Malaysian graduates have a serious lacking in speaking English and this situation has raised an alarming concern in securing employment in the future. Many Malaysian graduates perceive speaking in a foreign language as an intimidating task. This is due to the existence of foreign language anxiety that serves as a hindrance for the undergraduate learners to speak in a foreign language. This study aims to determine the level of speaking anxiety among Malaysian undergraduate learners. The Foreign Language Speaking Anxiety Scale (FLSAS) by (Balemir, 2009; Huang, 2004) was adapted and administered to measure the level of students’ speaking anxiety. 42 undergraduate learners from one of the public universities in Malaysia have been selected to participate in this study. Data collected through questionnaire was analysed using statistical analysis. The result from the study showed that undergraduates have English language speaking anxiety to a certain level. The findings of this study will assist both undergraduates and educators to be more aware of the level of English language speaking anxiety in order to overcome this perturbing issue.

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Providing peer feedback is commonly practiced in teaching and learning of public speaking courses. However, there is limited research examining peer motivational feedback in an online setting. This study adopted a qualitative, descriptive approach using document analysis to investigate the frequencies of peer motivational feedback which students' use in a public speaking course within an e-learning system of a local university. In addition, the specific public speaking skills and the nature of the feedback offered by students were also examined. Twenty-three final year undergraduate students video recorded their speeches, uploaded their videos, offered and received online peer feedback in the e-learning platform. All of the recorded online peer feedback went through a thorough classification process to identify, arrange, and systemize into the specified types of feedback. The data was examined at three levels of analysis to ensure concrete conclusions were drawn. Frequencies and examples of online peer motivational feedback were also presented. The results indicated that students provide relatively more motivational feedback on delivery and voice control skills, while paying less attention to language and proficiency skills. The process of giving and receiving feedback has acted as individualized feedback in which peers helped clarify the goal, criteria and expected standards of good performance. Thus, this study suggests that online peer motivational feedback could be used as a form of practice in the teaching of online public speaking courses due to its ability to motivate and sustain students' interest in learning public speaking while creating a student-centered learning environment.

The implementation of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has been debated by many researchers in the field of language teaching methodology. Much is done in this regard and literature confirms that the implementation of CLT in teaching English as a foreign language is challenging. Even though there are studies investigating the issue in Iraqi schools, little has been done in exploring the classroom practices of Communicative Language Teaching by the teachers. Thus, this study hopes to investigate how Iraqi English language teachers implement CLT in their classrooms. A qualitative method is used to collect data through classroom observation of 3 in-service English language teachers. The research question that is addressed is (to what extent the classroom practices of Iraqi English language teachers comply with the principles of Communicative Language Teaching?). The data collected from the observations are analyzed based on a checklist to compare them to the basic principles of communicative approach. The results of the study show that Iraqi English language teachers do not fully implement communicative approach in their classroom practices and their teachings mostly focus on grammar and vocabulary rather than meaningful communication. The results from this study will contribute to the field of knowledge about Communicative Language Teaching, particularly in Iraqi public schools. The outcome of this study will support teachers to overcome the current challenges in language teaching and provide better recommendation for them to improve their teaching and implementation of CLT approach

Research studies on ESL writing are more interested in providing operational writing strategies for academic writing. However, there are not many studies on challenges faced by students and their solutions. The main aim of this paper is to provide a systematic literature review of academic writing studies which focused on investigating students’ academic writing challenges and their solutions. The papers used in this study were published from 2010 until 2019. A systematic search of literature proposed in this paper employs the exploratory approach for identifying and evaluating twenty-seven articles published in the authentic Journals. The themes of the review are divided into two categories, one which is related to ESL Malaysian students and another category is regarding non-Malaysians, this is due to the context of the study which will be conducted in Malaysia and therefore a review of studies done on Malaysian student academic writing is justified. The review shows there is a broader context of ESL students’ academic writing challenges and factors influencing students’ academic writing skills. In addition, as mentioned above, the review clearly shows the highlight of previous studies was on strategies which help improve students writing skills. As a conclusion, the review signifies that there are three major enormous challenges faced by ESL students in academic writing, such as teaching methods, students’ attitude towards English, and language ability. And the solutions to the challenges are to employ active learning English language teaching methods, for example, Task-Based learning (TBL), Blended learning, Collaborative learning and cognitive approach, in teaching writing.