The move towards applying outcome-based education in teaching and learning at tertiary education level has become an important topic in Malaysia. Apart from the three learning domains; namely, cognitive, psychomotor and affective, the Ministry of Higher Education has determined eight learning outcomes which are important in providing wholesome quality education to students. Universiti Putra Malaysia has conducted a study to determine the extent to which these learning outcomes have been achieved. The result shows the overall perceived achievements were as follows: cognitive domain was at level four, psychomotor domain at level four and affective domain at level three. The Ministry's set of learning outcomes revealed the following results: The highest score went to providing KNOWLEDGE to students, while the least achievable learning outcome was MANAGERIAL AND ENTREPRENEURIAL SKILLS. The results infer that soft-skills among students were lacking and this problem needs to be addressed quickly and effectively.
Vocabulary learning strategies play an important role in vocabulary learning. Admittedly, lack of vocabulary knowledge will have an effect over all four of language skills: listening, reading, writing, and speaking. In addition, vocabulary learning and word retention are always the problems encountered by students at university. This study, hence, investigates ESL students studying teaching English as a second language in Universiti Putra Malaysia. This investigation attempts to understand the influence of informal language learning environment (parents and home environment) on the vocabulary learning strategies. This paper describes how mediating agents interfere in acquiring vocabulary learning strategies of ESL students or support them. The present study adopts the qualitative method. The researcher gathered data through in depth interviews and used open coding to code the data as well as constant comparative methods to analyze the data with ten students at the Faculty of Educational Studies in UPM. In order to the significance of mediating agents, the data revealed that parents' views of the importance of English are factors that elevate the process of learning vocabulary in all ten interviews. However, the information collected from the interviews showed that their parents had different perceptions on the learning of the English language due to their education level. Besides, language teachers have an effect on the students' beliefs, behaviors, and their choice of VLSs. Other contributors are affecting the vocabulary learning strategies were classroom and peers.
This paper investigates the value of the social context and its role in learning a second language in different contexts. Social context is believed to be able to influence attitude and motivation. It also provides learning opportunities which give rise to learner’s outcomes. In fact, students acquire a language by using it in social interaction with speakers of that language. Nonetheless, significance of social context is mostly ignored or underestimated in most EFL countries because this social context is naturally missing and there is a lack of severe demand for acquiring the second language. Therefore, the final outcome of second language learning is not satisfactory. This paper is a step towards investigating the issues in respect to the social context of EFL countries as an indirect but essential trigger in second language learning. Especially in foreign language classrooms, learners have limited social interaction with their teacher or peers in their target language since that language is not used as a means of communication among them outside or even inside classrooms. Besides investigating the issues, this paper provides suggestions which help improve social contexts in EFL countries
The present study explored the association among vocabulary breadth/size, depth/quality of vocabulary knowledge, and reading comprehension in English as a foreign language. The main intention of this research was to explore the association of vocabulary knowledge depth/quality and reading comprehension performance. This study was also intended to find out which aspects of vocabulary knowledge, breadth/size or depth/quality, has more significant association with determining EFL learners' reading comprehension performance. The Vocabulary Level Test (VLT), Word Associates Test (WAT), and Reading Comprehension test (IELTS) have been administered among all the respondents. The participants were 220 adult male and female EFL learners who were learning English in advanced level in BAHAR institute, Shiraz, Iran. The findings revealed that 1) test scores on vocabulary size/ breadth, depth/ quality of vocabulary knowledge, and reading comprehension were positively correlated, 2) vocabulary size/ breadth was a stronger predictor of reading comprehension than depth/ Quality of vocabulary knowledge.
This study aims to investigate the attrition rate of EFL concrete and abstract vocabulary among continuing and non-continuing Iranian female and male English language learners across different proficiency levels. They are students of a University and majored in different fields (between 20 and 25 years old). There was no treatment in this study where the researcher compared two groups on the same variables. Hence, the design of the current study is an ex-post facto design. A 40-item vocabulary test which varied across two proficiency levels are used to measure rate of vocabulary attrition as the instrument of this research. In the two stages, after an interval of three months, the students are taken the same tests. The results revealed that there was no significant difference between EFL attrition rate of abstract and concrete nouns among the continuing students across different proficiency levels. However, this hypothesis was rejected for the non-continuing learners at intermediate and advanced proficiency level. Keywords: Vocabulary attrition, Abstract and concrete nouns, Continuing and non-continuing students, Proficiency level IntroductionThe study of language attrition has recently emerged as a new field of study. The conception of loss in language skills occurred in a conference at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) in 1980. This conference was dedicated to the theoretical basis of research in the field of language attrition and other related conferences that probed the process of language loss as a natural disorder from many other perspectives. Kopke (2004) stated that "attrition refers to the natural (non-pathological) loss of a language in bilinguals; generally speaking, changes in the linguistic environment and termination of an instructional program may lead to attrition"(p.15).In terms of language learning, researchers have used the same definition to develop a framework which involved divergent methods of data collection, sampling and instrumentation on language attrition in papers and publications. This taxonomical framework was the one provided by Van Els (1986, as cited in Kopke and Schimd, 2004) which was as following categories:1. L1 loss in L1 environment: Dialect loss 2. L1 loss in L2 environment: Immigrant 3. L2 loss in L1 environment: Foreign language attrition 4. L2 loss in L2 environment: Language reversion in elderly peopleThe main phases reported in the field of language attrition are the above categories as the framework has divided the field of attrition into four simple and discrete categories. But, in order to gain a better and clearer picture of the concept of attrition, other methodological issues such as the distinction between attrition in adults and children, the effect of age at the amount of attrition, the effect of age at bilingualism, the effect of gender at the amount of L2 attrition and so forth also needs to be taken into consideration. Stages in Language AttritionWeltens and Grendel (1993) suggested that in "the first stage of language attrition that it t...
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