Sum up MELTA forums

Forum is one of the elements of active discussion especially in improving teaching English in Malaysia. For me, I have come out with the title “does on-line discussion help language students to improve their language”. I was so grateful because my topic became a hot topic of the week as my friends responded vitally relating to my topic. What I am so proud of my topic is that one of the UPSI lecturers has responded to my topic. I feel like it is an honor to me to receive a response from a lecturer as it gives an impact that my topic is a good topic to be discussed. On the other hand, there are advantages and disadvantages of the on-line discussion that we have discussed. Firstly, it gives a room of improvements for students to develop their language skills. It promotes student centred learning as students can get access to internet even outside of the class. So, for the beginner, it will lower students’ anxiety and it will encourage students’ affection domain to write what ever they like. Despites, there are disadvantages that we need to be taken into consideration. Firstly, most students are not interested in online discussion. They would think that the discussion would be very boring and helpless. The teacher should encourage or drill them with a topic and the task is compulsory for them to respond. If not, the online discussion would not be going to work. However, the online discussion has more advantages rather than disadvantages. So, the online discussion should be implemented as it gives lots of benefits for students’ language development.