Speaking is considered as one of the most important skill in learning a language especially English but many language learners find it difficult and need much effort to produce acceptable utterances in English. The aim of this study is to investigate Psychological factors that become obstacles to spoken English among Malaysian primary school pupils, and suggest possible solutions from the student’s perspectives to overcome the obstacles. For conducting current research, a questionnaire was used to collect data and identify the factors that affect students speaking performance, and find out possible solution from the students’ perspectives. After the data analysed, it was noticed that majority of students were the victims of the common physiological factors such as fear in the class, shyness and anxiety.  Most pupils did not have confident to speak because they felt fear to speak in English. While some other were felling shy and anxious when speaking in the class. Thus, pupils suggested solutions like interesting activities, encouraging learning atmosphere, a good rapport between teacher and students to help them to overcome these psychological factors that hinder them to speak in English.

Alternative assessment has been the focus of many educational researches in EFL classroom. This study was carried out to highlight the definition, characteristics and effects of alternative assessment in EFL context by reviewing current research on assessment. The research consisted of a systematic review of the empirical studies on alternative assessment in EFL classroom. Focusing solely on online search, many studies were found but only (n=24) met the inclusion criteria involving a total of (n=1588) participants. Also, it aimed to scrutinize the methods, participants and findings of the selected studies as well as the locations where they were conducted. The findings indicated that most of the studies (18 out of 24) reported positive effects of employing alternative assessment on language learning skills in EFL classroom. The results also show that the dominant method employed in the articles was quantitative where students were the main focal point involved in the research as their participants. The study is further concluded with a discussion on definition, characteristics and effects of alternative assessment in EFL context.

<p>The purpose of the current study is to identify various types of cohesive devices and their usage in the selected news articles about the courts’ decision for British-born Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh who is convicted of killing US journalist Daniel Pearl; published in Tolo News and BBC News websites. The data is analysed based on the cohesion model proposed by Holiday and Hasan (1976). Cohesions are semantic connections or “relationships of meanings within the text that describe it as a text” (Halliday and Hasan, 1976). The findings of the study show that grammatical cohesive devices containing references, conjunctions, substitution and ellipsis as well as lexical cohesions involving repetitions and collocations were found in both news articles. Among other grammatical cohesive devices, references were found to be frequently used in both news articles while repetitions were the most frequently occurred cohesive devices among lexical cohesion. It can be concluded that all the mentioned cohesive devices employed in the text ultimately contributed to the meaning of the text by binding it in an organised way. It also has been observed that writers use cohesions to give a sense of connection and order to the text.</p>

No abstract