The growing concern over the influx of foreign women in Malaysia as sex workers, has continually gained the attention of the local media particularly the mainstream newspapers. The media, despite playing an instrumental role in bringing about social transformation, has the ability to portray the foreign women in a positive way or to discriminate against them. This study, based on qualitative analysis, represents an attempt to study a social problem particularly in the way that foreign women in sex work have been represented in Malaysia by the mainstream English-language newspapers. The analytical tools of the discourse-historical approach (DHA) are employed in the analysis of the news articles. In particular, the argumentation strategy in the DHA demonstrates that a number of topoi (i.e., the topoi of control, number, threat, and victimisation) have been employed to represent foreign sex workers in the media. Investigation of the newspaper extracts from New Straits Times and The Star generally revealed that the media have portrayed foreign women in sex work in the offender orientation frame more so than as victims. Furthermore, foreign sex workers are also positioned negatively because of their illegal migrant status, making them doubly discriminated against. Such representations directly impact the women's lives, leading to further discrimination on the basis of their trade and illegal migrant status, denying them a voice and depriving them of their legal rights. The paper concludes by discussing the contributions of the research and emphasises the need for social justice for these marginalised women.
The ability to speak well in English has always been a challenging task among students from the rural areas. There are various types of materials that have been developed to improve student’s fluency to speak English, and Reader’s Theatre (RT) is one of them. A study was conducted using Readers Theatre to help students improve their oral and reading skills in English in a stress free workshop. The workshop was a combination of language and arts activities that combined language skills of speaking and reading to improve students’ performance. The workshop was conducted among students over a period of three weeks. A survey was carried out on the student’s perceived learning experience to speak and read English whilst taking part in Reader’s Theatre. The findings of the study show that Reader’s Theatre was a good tool to boost high school students’ motivation to speak clearly and confidently in English when they collaborated and interacted with their peers. However, it was not the aim of the present study to check if students spoke or read more English materials outside classroom as a result of Reader’s Theatre workshop.
This research project attempts to seek an analysis of the use of Twitter to acquire English language vocabulary for Foreign Language (EFL) international students who further their tertiary education in Malaysia. This research aims to study the role of Twitter in the vocabulary development of EFL learners at the university level and the perspectives of learners regarding the effectiveness of using Twitter as a language learning tool for vocabulary learning at the university level. Besides that, to validate the responses, this study also analyses the perceptions of EFL educators on the effect of traditional teaching methods and using Twitter in teaching vocabulary. The study used a quantitative research approach. It adopted two sets of questionnaires to collect data. Data and information from this study were obtained through questionnaires in Google Form and the use of SPSS software. The results found that most EFL learners agree that Twitter plays a vital role in the vocabulary development of EFL at the university level. Using Twitter as a language learning tool at the university level effectively promotes their vocabulary learning. It was also revealed that EFL educators prefer to utilize Twitter in teaching vocabulary, which is much more effective than traditional methods. However, a few learners perceived otherwise, stating that they tend to invest too much time in social media. The study concludes with recommendations for future research.
In this article, we present a study aimed to explore the attitude, interest and perception of students learning English language beyond the classroom using a list of activities such as Readers Theatre, Storyboard, Academic Explorace, Spell it right and Melodies of Pilah. A survey was conducted involving 466 students from different faculties who were taking English proficiency courses at diploma and degree levels at a local university. The findings indicate that both male and female students had a positive degree of interest and attitude toward the English activities carried out beyond the classroom. The popular activities were Readers Theatre and Melodies of Pilah (group singing). The study also indicated that students preferred group activities compared to individual activities. Based on the findings, it is recommended that students should be allowed to explore English materials independently beyond classrooms where language learning takes place implicitly. The study found that the success of English learning activities carried out beyond the confines of the classroom can generate interest among students to learn the language. The success of English activities carried out beyond classrooms can be assessed by students’ ability to complete the task assigned (the end-product) rather than the processes involved in completing the task. Keywords: language learning, beyond-the-classroom, out-of-class
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