mysterious woman—who, as it turns out, is actually God in disguise—furnishes Bhagat with this information, chastising him for paying too little attention in his first novel to “the biggest group of young people facing a challenge in modern India” (14): the 300,000-strong men and women who work in the Indian call center industry. The author’s wording here is somewhat surprising; in many ways this group would appear to be among the main beneficiaries of globalization in India. After all, in a country where the majority of the population makes less than two dollars a day (Murphy 429), their pay is relatively high; and, as critics have pointed out, as English speakers many of them could find other jobs outside the outsourcing industry quite easily. Instead, in One Night they are depicted as the underdogs of the country’s globalization story, their rights and dignity trampled upon by Americans. The character Vroom compares his dehumanizing call-center work to prostitution: 

“Every night I come here and let people fuck me.”. . . [He] picked up the telephone headset. “The Americans fuck me with this, in my ears hundreds of times a night . . . And the funny thing is, I let them do it. For money, for security, I let it happen. Come fuck me some more,” Vroom said and threw the headset on the table. (216) 

The problem with the call-centre (and thus globalization), Bhagat suggests, is that, as Vroom implies in this passage, it has resulted in a new materialistic culture in India that mirrors American consumerism. Relatedly, working at the call-centre is tantamount to a betrayal of the nation-state and its anti-consumerist social idealist founders. This newly materialistic culture and nationalist betrayal are linked closely to, and perhaps even rendered possible by, the accent neutralization and renaming practices of the call-centre, which undermine, erase, and distort a sense of “authentic” Indian-ness. 

(2) Cyberpunk: 

Cyberpunk is a postmodern science fiction genre. Cyber Punk is connected with science and technology. It features higher science, such as information technology and cybernetics, coupled with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order. Cyberpunk plots often center on a conflict among hackers, artificial intelligences, and Mega Corporation, The characters deals with cyber technology. Vroom hacks Bakshi's email and writes email to Esha on his behalf. The American's are terrorized with the help of bug in MS Office as virus attack on Internet . In the world of technology heroes are hiker like Shyam. Machine is controlling human beings. Bakshi controlling heroes and other high teach and law life. Character dealing with Bug, FM radio, Email, Internet (computer). So we can say it classify as Cyber punk novel.

Impressionistic criticism:

For the first time when I read this book I felt that the Bhagat is writing about the young India and what problems are faced by the generation and specially Indian people. This book also reflects the problem of the call center and people working there. He has also tried to touch the basic problem people face in there daily life. In this book we can also see the love hate relation among the characters. I also felt shocked when writer brings in the God's call which catches the attraction. I have never thought that this book would also be having characteristics like self help book, nationalism, globalization etc. 

Journalism

Journalism is a discipline of knowledge .the word journalism is derived from French word “De Jour which means ‘ of the day; .Journalism can be defined in different ways from different perspectives. It is a process.

Running on the ABC principle that is Accuracy, Balance and Credibility, the profession journalism is maintained and balanced by journalist. Journalism as such, is a process of collecting, verifying, reporting and interpreting information of any event and people, has its own importance’s along with its responsibilities. Winston Churchill has said that journalism is a guardian that never sleeps and protects freedom of the people. From his statement it is proved how important journalism actually is. Some importance of journalism are described below:

• It provides information to the public
• It acts as fourt state
• It acts as the ‘ voice of the voiceless’
• It plays the role of watch dog
• It is the mediator between related authorities and public

Journalism is an investigation and reporting of current world affairs which include fashion trends, political or general issue and events to a broad audience. Though there are various purposes for it, the most important aspect is the freedom of expression. The root of journalism comes from people’s right to have an opinion.

Feature Writing:

Feature Journalism is creative journalism. It escapes the hard-news format allowing the creative writers among us to write feature articles in an inventive and compelling way. Unlike short and to-the-point news articles, feature articles deal with a subject in greater depth and, usually, at greater length.

The best journalism engages as it informs. When articles or scripts succeed at this, they often are cast as what is known as features or contain elements of a story. Features are built from facts. Nothing in them is made up or embellished. But in features, these facts are embedded in or interwoven with scenes and small stories that show rather than simply tell the information that is conveyed. Features are grounded in time, in place and in characters who inhabit both. Often features are framed by the specific experiences of those who drive the news or those who are affected by it. They are no less precise than news. But they are less formal and dispassionate in their structure and delivery.

