savoy093

Mandarin language has generated a global interest among the non-Chinese students in the 21st century. Mandarin language has also become the favorite third language subject among Malaysian university students. However, many non-native speakers of Mandarin often encountered problems in pronunciation in terms of consonants, vowels, and tones. Mandarin is a tonal language, which the meaning of the word will be changed if the tone is pronounced incorrectly. Since identifying the Hanyu Pinyin pronunciation mistakes is essential and should be prioritised by Mandarin instructors, this study aims to investigate the evidence of pronunciation errors spoken by the students as non-native speakers in the area of consonants, vowels, and tones based on Hanyu Pinyin system. A survey was conducted by distributing questionnaires to undergraduates from Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) Engineering Campus. The findings from the data analysis show that most students made a lot of errors in pronouncing retrofl...

The issue of unemployment among the graduates is an issue which has come to the attention of the nation so much that it warrants a quick and effective measure taken by the institutions of higher education. The mismatches of expectations from the employers and the graduates’ communicative ability have been a contributing factor to why these graduates face difficulty in being employed. Hence, their verbal competence is one of the many indispensable criteria that are sought after by the employers apart from their hard skills. The purpose of this study is to examine the challenges and opportunities in relation to the English Exit Test (EET) and Competence Based English Test (CBET) Speaking Assessment which are initiated by University Technology MARA and University Kebangsaan Malaysia in gauging the graduates’ English language readiness for their workplace. Based on the systematic review analysis conducted, it can be concluded that both competence tests do have their fair share of hiccups a...

To tackle the Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) students’ writing problems besides fulfilling the writing needs of UiTM learners and instructors, web-based instruction (WBI) was proposed as a supplementary instructional tool. A hybrid e-framework namely Web-based Cognitive Writing Instruction (WeCWI) was proposed to be adopted for developing WBI for writing performance and critical thinking enhancements. Before embracing WBI as a supplementary instructional tool of an English course, a qualitative systematic review of literature was conducted on the related studies of UiTM students’ writing needs and challenges as well as UiTM English courses. BEL422 Report Writing was identified as the most appropriate course among all the UiTM English courses offered up to 2013 owing to its syllabus, course structure, and assessment components focussing on report writing. Besides, this course was also crucial for the students to acquire their writing competence to communicate effectively in their futu...