The major aim of this research is to determine the effectiveness of using songs in teaching English language to primary school students. This research will specifically investigate to what extent songs can contribute to the development of students' language proficiency. The research is designed to find out whether using songs can be an effective way in creating positive attitude and motivation in language learners. The research will be carried out through the use of questionnaire. The data will be analyzed using the SPSS software to determine the best statistical technique to be used to test the hypotheses and to interpret the result. This is a preliminary survey research and it is hoped that this research will give an opportunity to teachers to realize songs help improve students' language proficiency. From the survey, it has been discovered that the use of song not only helps the understanding, it also stimulates and increases the students' interest to learn, enjoy and engage in the learning process. Furthermore, it accelerates students' confidence, learning ability and skill when activities are highly motivated and memorable. Future researchers should extend this research to other samples in other localities and cultures.

Historically, the use of the English Language in Malaysia, then Malaya, dates back to the Colonial times. This shows there has been a legacy of English usage in the nation. Recently, in view of globalization and increasing competition among nations in the world, there has been a renewed emphasis on the importance of English. This study hopes to provide some feedback from four industries in Kemaman about the adequacy of our new graduates. This study focused on two GLCs and two private sector companies in Kemaman, Terengganu. However, the findings can be applicable to companies throughout the country, be they GLC’s, government or private sector. Although only 115 respondents from the supervisory level upwards have been selected as the sample, these 115 respondents can be representative of the work sector not only in Kemaman, Terengganu but in the entire nation. Based on the findings, the speaking, writing, social skills and overall English proficiency of new graduates were found to be not adequate. Future researchers should focus on the need for a new syllabus design which gives scope for the development of soft skills such as interpersonal skills, speaking skills and socializing skills

No abstract

No abstract

Interactive and interactional metadiscourse are linguistic features used to maintain the coherence in essays. It involved a one-way interaction between the writer and reader, thus a challenge for Second Language (L2) learners to write effectively and comprehensively. A study is done on how the L2 learners produced the metadiscourse features and the usage is compared. A corpus of 200 evaluative essays by UiTM undergraduate students from computer science and business administration courses is analysed based on Hyland’s (2005) framework. The purpose is to find out the amount and types of metadiscourse used and whether students from different course groups make any differences in their choices. The analysis revealed that students in both courses produced more interactive than interactional metadiscourse. The most prominent feature is Self-mention and the least is Attitude Markers. The same prominent feature for both courses is Transition Markers. The business administration course shows the least feature in Evidentials, whereas Frame Markers in computer science. These are evidence as to the importance of metadiscourse in students’ academic writings and awareness is shown in its usage. This could lead to a proposition for a metadiscourse writing comparison between secondary schools and universities to gain fascinating outcomes.    Keywords: Evaluative writings, Interactional metadiscourse, Interactive metadiscourse, L2 learners, undergraduates

Oral presentations become commonplace in higher education. Apprehension of oral presentation in English is one of the language barriers that university students face at present. Most of the students are experiencing anxieties when it comes to oral presentation. Surprisingly, the apprehension of oral presentation does not only occur in face-to-face class but also in online distance learning (ODL). The objectives of this study are to identify the frequency of the state and trait apprehension factors, discuss the most influential factor of oral presentation apprehension and investigate the preference method of oral presentation during ODL. The methodology used in this study is Purposive Sampling Method. The selected respondents are 92 degree students who are taking Oral Presentation Skills (ELC590) course. Data collected were analysed using SPSS software. The frequency analysis revealed that the students were always worried of the scores and nervousness. Besides that, the marks for the presentation appeared to be the most prominent for state apprehension factors. However, for trait apprehension factors, nervousness showed the highest percentage as compared to the other factors. In addition, the most preference method for oral presentation was recorded.

This study highlights how critical MD should be used in ESL writing. Based on Hyland's metadiscourse (MD) table (2005), this study examined interactional MD markers in 40 expository essays written by ESL students taking different courses. The study sought to determine whether learners in separate course groups differed in their choice of MD and whether both groups used the exact amount and type. The quantity and variety of materials employed by the two groups varied to some extent. While hard science students were quite aggressive in their writing, soft science students created more MD traits and were more interpretative.   Keywords: Interactional Metadiscourse; Expository Writing; ESL Learners eISSN 2514-7528 ©2022. The Authors. Published for AMER & cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour StudiesCollege of Built Environment, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/jabs.v7i23.417

This study was carried out to investigate the word order distribution of English Noun Phrases (NPs) by using Saussure’s notion of structural linguistics and Reid’s meaning-based approach. The data from non-literary texts and short stories were examined to see if they comply with the patterns of NPs which have been proposed by other traditional linguists. The results of this study revealed that both literary and non-literary writings share similar word order distribution of simple noun phrases (i.e. ‘determiner + modifier + head noun’) with some slight differences pertaining to the positions of the modifiers in both texts. The analysis can be further improved by focusing on one category of word order distribution to identify the occurrences and to precisely elaborate on the occurrences of the word order