Research has shown that teachers' beliefs on teaching and learning exert an influence on their actual classroom practices. In the teaching of English pronunciation, teachers' beliefs play a crucial role in the choice of pronunciation components taught in the ESL classrooms. This paper explores teachers' beliefs about teaching English pronunciation in Malaysian classrooms and the extent to which these beliefs influenced the teachers' classroom instructions. Employing a multiple case study of five ESL teachers in secondary schools, this study investigated the beliefs the teachers have formed about pronunciation focused areas and classroom practices in teaching English pronunciation. Data were collected through actual classroom observations and semi-structured interviews with the teachers and students. The findings of the study found that ESL teachers seem to believe that pronunciation skills are to be taught integratedly with other English language skills. Results also indicate a discrepancy between these teachers' beliefs on the focused areas of pronunciation and the stated curriculum specifications. Additionally, the ESL teachers seem to have vague and contradictory beliefs about pronunciation focused areas. These beliefs are based on their previous language learning and professional experience as well as other contextual factors such as examination demands and time constraints. As a result, these beliefs lead to the pronunciation component being neglected despite it being stipulated by the curriculum.

The article presents how a study that investigated the acquisition of second language academic literacy skills practised the qualitative methodology, interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), from a realist perspective. We share the rationale behind the methodological decisions made in the study, which is followed by a detailed description of the methodological practice. In addition, the evaluation of the study against the realist criteria is reported, and some implications of using IPA based on realism for educational research are discussed. Overall, we suggest that IPA practice from a realist perspective helps go beyond postmodernism paradigms that seems to exert considerable influence on qualitative research in education.

This paper explores ESL preservice teachers' beliefs regarding teaching English to young learners, and examines the interplay between their beliefs and instructional practices. Seventy ESL preservice teachers at a university in Malaysia participated in the study. Data is drawn from semi-structured interviews and lesson plan analysis. The results indicated that the preservice teachers' classroom practices did not often reflect their stated beliefs about young learners language learning. Although there was a strong consensus that English should be taught communicatively, the preservice teachers also employed structural based approach when teaching grammar. Contextual factors hindering this consistency were attributed to exam focused instruction and time constraints. Thus, this paper argues that reform in language teacher education need to address factors that hinder preservice teachers from implementing instructions which aligns with the theoretical beliefs espoused by their teacher training program.

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In second/foreign language learning, it is hypothesised oral interaction facilitates language acquisition. Studies show that one aspect of interaction that promotes second/foreign language acquisition is through the process of negotiation, and one factor that influences interaction is the task or activity that learners are engaged in. Hence, it is the aim of this study to investigate if foreign language (FL) learners would engage in different negotiation strategies when completing different communication task types. Nine FL learners from a tertiary EFL class in groups of three participated in the study. They completed three different communication task types (i.e., information gap, jigsaw and decision-making) over a period of four weeks. Data for the study comprised transcribed recordings of the groups' oral interaction. This study qualitatively examined FL learners' oral interactions when engaged in three different types communication tasks. Data collected were analysed for instances of negotiation. Findings revealed that the different communication tasks elicited negotiation episodes as the participants engaged in task completion. They applied similar negotiation strategies during peer interaction. However, further scrutiny revealed that there were differences in terms of the depth of negotiation for the different communication task types. The results of this study exhibit evidence that language communication tasks do promote meaningful interactions among tertiary EFL learners. Data clearly showed widespread negotiation episodes during task completion. The knowledge on the types of communication tasks that can promote meaningful interaction and negotiation episodes can assist language practitioners to make informed decisions on tasks that are suitable for their learners.

This article details an attempt to understand better how first-year doctoral students construct persuasive arguments in academic writing by exploring the patterns of boosters in drafts of doctoral research proposals. Eight Malaysian first-year ESL doctoral students produced 43 drafts of doctoral research proposals across four areas of study in education during their first year of doctoral studies. These drafts were analysed by coding the various linguistic items used to persuade readers of a text, and the analysis was based on Hyland’s (2005) model of metadiscourse. Results show that the (i) overall frequency of booster markers used is relatively low (n=158), reinforcing the argument that first-year doctoral students lack understanding about the interaction between booster markers and the context in a more complicated discussion in academic writing such as the doctoral research proposal. Then, the (ii) further analysis of booster marker sub-categories indicates that Malaysian first-year doctoral students struggle to make appropriate booster markers with different meanings and strengths in academic writing when used in context. Therefore, our study suggests that direct and explicit teaching of using various booster markers categories should be implemented in postgraduate writing courses to heightened the students’ perceptiveness regarding semantic features associated with creating convincing arguments in academic writing.

In using English as an international language (EIL), one important issue is mutual intelligibility among EIL speakers from different language backgrounds. The present study investigates the crosslinguistic intelligibility of Malay-accented English and Swedish-accented English, regarding the three phonetic features -word stress pattern, consonant clusters, and long vowel in particular. We prepared 15 English statements that are evidently true or false if understood, and examined to what extent the three phonetic features are related to 30 Swedish and 38 Malaysian listeners' understandings of the statements read by a speaker from the other language group. We compared the Malaysian and Swedish listeners' answers given with understanding as well as processing time to respond. The listeners' own accounts of their struggles in understanding the speakers' pronunciations were also analyzed. Results show that Malaysian listeners easily understood Swedish-accented English, while Swedish listeners struggled to understand Malay-accented English. The difference between the two groups of listeners seems to be closely related to the degree of the realization of the three phonetic features by the speakers as well as to the degree of the use of these features as perceptual cues by the listeners. Based on the findings, we discuss potential phonetic core features of EIL for intelligibility and some pedagogical implications for teaching English pronunciation to the learners of the language.

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