According to our experience, facilitating online reflective writing via Facebook motivates students to improve their writing skills and reflective thinking. Six students and a teacher from an urban school in the northern region of Malaysia were involved in this study. The qualitative data in the form of online archives were categorized as reflectionin-action (feedback and self-correction) based on Garrison et al.'s (2000) cognitive presence. Additionally, reflection-on-action which comprised the students' reflective journal demonstrated their thoughts and feelings while engaged in the Facebook environment. Data suggested that feedback only related to grammar and sentence structures (micro aspects). There was no feedback relating to organization and content (macro aspects). The reflective journal revealed that Facebook can be considered as a successful platform to enhance students' narrative writing. The findings of this study have implications for teaching and learning activities in web-based environments.
This study aimed to investigate the linguistic knowledge aspect in academic reading, the challenges and the deployed strategies by English major undergraduates at a Jordanian institution of higher education. The importance of the study is attributed to the importance of the academic reading at university which is closely related to the academic achievement across the different academic disciplines. Data were collected by administering a questionnaire among English major students at the Hashemite University in the year 2016. The number of the respondents was 297. The data collected were analysed for its descriptive statistics, Post Hoc Tests, Scheffe Method, and frequency using the SPSS software. Cronbach's alpha of the reliability coefficient was .93 to the difficulties of reading and .87 was to the strategies deployed by the students, which indicated high internal consistency reliability. Results showed that students faced difficulties related to their insufficient knowledge of text-structure, constructing meaning, and fluent reading. The study revealed that students most employed strategies were the metacognitive followed by the social ones. The cognitive strategies were the least to be used among the students. The study provided some pedagogical implications to be considered.
The language of advertising has a powerful impact on the branding of automobiles and sustaining its customer"s loyalty. This study aims to identify the arguments used in advertisements; particularly on its claims, warrants and data to influence the automobile buyers in a diverse international market. It analyses the rhetorical devices and language equivalence used in the English and German print advertisements. A contrastive analysis of three cars" print advertisements, namely Mercedes Benz, BMW and Volkswagen from the German and Malaysian English dailies was carried out using Toulmin"s model to identify the arguments and the rhetorical devices used in the advertisements. The study reveals two main similarities, particularly in the arguments put forth as well as the stylistic approach of the advertisements. The BMW and Mercedes Benz focused on their technological superiority and advancements, while the Volkswagen focused on its affordability. The German adverts were more persuasive and directed the buyers for action compared to the English adverts that provided more data and warrants. The BMW adverts also utilised a closed form compound adjectives such as "ConnectedDrive" to sustain the "hybrid concept" stylistic in line with the contemporary automobile advancement that focuses on hybrid cars. The use of figurative language was more prevalent in the English adverts compared to the German adverts to portray its internationalisation status of the car. These elements contribute to the pedagogical implications of teaching and learning foreign language; particularly for diverse writing purposes as well as planning business language for the different genres.
Research supports extensive reading (ER), which draws on incidental learning, as a primary tool for second/foreign language vocabulary knowledge development. However, while it is deemed useful for vocabulary learning, the claim that ER on its own is sufficient for learners to experience significant lexical gains has been challenged. Instead, a more fitting measure appears to be a combination of incidental and intentional vocabulary learning, with ER followed by explicit vocabulary study. Given the issue of Malaysian tertiary students lacking English vocabulary knowledge, this quasiexperimental study implemented a method incorporating ER using graded readers and explicit vocabulary study (READ+) to observe its effectiveness for receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge development, as compared against another method (READ) in which only ER was utilised. The study was conducted in a Malaysian public university employing two groups of participants. Each group comprised 14 Malaysian undergraduates of the MUET Band 1 to Band 3 cohort undergoing a preparatory English language course at the university. Pre-, post-and delayed post-testings were carried out using the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale. Results from statistical analyses indicate that the READ+ group performed significantly better than the READ group for both receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge recall and retention.
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