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Article HistoryKeywords STAD method Descriptive writing ESLwriting Action research Year six students International school.Students" ESL writing skills in general are not at a desirable level. The objective of this study was to determine the effectiveness of utilizing the STAD method to enhance descriptive writing skills among students in an international school in Selangor, Malaysia. This study employed an action research design. The sample consisted of 20Year 6 students aged between 11 and 12 years. The data for the research was obtained using a pre-test and a post-test, focus group interviews with students, teacher"s reflection and an observation checklist. The action-research was carried out over a period of 6 weeks. The quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics and the qualitative data (interviews, teacher"s reflections and observations) was analyzed based on emerging themes. The findings from the quantitative data indicated that the STAD method helped to enhance students" descriptive writing skills. The analysis of the qualitative data revealed that students enjoyed writing in groups and they stressed that they learned a lot from their friends when they wrote in groups. The teacher"s reflection revealed that the STAD method improved students" writing skills through collaborative learning as they get the opportunity to edit their group essays. Findings from the observation showed that students were actively engaged in the process of writing during group work and their social skills improved too. This study has pertinent theoretical implications, pedagogical implications and practical implications in ESL writing. Contribution/Originality:This study is one of very few studies which have investigated the effectiveness of utilizing the STAD method to enhance students" ESL writing skills in an international school. This study has strong pedagogical implications as it serves as a guide to teachers on how to carry out action research using the STAD method.

Teaching History is a tough and challenging task for teachers because most students consider History as a boring subject. Many studies indicate that students are not interested in learning History. This paper is based on a quasi-experimental study conducted to investigate the effects of utilizing the concept map method in the teaching of History in secondary schools. The researchers investigated whether the use of concept maps in the teaching of History helped the subjects from the experimental group to answer history questions better than the control group. The researchers also investigated whether this method helped to enhance students' interest in the learning of History. The findings of this research indicated that the utilisation of the concept map method significantly improved students' achievement and interest in History. Findings of this study support the theory of meaningful learning and utilization of concept maps. Moreover, the findings have strong pedagogical implications on teaching of History. As such, the practical implications are that the Ministry of Education should train History teacher how to utilize concept maps in teaching of History.

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This article is based on a descriptive study using survey method and focus group interviews. Thinking skills and problem solving skills are vital for pupils in their daily lives and facing their future challenges. Therefore, parents and teachers play an important role in nurturing these skills among pupils. The objective of the study is to explore parents' and teachers' views of pupils' thinking skills and problem solving skills according to locations of the school (urban and rural). This study also explores parents' and teachers' suggestions to enhance pupils' thinking skills and problem solving skills. The sample consists of 302 parents of the pupils and 104 teachers who are teaching Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6. The quantitative data for the research was collected using questionnaires which were developed by the researchers. Each set of questionnaire consists of 23 items. While the qualitative data was collected through the focus group interview method among parents and teachers to get their suggestions on how to enhance pupils' thinking skills and problem solving skills. The findings show that the urban parents' views of children's thinking skills and problem solving skills is significantly higher than those from the rural. The results also indicate that there is no significant difference between the urban school teachers' and the rural school teachers' views of pupils' thinking skills and problem solving skills. Findings from the focus group interviews show that most parents engage their children in hands on activities at home to enhance their thinking skills and problem solving skills. On the other hand, teachers encourage active participation of pupils in co-curricular activities to enhance pupils' thinking skills and problem solving skills.

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This study investigates the level of pragmatic competence for ESL writing skills among Nigerian undergraduates. Methodologically, it adopts descriptive research design within the explanatory framework of the QUAN-Qual model. The instruments used are descriptive essay text and focus group interview questions. In writing the descriptive essays, a total of 402 undergraduates' participated through convenience sampling. Quantitatively, an independent samples t-test was carried out. The results indicated the females required putting more efforts towards improving their pragmatic competence in the ESL writing as they achieved a higher means for language errors, compared to that of the males. Moreover, the ttest value demonstrated that the females lacked skills in the pragmatic skills of mechanical structure, grammatical function, and sentence structures and this made them commit more language errors. Qualitatively, a focus group interview was held randomly with 12 participants out of the 402 undergraduates through purposive sampling. The results of the interview sessions revealed novelties of culture-specific, learning feasibility and the academic discourse as the key elements that constraint most of the Nigerian undergraduates ESL writing skills, particularly the females. Therefore, this study revealed strong implications on how best to develop Nigerian learners' pragmatic competence in ESL writing skills.

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