Lead Writing:

In journalism, the beginning sentences of a news story are everything. Called leads or “ledes,” they must convey essential information, set the tone and entice people to continue reading. If you’re interested in becoming an expert journalist, understanding how to write a lead is a key skill for your toolbox.

A lead (also known as a lede) is the first paragraph or several paragraphs of a story, be it a blog entry or a long article. Its mission is to catch readers’ attention and draw them in. Getting them truly involved is the duty of the rest of the story; getting them to that point is the job of the lead.

There are two broad categories of leads, direct and indirect. The first gets right to the basics: who, what, when, where and why, with a dose of how if appropriate.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, born September 15, 1977, Enugu, Nigeria, Nigerian author whose work drew extensively on the Biafran war in Nigeria during the late 1960s. 

In 2008 Adichie received a MaCAurthur Foundation fellowship. The following year she released The Thing Around Your Neck, a critically acclaimed collection of short stories. Americanah (2013) centres on the romantic and existential truggles of a young Nigerian woman studying in the United States.

Adichie’s nonfiction includes We Should All Be Feminists (2014), an essay adapted from a speech she gave at a TEDx talk in 2012; parts of the speech were also featured in Beyonces song “Flawless” (2013). Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions was published in 2017.

There is always two sides of coin, if you know only one your knowledge is incomplete and dangerous also. This is what she talks about in her Ted Talk on “Dangers of Single Story”. She told that how a single story narrated differently every time conditioned the mind of people to think about certain things in a certain pattern. She also talks about the power which narrates the story and conditioned the mind of people. She also said that single story will create archetype and archetypes are dangerous because they are incomplete. At the end she said that, “When we reject single story, when we realized that there is not a single story of any place, we regain a kind of paradise”.

I agree with her point, single story can create stressful situation for people. People should think that every human, every place and everything on this earth has ups and downs. No one has only virtues or only vices. Nothing is perfect, perfection is a myth. One should ponder on both sides of story.

First time I’ve heard Chimamanda and very impressed by her way of telling stories and her thoughts. She tells her own life experience as story. Her pronunciations are very clear and when she speaks she can touch the heart of audience by her words. After listening her speech now I also wants to read her stories. It will be interesting, fun and good experience.

Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy, full name Suzanna Arundhati Roy, born November 24, 1961, Shillong, Meghalaya, India, Indian author, actress, and political activist who was best known for the award-winning novel The God of Small Things (1997) and for her involvement in environmental and human rights causes.

'Arundhati Roy is one of the most confident and original thinkers of our time' Naomi Klein

'Unflinching emotional as well as political intelligence... Lucid and probing insights on a range of matters, from crony capitalism and environmental depredation to the perils of nationalism and, in her most recent work, the insidiousness of the Hindu caste system. In an age of intellectual logrolling and mass-manufactured infotainment, she continues to offer bracing ways of seeing, thinking and feeling' TIME magazine

Booker Prize-winning The God of Small Things to the extraordinary The Ministry of Utmost Happiness: a journey marked by compassion, clarity and courage. Radical and readable, they speak always in defence of the collective, of the individual and of the land, in the face of the destructive logic of financial, social, religious, military and governmental elites.

Much of her own experience feeds into The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, not least the fact that she studied to be an architect and has campaigned for Kashmiri independence. For herself, she realized very quickly that architecture was not for her. “I graduated but I didn’t actually build anything, because I wasn’t really cut out to be making beautiful homes for wealthy people or whatever,” she says, smiling. “I had too many arguments with my bosses. Kept getting sacked for bad behavior. For insolence!”

The God of Small Things to wide acclaim. The semi-autobiographical work departed from the conventional plots and light prose that had been typical among best-sellers. Composed in a lyrical language about South Asian themes and characters in a narrative that wandered through time, Roy’s novel became the biggest-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author and won the 1998 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

The author’s subversive nature has made her accustomed to criticism. “Each time I step out, I hear the snicker-snack of knives being sharpened but that’s good. It keeps me sharp”, said Arundhati Roy when interviewed by an Indian magazine.

Roy has also concentrated on penning down political issues. She has written on diverse topics such as Narmada Dam project, India’s nuclear weapons and American power giant Enron’s activities in India. She also served as a critic of neo-imperialism and has been linked with anti-globalization movement.