This paper examines the different types of writing errors performed by 16 international postgraduate students undertaking an intensive English course at a public university in Malaysia. It was mandatory for international postgraduate students who obtained less than IELTS Band 6 to undertake an Intensive English Course (IEC) offered by the University, prior to entering their respective faculties’ academic programs. The students were required to write a 3-5 page term paper assignment on a topic related to their field of study. Mixed methodology approach was employed to examine and analyze corpus of students’ term papers. The errors in the term papers were identified and classified accordingly. The results of the study revealed that four most common English language errors committed by the participants were sentence structure, articles, punctuation and capitalization. This study also shed light on the manner in which students assumed the rules of English to that of their native language. Such insight is useful for both instructors and students because it provides significant information on the building blocks experienced by English language learners in academic writing.

Communication apprehension has been identified as a major factor which inhibits an individual's willingness to communicate and his/her ability to develop effective communication skills. While many prior studies have investigated oral communication apprehension among undergraduate students, there has been little research exploring this phenomenon among doctoral students. This study applied qualitative methodology via observation and interviews. The research subjects were international doctoral students from several Malaysian universities. The experiences of the students in communicating with examination panel during academic presentations (e.g. proposal and viva) are analysed and the factors contributing to their oral CA are explored.

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The 2012 PISA reading literacy aims to measure 15 year-olds' reading performance in preparing them to meet real-life challenges. The primary aim of the present study is to examine Malaysian students' reading performance by comparing the girls' and boys' performances in PISA 2012. The 2012 PISA reading literacy framework comprises three important reading aspects: access and retrieve (AR), interpret and integrate (II), and reflect and evaluate (RE). These aspects were further examined through the students' reading performance in five types of text namely narration, exposition, argumentation, description and instruction. The findings demonstrate that the students performed better in AR than in II and RE indicating a better performance in lower-order reading skills than in the higher-level reading aspects. Findings also show that girls outperformed the boys across all reading aspects and types of reading texts. This paper concludes by emphasizing the need to integrate higher-order reading skills in the reading curriculum in order to prepare Malaysian students for better literacy competency.

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