savoy093

English is used as a second language (L2) in Malaysia with a great emphasis on tertiary education as the medium of instruction, the most important subject in the curriculum, and a mandatory subject for all undergraduates. Yet, the university lecturers share a common view that students find it difficult to perform satisfactorily, particularly in writing assessment in English language courses. To identify the challenges of ESL writing, particularly among the undergraduates in Malaysia, one of the Malaysian universities with the highest population was chosen. A performance analysis was conducted in two consecutive semesters on the results of one of the English courses, which writing becomes the core assessment. Besides, a review of the past studies was done. Nine L2 writing challenges were identified, which can be represented by a chain reaction diagram called “SIL”: system (S), instructor (I), and learner (L). SIL proposes a sequence of inductive remedial actions, which should be taken b...

Mandarin is a tone language, which every Chinese word has a fixed tone. If a tone is changed, the meaning of the word will be changed. Thus, identifying the Hanyu Pinyin pronunciation mistakes is essential and should be prioritized by Mandarin instructors. Numerous pronunciation errors were identified among the undergraduates who were the non-native speakers with difficulties in pronunciation, communication and listening skills in Mandarin. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the pronunciation problems faced by the students as non-native speakers in consonants, vowels and tones based on the Hanyu Pinyin system. The findings of the study show consonant constitutes the highest number of errors (68.29%) as compared to the tone (13.66%) and vowel (18.5%). Among the consonants, most of the students committed errors in the pronunciation of "zh" as 16.43% while the second place goes to the consonant “z", which constitutes 13.57% of errors. The highest inaccuracy in vowel ...

In the era of rapid development of information and communication technology, both teachers and students are exposed to a great number of multimedia tools which can be used for teaching and learning purposes. Nevertheless, the biggest challenge faced by teachers is how to use the multimedia tools properly and effectively in classrooms. This study is carried out to investigate the proper management of three main multimedia tools, i.e. PowerPoint, video clips and E-Learning, in classroom activities in order to have effective teaching and learning of Spanish language at Engineering Campus of Universiti Sains Malaysia. The set of ideas underlying the basis of the management of PowerPoint, video clips and E-Learning in classrooms is firstly presented. A framework for the management of classroom activities incorporating the combination of PowerPoint, video clips and E-Learning with other resources such as games, songs and additional notes is then proposed. An example of classroom activities i...