This quasi experimental study has validated the effectiveness of Task Based Language Teaching (TBLT) in promoting writing skills of EFL learners enrolled in undergraduate programs at public sector Malaysian universities. TBLT is emerging as an essential part of curricula in language pedagogies in several countries around the globe and advocated by prominent SLA researchers along with ELT practitioners. In current study research participants were divided into an experimental and a control group. The data were collected following a Mixed Method Research paradigm during pretest and posttest. A Paired Samples T-test was used to determine the statistical significance of the learners' scores in pretest as compared to the posttest. The vast majority of the learners opined in their reflective journal that TBLT was the most interesting and a learner centered approach enabling learners to use their existing linguistic resources. The use of existing linguistic resources is a fundamental principle of TBLT as it leads the EFL learners to be fluent and confident users of English language both inside and outside the classroom in real life situations.

Purpose-Citation is vital in academic writing but particularly challenging for novice writers who use English as a second or foreign language. While much is known about citations types and functions, scarce knowledge is available about what makes citing a complicated procedure. Hence, this study explores the difficulties in citing and integrating information from academic sources into the literature review chapter of PhD proposals.

The study has been made possible through the postgraduate scholarship scheme (PGS) provided by Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM).

Citations are significant academically for establishing research backgrounds and justifying a research problem. In spite of the increasing studies on citations, limited studies have employed the Systemic Functional Linguistics in analysing citations. Therefore, this study explores the logico-semantic relations in citations with clause complexes, employing the ideational metafunction of the Functional Theory. The study adopted a purposeful sampling in selecting the literature review chapters of 20 PhD theses by EFL postgraduates in a public Malaysian university in two disciplines: Information Technology and Applied Linguistics. The findings revealed that citations were structured to realise two logico-semantic relations, mainly Expansion and Projection with several subcategories for each. A combination of Projection and Expansion was also used, which resulted in reclassifying the logico-semantic relations. The findings could present comprehensive descriptions of citations that could be pedagogically utilised for academic purposes.

Academically, citation is pivotal since it presents justifications for the arguments and a demonstration of the writer's position. Despite the increasing number of studies on citations, little knowledge has been reported regarding the citation use and practices of EFL students within the ESL context. Hence, the present study aimed at investigating the extent of variation in the citation practices in the literature review of PhD theses in Applied Linguistics and Information Technology. The study analysed the citations qualitatively focusing mainly on several aspects, including using types of citations, the variety of the citations based on the type of the clauses in each citation, and the perspectives of EFL Arab postgraduates on using citations. A purposeful sampling was adopted in selecting the literature review of 20 PhD theses and nine EFL Arab candidates of Applied Linguistics and Information Technology. The results show the dominance of the integral citation in the literature review of Applied Linguistics and Information technology. The inter-disciplinary comparison also reported similarity in terms of the high frequency of using citations with clauses complexes. The discourse-based interviews revealed that EFL Arab postgraduates depended on the integral citation to highlight ideas, attract the reader's attention, affirm the credibility of the cited information, and refer to the type of the information. The little available information on using citations and the possible effect of their native language may lead EFL Arab postgraduates to have their own strategies regarding citations use. Consequently, EFL postgraduate students probably need explicit instructions on the use of citations.