Expository text offers particular challenges to the reader because of the abstract and unfamiliar concepts that it presents. In order to solve these problems in reading classes, students should be taught the hierarchical structure of the expository text and the interrelationships among ideas. This is what experts in this field refer to as text structure. Reading researchers have argued that knowledge of text organization, or structure, is an important factor for text comprehension. In this article, we review techniques and procedures in how to teach text structure in reading classes in order to facilitate comprehension of the expository texts.

An important aspect of native speakers' communicative competence is collocational competence which involves knowing which words usually come together and which do not. This paper investigates the possible relationship between knowledge of collocations and the use of verb noun collocation in writing stories because collocational knowledge distinguishes native speakers and foreign language learners and is a significant factor in productive skills especially writing. This study examined the correlation between knowledge of verb noun collocations and their use in written essays. The participants in the study were 27 PhD Iranian students in a Malaysian university. A specially constructed C-test measured the subjects' collocational knowledge and the use of collocations was measured by the number of collocations used in essays written by the subjects. For this purpose, participants wrote six different stories in six weeks based on a writing task designed to illicit verb noun collations. The statistical results demonstrate that there exists a strong positive relationship between knowledge of collocations and the use of verb noun collocation in the writing stories.

The purpose of this study is to investigate international postgraduate students' perceptions of difficulty with academic writing in Malaysian public universities. A survey was used to collect students' perceptions of difficulties and challenges in general academic writing skills and language-related skills. The results revealed that students perceived greater difficulty in languagerelated problems than general academic writing skills. In terms of language-related skills, they ranked writing coherent paragraph, summarizing and paraphrasing, applying appropriate lexical phrases, utilizing proper academic language and vocabulary respectively as the most difficult areas in writing. However, with respect to general academic writing skills, they perceived the most difficulties in reviewing and criticizing the literature, writing introduction and research gap. The results of this study implied that international postgraduate students who graduated from non-English medium instruction universities should be supported in terms of English for Academic Purposes (EAP), critical thinking skills and language-related skills to become selfdirected in learning to write.

This paper reports on academic discourse socialization of several EFL teachers in a TEFL graduate program in Iran through oral discourse practices over the first year of the program. It explores how the professional identity of the in-service teachers is affected by the socialization process, their prior histories and contextual factors. It concludes that dialogical interactions through oral discourse practices are likely to result in re-consideration of their prior professional identity. The paper is likely to make a contribution to our understanding of professional identity construction of EFL teachers in graduate programs as far as academic oral discourse practices are concerned.

Abstract-This paper examined how the homogeneous dyads--two EFL (i.e. Iranian) dyads and two ES L (i.e., Malaysian) dyads--consciously reflected on their language in the course of performing collaborative writing tasks. To this end, the dyads were asked to do fifteen writing tasks collaboratively. The pair talk was audiorecorded and transcribed for each dyad. It was revealed that EFL/ES L dyads had different orientations towards metatalk; EFL dyads tended to focus considerably more on meta-linguistic features of language than ES L dyads. The findings are discussed with a reference to the different status of the English language in the two contexts of Iran and Malaysia (i.e., EFL vs. ES L) as well as the effect of previous educational experiences of the learners. The findings of the study could be of pedagogical help and significance to educationists and practitioners.

This paper discusses the effectiveness of using two task-types, dictogloss and opinion-gap tasks, in focus-on-form lessons to elicit language-related episodes (LREs) and produce modified output. The participants were 40 Form 6 students in a Malaysian secondary school in two intact classes. One group was taught using opinion-gap tasks and the other using dictogloss tasks. Results show that almost double the number of LREs was elicited in the dictogloss group compared to the opinion-gap group. However, more than 50% of the LREs in both groups were unresolved or wrongly resolved. These results imply the need to train learners to notice linguistic errors and engage in negotiations of form and meaning and could also indicate the need for teacher feedback on language use, perhaps during pre-task and post-task activities. The types of linguistic errors learners focused on might be an indication of learner developmental readiness which could influence task and text selection.With the current inclination in second language acquisition (SLA) practices toward task-based language teaching (TBLT), there is a growing concern that the importance of language accuracy will be undermined. Skehan and Foster (2001), for example, argue that a task-based approach, if inappropriately handled, could result in an overemphasis on task outcomes at the expense of improving target language ability. As a result, it could encourage premature fossilization rather than promote interlanguage development. Thus, SLA researchers (e.g., Ellis, 2001;Ellis, Basturkmen, & Loewen, 2001;Loewen, 2004;Leeman, 2007) have argued for the need to incorporate grammar instruction in a meaning-focused lesson. These researchers challenge Krashen's (1985) input hypothesis, which posits that grammar instruction is not an important part of language instruction. Instead, he contends that language is developed through massive comprehensible input of the language. Initially, Long (1985), through the interaction hypothesis, concurred that comprehensible input facilitates acquisition as it provides opportunities to negotiate meaning during a communicative breakdown. Later, Long (1996) extended his hypothesis to include feedback and modified output as important contributors to interlanguage development. He explains that the feedback learners receive on their language production when they attempt to communicate could contribute to language acquisition, as this would push learners to reformulate their productions to make them comprehensible.

This paper is part of a larger study which was concerned with the comparison and description of Iranian and Malaysian students' classroom behaviors in general and their collaborative tendencies in particular. In this paper the core findings of interviews with five teachers who had the experience of teaching both in the contexts of Iran and Malaysia are reported. They all shared the view that the collectivist orientation is tangibly stronger among Malaysian participants than among their Iranian counterparts. The findings are discussed with regard to the macro-cultural dichotomy of world cultures (collectivist/ individualist). The possible pedagogical implications of the study are touched upon as well.

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