Language NCCA Home » Primary » Curriculum Areas » Language Introduction Language in the primary curriculum involves two subjects English and Gaeilge. Note: A new language curriculum is available for infants to second class and will be available for all other classes from 2018.

Copywriting

Copywriting is the act of writing text for the purpose of advertising or other forms of marketing. The product, called copy, is written content that aims to increase brand awareness and ultimately persuade a person or group to take a particular action.

Copywriters help create billboards, brochures, catalogs, jingle lyrics, magazine and newspaper advertisements, sales letters and other direct mail, scripts for television or radio commercials, taglines, white papers and other marketing communications.

They are generally known as website content writers if their work appears mostly on the Internet. A content writer helps create online advertisements, web pages, email newsletters, blog posts and social media.

Many copywriters are employed in advertising agencies, public relations firms, or copywriting agencies.

• Advertising agencies usually employ copywriters as part of a creative team in which they are partnered with art directors. The copywriter writes text or script for an advertisement, based largely on information obtained from the client. The art director is responsible for visual aspects of the advertisement and, particularly in the case of print work, may oversee production. Either member of the team can come up with the overall idea (typically referred to as the concept) and the process of collaboration often improves the work.
• Copywriting agencies combine copywriting with a range of editorial and associated services that may include positioning and messaging consulting, social media, search engine optimization, developmental editing, copy editing, proofreading, fact checking, layout and design. The clients are usually large corporations.

Copywriters also work in-house for retail chains, book publishers or other big firms which advertise frequently. They can also be employed to write advertorials for newspapers, magazines, broadcasters and cable providers.

Some copywriters work as independent contractors, doing freelance writing for a variety of clients. They may work at a client's office, a coworking office, a coffeehouse, or from home.

Copywriters are similar to technical writers and the careers may overlap. Broadly speaking, however, technical writing is dedicated to informing readers rather than persuading them. For example, a copywriter writes an advertisement to sell a car, while a technical writer writes the operator's manual explaining how to use it.

Book publishing

In book publishing, flap copy or jacket flap copy is the summary of a book which appears on the inside of a hardcover dust jacket; back cover copy is similar text, usually briefer, on the outside back cover; and catalog copy is a summary written for a publisher's catalog.

Internet

The Internet has expanded the range of copywriting opportunities to include landing pages and other web content, online advertisements, emails, blogs, social media and other forms of electronic communications.

The Internet has brought new opportunities for copywriters to learn their craft, do research and view others' work. Clients, copywriters and art directors can more readily find each other, making freelancing a viable job option.

Search engine optimization

Web copy may include among its objectives the achievement of higher rankings in search engines. Known as "organic" search engine optimization (SEO), this involves the strategic placement and repetition of keywords and keyword phrases on web pages, writing in a manner that human readers would consider normal.

Recitation

A recitation in a general sense is the act of reciting from memory, or a formal reading of verse or other writing before an audience.

In academia, recitation is a presentation made by a student to demonstrate knowledge of a subject or to provide instruction to others. In some academic institutions the term is used for a presentation by a teaching assistant or instructor, under the guidance of a senior faculty member, that supplements course materials. In recitations that supplement lectures, the leader will often review the lecture, expand on the concepts, and carry on a discussion with the students.

In its most basic form, a student would recite verbatim poems or essays of others, either to the teacher or tutor directly, or in front of a class or body of assembled students.

In classes involving mathematics and engineering, a recitation is often used as the vehicle to perform derivations or solve problems similar to those assigned to the students.

Scientific classes, such as biology, chemistry, and physics, often employ the use of recitation sections to help students clarify subject matter that was either not fully understood or inadequately addressed in the limited time of lecture. These recitation sections may be conducted by the professor or a student teaching assistant. These sections provide students with an opportunity to receive additional instruction on confusing subject matter or receive personal assistance with problems or questions assigned as homework in the lecture section. Some universities may require attendance at regularly scheduled recitation sections in addition to any required labs. Recitations may also provide students with additional opportunities for receiving grades for the lecture portion of the course. Despite mandatory attendance and additional time spent in the classroom, these sections usually do not count towards university credits required for graduation, but may significantly increase a student's ability to understand important concepts required to pass the course.

Recitations of holy texts are part of the cultural presentations of some religions. As Denny notes, "There is a vast bibliography of Qur'an recitation in Arabic and other languages by Muslim scholars." These religion recitations take the form of prayer, liturgy, and public performance.

Recitation as a performing Art

Recitation is practiced as a performing art especially in Bangladesh and India. Nowadays it is a popular art form in Bengal. The reciters recite Bengali poems on stage and electronic media. Shambhu Mitra, Kazi Sabyasachi, Pradeep Ghosh, Partha Ghhosh, Gauri Ghosh, Utpal Kundu are great reciters from West Bengal. Reciters like Samiran Sanyal, Bratati Bandyopadhyay, Bijoylakshmi Burman, Pinaki Chattopadhyay to name a few, are contributing significantly in this field. There are many such organizations of recitation, with most located in Bangladesh.

