This research investigates a group of primary five students utilizing their prior knowledge as they construct meaning while reading the expository texts in the English as the Second Language (ESL) classroom. In this case, the students are viewed as bringing personal meaning actively to the reading process. The reading comprehension lessons were carried out with a group of elementary students’ reading behaviours being observed and audio-recorded and the data were collected and analyzed qualitatively. The KWLS grid was used to assist students to activate their prior knowledge by generating questions and discussion to construct meaning while reading. Activating and developing prior knowledge presents background material supporting the importance of schemata and prior knowledge for literacy development. In short, the outcome of this research showed that comprehension can and should be taught. At this time, the challenge for the field is to mesh research with reality. Students of all ages.....

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The purpose of this research was to compare the Omani and Malaysian students' motivation toward science learning in secondary schools. Motivation is an important component from any teaching and learning process. The results of previous studies revealed that students with better motivation usually perform better in school grades. The sample size is 359 students: 37.6% of them were Malaysian (135 students) while 62.4% were Omani (224 students). The 30-item Science Motivation Questionnaire (SMQ) was used in this research. It was developed by Glynn, Taasoobshirazi and Brickman. The results showed that the students had a “moderate” motivation in general. Regarding the subcategories, the students had “high Extrinsically Motivation” while they had a “moderate” level of motivation in the other subcategories or motivational factors. An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare the motivation towards science scores of Omani and Malaysians. This finding implied that the Oman.....

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The connectivity between work skills or work ethics and life skills is an important factor in fulfilling the ‘satisfaction gap’ as well as having a major impact on the success of internships of diploma students undergoing industrial trainings. This paper will highlight the definition of internships, the purpose and importance of work ethics and life skills and its bridge between them that creates one connection between students’ academic majors and future careers. In many cases, it is through internships where attributes are enhanced, interests are developed, and talents are identified experientially. The uniqueness of internship serves different purposes to different students which ultimately provides a high impact learning experience and practice for students of Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris (UPSI)...

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Students in higher learning institutes in Malaysia face some difficulties in expressing themselves in English language and show lack of competency in speech.They perform poorly in the English language during examination held in the university and also interviews. Based on the problems encountered by the weak students, it was deemed necessary to provide some form of guidance to enable the ESL students to speak confidently. The guidance comes in the form of a cooperative interactive learning module for teaching speaking to weak ESL students. The purpose of the study is to develop a cooperative interactive learning module as a teaching approach that could benefit ESL students at the university. This study also investigates the attitudes of the students before and after using the cooperative interactive learning module concerning speaking.The research comprises of two stages namely instructional design, ADDIE model (to develop the module). A quasi-experimental design was carried�.....

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This research investigates a group of primary five students utilizing their prior knowledge as they construct meaning while reading the expository texts in the English as the Second Language (ESL) classroom.  In this case, the students are viewed as bringing personal meaning actively to the reading process.  The reading comprehension lessons were carried out with a group of elementary students’ reading behaviours being observed and audio-recorded and the data were collected and analyzed qualitatively.  The KWLS grid was used to assist students to activate their prior knowledge by generating questions and discussion to construct meaning while reading. Activating and developing prior knowledge presents background material supporting the importance of schemata and prior knowledge for literacy development.  In short, the outcome of this research showed that comprehension can and should be taught. At this time, the challenge for the field is to mesh research with reality.  Students o.....

431 hits

This paper revisits the analysis on the effect of cross-cultural awareness and self-efficacy, which are both significant constructs in today’s globalized world. People are expected to have both a high level of self-efficacy and a strong sense of cross-cultural awareness due to the growing frequency of cross-cultural interactions. For fields like education, psychology, and cross-cultural communication, it can be very crucial to comprehend how cross-cultural awareness affects self-efficacy. 60 relevant articles were found after a thorough assessment of the literature on the subject using thematic analysis of the CNKI and Google Scholar databases. Ten major themes were found in the review: 1) the cultivation of cross-cultural awareness, 2) the current situation of students’ cross-cultural awareness, 3) the importance of cross-cultural awareness, 4) the relationship between self-efficacy and academic achievement, 5) the relationship between learning self-efficacy and influencing factor.....

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