Malaysian tropical rainforest has been reported to home for more than 15,000 species of flora and fauna. The plants represent diversed lifeform of trees, shrubs, herbs, climbers, creepers, ferns, palms, liana, parasite and saprophyte. These plants diversity give substantial contribution to richness of plants for foods, beverages, medicinal and ornamentals. The number does not include species which have not been documented due to limited distributions or restricted to only a certain microclimate. Most lowland tropical rainforest has been logged and replanted with agriculture crops such as rubber, palm oil, coconuts and cocoa, whilst others being developed into new township, settlement and infrastructures such as highways and dam. Slim Forest Reserve is a reserve that composed small acerage of lowland tropical rainforest. The proposed study is important and necessary to be pursued for identification of plants and animals diversity (biodiversity), because majority of tropical rainforest b.....

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Fourteen TESL undergraduates in UPSI were chosen as subjects in this research. Each of them was given a task to assess seventy samples of essays written by Form Four ESL secondary school students. Three scoring methods were devised for the subjects to refer to when they assessed the essays and each of them was given different scoring method. Three of the subjects were given the holistic scoring method; six of them were given the analytic scoring method; and five of them were given the primary trait scoring method. They were told to assess the essay samples individually and each of them was required to record down their salient features of assessment (verbal protocol). The scores given by the subjects were correlated to find relationships; and the salient features of the assessment were analysed descriptively. The findings of the research showed that the scoring methods could not be used to generalize the overall result of the students’ performance in writing. This is because each sco.....

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Twenty-eight TESL students from UPSI and one experienced English SPM Examination examiner (Expert Rater 1) assessed twenty-five samples of Form Four ESL secondary school students’ writing. Twelve of the TESL students used the analytic scoring method; seven used the primary trait scoring method; and eight used the holistic scoring method. The expert rater and one of the TESL students (Teacher A) used the English SPM Examination scoring method. Teacher A and Expert Rater 1 assessed the writing samples individually, but the other twenty-eight TESL-students were gathered during three separate seminars and workshops. The scores from the twenty-eight TESL students, Teacher A and Expert Rater 1 were correlated using descriptive statistics and non-parametric(Spearman Rho) calculations. The analysis of these scores showed that there was a significant correlation coefficient between the subjects, even though they used three different scoring methods to assess the writing samples. The TESL stud.....

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