It was often popular for a poet to recite his or her newly-created poetry to an audience. In the early twentieth century, recitation developed into an autonomous art form.

Audio Podcast

A podcast is an episodic series of digital media files which a user can set up so that new episodes are automatically downloaded via web syndication to the user's own local computer or portable media player.

The word arose as a portmanteau of "iPod" (a brand of media player) and "broadcast". Thus, the files distributed are typically in audio or video formats, but may sometimes include other file formats such as PDF or ePub.

The distributor of a podcast maintains a central list of the files on a server as a web feed that can be accessed through the Internet. The listener or viewer uses special client application software on a computer or media player, known as a podcatcher, which accesses this web feed, checks it for updates, and downloads any new files in the series. This process can be automated so that new files are downloaded automatically, which may seem to the user as though new episodes are broadcast or "pushed" to them. Files are stored locally on the user's device, ready for offline use. Podcasting contrasts with webcasting or streaming which do not allow for offline listening, although most podcasts may also be streamed on demand as an alternative to download. Many podcast players (apps as well as dedicated devices) allow listeners to adjust the playback speed.

Some have labeled podcasting as a converged medium bringing together audio, the web, and portable media players, as well as a disruptive technology that has caused some people in the radio business to reconsider established practices and preconceptions about audiences, consumption, production, and distribution. Podcasts are usually free of charge to listeners and can often be created for little to no cost, which sets them apart from the traditional model of "gate-kept" media and production tools.^[4] It is very much a horizontal media form: producers are consumers, consumers may become producers, and both can engage in conversations with each other.

odcasting, once an obscure method of spreading information, has become a recognized medium for distributing audio content, whether for corporate or personal use. Podcasts are similar to radio programs, but they are audio files. Listeners can play them at their convenience, using devices that have become more common than portable broadcast receivers.

The first application to make this process feasible was iPodderX, developed by August Trometer and Ray Slakinski.^[14] By 2007, audio podcasts were doing what was historically accomplished via radio broadcasts, which had been the source of radio talk shows and news programs since the 1930s.^[13] This shift occurred as a result of the evolution of internet capabilities along with increased consumer access to cheaper hardware and software for audio recording and editing.

In August 2004, Adam Curry launched his show Daily Source Code. It was a show focused on chronicling his everyday life, delivering news and discussions about the development of podcasting, as well as promoting new and emerging podcasts. Daily Source Code is believed to be the first podcast produced on a consistent basis. Curry published it in an attempt to gain traction in the development of what would come to be known as podcasting and as a means of testing the software outside of a lab setting. The name Daily Source Code was chosen in the hope that it would attract an audience with an interest in technology.^[

Daily Source Code started at a grassroots level of production and was initially directed at podcast developers. As its audience became interested in the format, these developers were inspired to create and produce their own projects and, as a result, they improved the code used to create podcasts. As more people learned how easy it was to produce podcasts, a community of pioneer podcasters quickly appeared.^[16] Despite a lack of a commonly accepted identifying name for the medium at the time of its creation, Daily Source Code is commonly believed to be the first podcast to be published online.

In June 2005, Apple released iTunes 4.9 which added formal support for podcasts, thus negating the need to use a separate program in order to download and transfer them to a mobile device. While this made access to podcasts more convenient and widespread, it also effectively ended advancement of podcatchers by independent developers. Additionally, Apple issued Cease and Desist orders to many podcast application developers and service providers for using the term "iPod" or "Pod" in their products' names

Language Curriculum

In education, a curriculum (/kəˈrɪkjᵿləm/; plural: curricula /kəˈrɪkjᵿlə/ or curriculums) is broadly defined as the totality of student experiences that occur in the educational process. The term often refers specifically to a planned sequence of instruction, or to a view of the student's experiences in terms of the educator's or school's instructional goals. In a 2003 study Reys, Reys, Lapan, Holliday and Wasman refer to curriculum as a set of learning goals articulated across grades that outline the intended mathematics content and process goals at particular points in time throughout the K–12 school program. Curriculum may incorporate the planned interaction of pupils with instructional content, materials, resources, and processes for evaluating the attainment of educational objectives.

Although the need to learn foreign languages is older than human history itself, the origins of modern language education are in the study and teaching of Latin in the 17th century. Latin had for many centuries been the dominant language of education, commerce, religion, and government in much of the Western world, but it was displaced by French, Italian, and English by the end of the 16th century. John Amos Comenius was one of many people who tried to reverse this trend. He composed a complete course for learning Latin, covering the entire school curriculum, culminating in his Opera Didactica Omnia, 1657.

