There are many factors that contribute to one's ability to read effectively. Vocabulary size is one important factor that enhances reading comprehension. The purpose of the study is to examine the relationship between students' reading comprehension skills and their vocabulary size. A total of 129 pre-university students undergoing an intensive English language programme at a public university in Malaysia participated in this study. A correlational analysis was employed to ascertain the relationship between scores in the reading comprehension component of the institutionalised English Proficiency Test (EPT) and the Vocabulary Levels Tests (Nation, 1990). Based on Pearson product moment correlation coefficient, there was a moderate correlation (r=0.641) between scores in the EPT reading comprehension and Vocabulary Levels Tests. The relationship was statistically significant at p<0.01 level. The findings also indicate that all students (100%) were able to fulfil the minimum admission requirements for the reading skill (Band 5.5) in the EPT even though only half of the students (54.3%) reached the mastery level at the 5,000 word level. The findings provide useful insights into the prediction of ESL students' performance in reading and the teaching of vocabulary in the ESL context.

Code-switching has always been an intriguing phenomenon to sociolinguists. While the general attitude to it seems negative, people seem to code-switch quite frequently. Teachers of English as a foreign language too frequently claim that they do not like to code-switch in the language classroom for various reasons-many are of the opinion that only the target language should be used in the classroom. This study looks at the teachers' attitudes towards code-switching in teaching English as a foreign language to Malay students at one of the local universities in Malaysia. Data was collected through observations, questionnaires and interviews. Each teacher was observed, their language use were recorded, transcribed and then analyzed using the functions proposed by Gumperz (1982). The results of the study showed that teachers do code-switch in the language classroom, despite their claim that they do not. Analysis of the data showed that, in most cases, code switching by teachers was done to serve pedagogical purposes.

One of the major challenges that learners face during the process of foreign language learning is acquiring vocabulary. Thus, students need to employ various vocabulary learning strategies to acquire the vocabulary of a foreign language. The present study attempts to identify the vocabulary learning strategies employed by Saudi English major students. This study also aims to examine if there are differences between male and female students in the pattern and frequency of strategy use. Sixty-five first-year English major students of Majmaah University participated in the study. Their vocabulary learning strategies were measured using the Vocabulary Learning Strategy Survey. The results showed that students preferred cognitively less demanding strategies compared to the ones that required deeper cognitive processing. The most frequently used strategies were "I try to remember the word by repeating it for several times," "I try to guess the meaning of the word from text/context" and "I learn new words when I interact with native speakers." In general, social strategy is the most used strategy while memory strategy is the least used. The findings also showed that males preferred social strategy compared to females who preferred cognitive strategy and that two strategies (cognitive and memory strategies) showed significant differences between the two genders.

Abstract. Research has shown that there is a need to use materials that are cultural sensitive and context-appropriate in the EFL classroom. It is imperative that teaching materials match with the goals, objectives and philosophy of the programme. This is to ensure that the materials are congruent with the learners' attitudes, religious beliefs and preferences. Thus, this study aims to find out if there were materials that are not in harmony with Islam. The sampling of this study was taken from 5 textbooks that were being used in an intensive English course. The findings from this study showed that in general the contents of the ELT textbooks could be categorised into three categories of neutral, positive and negative. Additionally, it was also discovered that these themes fall under community knowledge, beliefs and values of the western culture in Byram's (1993) cultural content checklist. This study has strong implications for the use of ready-made textbooks in the EFL context.

Indeed research has shown that vocabulary acquisition is one of the chal-lenges of a language learner; even more so for productive vocabulary. Thus this study intends to investigate the lexical richness of 2 groups of EFL learners. This was done through a content analysis of 139 essays of entry-level university students and 140 essays of third-year university students studying at an English medium university. Both these groups of students scored at least a band 6 or 550 in TOEFL. Specifically, the objective of this study is to find out if there are differences in the lexical richness of these two groups of essays in the type-token ratio. This study also intends to find out if there are differences between the two different groups of essays in the use of the 1,000, 2,000, word levels, the AWL as well as the use of the words not-in-the-list. The RANGE programme developed by Nation, Heat-ley & Coxhead (2002) was used to carry out the above procedure. Findings of the study showed that the two groups of essays show a statistically significant difference in the use of the 1,000, 2,000, word levels and the AWL by the two groups of learners. There was also a difference in the not-in-the-list category. This research has pedagogical implications for the teaching of vocabulary in the language classroom with a specific focus on the development of lexical richness in EFL learners’ written production.