This is an exploratory research examining written work in English of Malay college students, analysing lexical errors that occurred in their work, which were caused by the negative transfer from the students’ mother tongue. The study also categorized the errors and gave some pedagogical suggestions on reducing the lexical errors to improve students’ English writing. Students involved were Malays at foundation level, with an age range from 17 years to 19 years old. Out of 40 participants, 15 of them were males and 25 were females. The categorical analysis and findings of this study aim to gain educators' understandings on Malay-based lexical negative transfer problems in learning English and trigger educators to take note on the problems in order to improve students' language learning strategy...

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The purpose of this study was to investigate whether inner speech instruction had any significant effect on upper-intermediate EFL learners’ reading comprehension. To this end, 60 female subjects participated in this study and were assigned to the experimental and control groups each consisting of 30 participants. The same teaching materials comprising twelve reading texts were taught to both groups through a 10-session treatment with a difference in the procedure during which the experimental group underwent an inner speech instruction while the control group did not receive such an instruction. Results of paired samples t-test indicated the effectiveness of inner speech instruction in the experimental group. Moreover, the interview analysis revealed that the visual and auditory learners preferred to visualize and hear voices while completing the task and developing a positive perception towards the use of inner speech as a tool to enhance their reading ability. It is assumed that a.....

531 hits

This study investigates the cultural content and covert syllabus of one well-known widely printed English Language Teaching (ELT) course book: Passages 1. In order to analyse the content, two coding systems the Five Dimensions of Culture and the Categories of Culture by Chao (2011) were used. The findings indicate that Passages 1 has encouraged various aspects of culture with an emphasis on the presentation of products, persons and viewpoints of the West. The partiality for the Target Culture (countries with English as the native language) is clear throughout the course book in terms of the selection of reading texts, listening tracks, and the images. Findings indicate that there is a minimal focus on the introduction of local and the Middle Eastern cultures. The theme of 'universality across cultures', as a specific classification in this study, is mostly placed in the speaking practices which revolves around sharing personal experiences rather than engaging in intercultural thinking .....

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School-based print texts and didactic teaching appear slow and unexciting, thus there is a need to integrate social networking sites in the teaching and learning process. Facebook is one of the social networking sites that has captured the attention of educators in language teaching and learning. The use of Facebook in teaching Literature is beneficial and gives teachers the chance to improve teaching via a lively classroom. This study surveyed the perceptions of secondary school teachers on the use of Facebook in teaching literature. A 30-item questionnaire was administered to 100 secondary school teachers in Malaysia. The teachers from 10 states were involved in this study and they are currently teaching English language in secondary schools in Malaysia. The findings indicated that teachers found Facebook as the most useful aspect of Internet in teaching literature and they prefer to use Facebook as a teaching tool compared to the classroom blackboard. This study recommends the use o.....

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Creativity is one of the assests for developing countries to move towards industrialized nations. Therefore, elements of creativity should be developed from preschool level. Based on the findings from the literature in 2000-2016 on elements, criteria, process, products, and creative behaviors, a set of elements for creative assessment for preschool education was identified. These include inventiveness, authenticity, originality, flexibility, fluency, and imagination. This is useful to be used in a later study on how teachers incorporate creativity elements in designing creative assessment...

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Electronic portfolio or e-portfolio is used to assess teachers’ professional development concomitant to rapid growth of technology. The effect of using e-portfolio has changed the assessment method in teacher education system. As an innovative tool, the multiple forms of e-portfolio play various roles in professional and personal development through self-assessment, reflection, formative and summative approaches. The development of identity of a professional teacher with soft skills is essential therefore exposure and awareness of its importance should be emphasized early in teacher training. The aim of this paper is to elaborate preliminary findings on UPSI e-portfolio system on its learning websites, MyGuru and the perception of student teacher on using e-portfolio system to assess soft skills. The respondents of 78 students from teacher education program (5 samples during interviews and 73 samples responded on questionnaires) were selected using convenience sampling. The focused c.....

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The use of mother tongue in foreign language classes has been a controversial issue in the history of language teaching. The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of using L1 in teaching vocabulary to EFL students. To do so, 72 participants (36 boys and 36 girls) were divided into 6 classes in three levels based on their language proficiency, namely beginner, elementary and preintermediate. The students in each level were randomly assigned to control and experimental groups. In order to measure the effect of using L1 on their vocabulary learning, the control and experimental groups were taught for 20 sessions through the use of different methods. In the experimental groups, after teaching the new words through images and pictures, students’ L1 was used to tell the students the Persian meaning(s) of the words, while in the control group, the Persian meanings were not told to the students and only the target language and visuals were used for teaching the new words. The.....

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Kajian ini bertujuan untuk mengenalpast i strategi interaksi berkesan Bahasa Inggeris semasa sesi pengajaran dan pembelajaran oleh guru prasekolah di Daerah Kerian, Perak. Kajian ini juga mengenalpast i kemahiran pedagogi guru dalam pengajaran dan pembelajaran Bahasa Inggeris serta penggunaan peneguhan dan rangsangan sebagai mot ivasi untuk kanak-kanak berinteraksi dalam Bahasa Inggeris. Pendekatan kualitat if dengan reka bentuk kajian kes telah digunakan dalam kajian ini. Pensampelan bertujuan melibatkan lima orang guru prasekolah Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia yang telah menghadiri beberapa siri kursus kemahiran Bahasa Inggeris pada tahun 2014. Tiga jenis instrumen kajian telah digunakan iaitu temu bual, pemerhatian dan analisis dokumen. Data dianalisis menggunakan kaedah tematik. Hasil kajian menunjukkan bahawa penggunaan peluang yang diberikan oleh guru, strategi interaksi berkesan sepert i kaedah pengulangan, penggunaan dwi bahasa dan parallel talk dapat meningkatkan interaksi Ba.....

950 hits

This paper proposes four methods to approximate circular arcs using quartic Bezier curves. Barycentric coordinates of two/three combination of control points are used to obtain an optimal approximation. Interior control points of quartic Bezier curves are found by satisfying G 2 data from given circular arcs. The maximum errors between circular arcs and approximated curves are calculated using Hausdorff distance approach. Four different approaches are discussed which varies in terms of accuracy, computation cost and approximation order...

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Kajian ini bertujuan membangunkan modul pengajaran dan pembelajaran berdasarkan pendekatan pengajaran inkuiri bagi tajuk jatuh bebas dan gerakan luncuran dan menilai keberkesanannya terhadap pencapaian pelajar. Reka bentuk kajian kuantitatif ini ialah Reka Bentuk dan Pembangunan Modul. Bagi menilai keberkesanan modul, reka bentuk kajian ialah eksperimen. Pembinaan modul adalah berdasarkan model ADDIE. Kesahan modul diperolehi daripada dua orang pakar dengan mengambil peratus persetujuan kedua-dua pakar tersebut manakala kebolehpercayaan modul diperoleh melalui kajian rintis dengan menentukan ketekalan dalaman menggunakan pekali Alfa Cronbach. Keberkesanan modul terhadap pencapaian pelajar diuji menggunakan ujian-t. Kajian ini melibatkan keseluruhan populasi seramai 60 orang pelajar fizik program dua tahun di Kolej Matrikulasi Selangor. Mereka dibahagikan sama rata secara rawak ke dalam dua kumpulan iaitu kumpulan kawalan dan rawatan. Dapatan menunjukkan purata peratusan persetujuan ant.....

1320 hits