In this work, Comenius also outlined his theory of language acquisition. He is one of the first theorists to write systematically about how languages are learned and about pedagogical methodology for language acquisition. He held that language acquisition must be allied with sensation and experience. Teaching must be oral. The schoolroom should have models of things, and failing that, pictures of them. As a result, he also published the world's first illustrated children's book, Orbis Sensualium Pictus. The study of Latin diminished from the study of a living language to be used in the real world to a subject in the school curriculum. Such decline brought about a new justification for its study. It was then claimed that its study developed intellectual abilities, and the study of Latin grammar became an end in and of itself.

Language education may take place as a general school subject or in a specialized language school. There are many methods of teaching languages. Some have fallen into relative obscurity and others are widely used; still others have a small following, but offer useful insights.

While sometimes confused, the terms "approach", "method" and "technique" are hierarchical concepts.

An approach is a set of assumptions about the nature of language and language learning, but does not involve procedure or provide any details about how such assumptions should be implemented into the classroom setting. Such can be related to second language acquisition theory.

There are three principal "approaches":

1. The structural view treats language as a system of structurally related elements to code meaning (e.g. grammar).
2. The functional view sees language as a vehicle to express or accomplish a certain function, such as requesting something.
3. The interactive view sees language as a vehicle for the creation and maintenance of social relations, focusing on patterns of moves, acts, negotiation and interaction found in conversational exchanges. This approach has been fairly dominant since the 1980s.

Characteristics of a Good Evaluation Tool

Most evaluations require the use of a data collection tool—a survey or other data collection instrument. Evaluators either need to adopt or adapt tools “off the shelf” or create new ones. Either method can pose challenges: Tools that have been developed for one evaluation may not prove suitable for another, at least not without careful modification. At the same time, creating new tools requires expertise in measurement and instrument design.

Desirable Characteristics of Evaluation Tools

The evaluation tools serve a variety of uses.  Regardless of the type of tool used or  how the results of evaluation are to be used, all types of evaluation should possess certain characteristics.  The most important characteristics are - validity, reliability and usability.

  1. Validity

Validity is the degree to which an evaluation tool actually serves the purpose for which it is intended.  It refers to the extent to which a test measures what it is supposed to measure.  Although there are several kinds of validity, the three types commonly used are criterion, content and construct.

 2.Reliability

Reliability refers to the consistency of measurement, that is, how consistent are evaluation results from one measurement to another.  Reliability is concerned with the extent to which an evaluation test is consistent in measuring what it is intended to measure.  Whether the response of the respond dents would have been different if they were tested yesterday or next week? How would the result have varied if a different sample of equivalent items had been selected? These are the types of questions with which reliability is concerned.  If the measurements are not consistent over different occasions or over different samples of the same performance domain, the evaluator can have little  confidence in the results.

3.  Usability

While selecting evaluation tool / instrument, practical considerations need to be kept in mind. Generally, the tests are administered by teachers having very limited training. The time available for testing is also limited. The cost of testing is also taken into consideration. All these factors must be taken into account when selecting evaluation tools.

Online Examination

Online Examination
Online examination is an assessment that use network connection or internet in its process. Individuals and students must sign in on an assessment program or web link by entering their username and password. Then they choose the course that will be tested and the student start answering the questions that is shown on the screen. After they have finished the examination, the student taking the exam must click on a certain button that would require finishing the examination process. Even though this seems easy, online examination has its advantages and disadvantages as well.

Electronic assessment, also known as e-assessment, online assessment, computer assisted/mediated assessment and computer-based assessment, is the use of information technology in various forms of assessment such as educational assessment, health assessment, psychiatric assessment, and psychological assessment. This may utilize an online computer connected to a network. This definition embraces a wide range of student activity ranging from the use of a word processor to on-screen testing. Specific types of e-assessment include multiple choice, online/electronic submission, computerized adaptive testing and computerized classification testing.

Different types of online assessments contain elements of one or more of the following components, depending on the assessment's purpose: formative, diagnostic, or summative. Instant and detailed feedback may (or may not) be enabled.

The students who agree that online examination is good has many advantages. Online examination can make the student’s life easier because they don’t need any paper and pen to do the examination. Furthermore, online examination can be effective and efficient. The students don’t waste much time to answer the questions because they only click on the best answer that is provided. One other advantage of online examination is that we can know our scores just after the exam. Sometimes, instructors can be very busy on a given day and do not have any time to check the exams. Online examination can solve this problem. The instructor does not need to check all of the exams. Online examination can do...

Other Advantage
Can be easily accessed 24/7 over the open test period
Can be timed to allow Y minutes to answer X number of questions
Immediate test feedback when a test is submitted
Can take advantage of special media; video, audio, or pictures
Can contain a combination of True/False, multiple choice, and in some cases essay questions

Other Disadvantages:
Highly dependent on honor system; hard to catch cheating. A group of students can take turns
taking test first to share answers with others in the group raising their overall grade.
Hard or difficult to ask questions or contest answers
Can be slow responding due to connection speed (i.e., dial-up would limit the use of graphics or media files)