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The current paper touches upon some major available approaches to the identification of different types of combinations subsumed under the category of phrasal verbs. Although literature offers a number of tests for the identification of... more
The current paper touches upon some major available approaches to the identification of different types of combinations subsumed under the category of phrasal verbs. Although literature offers a number of tests for the identification of phrasal verbs, these tests are rather complicated, including seven to eleven items. They are subject to exceptions and counterexamples as well. Moreover, they tend to differentiate Verb Real Particles from Verb Prepositions but remain silent on how they are distinct from Verb Adverb particles. Therefore, a new test, called Zar-Test of Initialization, has been developed to help distinguish among these combinations. The new approach simply consists of one single-item test that is applied in three stages. The simplicity of the approach, it is hoped, will do a great service to both the language teachers and learners as well.
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In reading classrooms, reading comprehension skills usually take priority. Teachers constantly provide comprehension exercises which reinforce skills like skimming, scanning, inferencing, predicting and vocabulary recognition. This... more
In reading classrooms, reading comprehension skills usually take priority. Teachers constantly provide comprehension exercises which reinforce skills like skimming, scanning, inferencing, predicting and vocabulary recognition. This becomes the overriding concern, so much so that the overall development of learners as readers is totally neglected. According to Muskowitz (1978), this is reflective of a dead classroom where learners are perceived as containers whose primary function is to receive and hold subject matter given by the teacher. Their understanding of the subject matter is then assessed via comprehension questions. Learners are seldom given the chance to explore their responses and feelings towards the readings. There is little scope for creative and reflective thinking. On the other hand, in a live classroom, learners are "enthusiastically and authentically involved" in the learning activities and they are genuinely "respected and treated as a human being" by the teacher (Muskowitz, 1978). Learners are encouraged to express what they feel after reading given texts. The emphasis is on drawing the content out of the learners. This is the essence ofthe Reader Response Approach in reading.
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... When the book is used again in another session or term or year in a new class, the teacher would be able to ... 2) and different words (types) (figure 3) and their loading and distribution patterns throughout the book can be made... more
... When the book is used again in another session or term or year in a new class, the teacher would be able to ... 2) and different words (types) (figure 3) and their loading and distribution patterns throughout the book can be made explicit to the teacher through the use of the ...
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Achieving an acceptable degree of proficiency in any language is no doubt threatened by the daunting task of mastering a bulk of new vocabulary items. Although incidental reading is often considered an invaluable source of vocabulary... more
Achieving an acceptable degree of proficiency in any language is no doubt threatened by the daunting task of mastering a bulk of new vocabulary items. Although incidental reading is often considered an invaluable source of vocabulary learning, it seems to be such a slow and error-prone process that it needs to be supplemented with explicit instruction. In order to design and assess practical activities for vocabulary learning and retention, researchers have presented several techniques and models, from which the Involvement Load Hypothesis appears to be the most popular and of widespread use by ELT practitioners. The current paper presents a detailed criticism of the Hypothesis, arguing that it is unclear in identifying the model components, making the determination and measurement of the involvement load of learning tasks rather tricky. Therefore, the current paper suggests an alternative model, namely the Cognitive Load Framework, which is claimed to be more clearly operationalize...
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This study investigated the connection between teachers’ incidental focus on form, namely, corrective feedback and learners’ uptake and immediate repair of errors in communicative English as a Foreign Language classrooms for adults. The... more
This study investigated the connection between teachers’ incidental focus on form, namely, corrective feedback and learners’ uptake and immediate repair of errors in communicative English as a Foreign Language classrooms for adults. The data was drawn from the transcripts of oral corrective feedback moves of six audio and video-recorded classrooms at an intermediate level totaling 9 hours. Corrective feedback moves were coded based on Lyster and Ranta (1997) and Panova and Lyster (2002) models. This study investigated the integration of incidental focus on form into six intact communicative EFL classes. A descriptive design which employed qualitative data collection procedure was adopted. The results revealed a significant difference in the ratio of uptake following certain corrective feedback types, which was in sharp contrast to the findings of Lyster and Ranta (1997) and Panova and Lyster (2002). Possible reasons are discussed from different aspects of learners’ age, their motiva...
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Research Interests: Sociology and Linguistics
This study is an attempt to find out the attitudes of writing teachers and lecturers towards the assessment of writing. For this purpose, a survey using questionnaire and semi-structured interview was conducted among ESL (English as A... more
This study is an attempt to find out the attitudes of writing teachers and lecturers towards the assessment of writing. For this purpose, a survey using questionnaire and semi-structured interview was conducted among ESL (English as A Second Language) university lecturers and school teachers and the data were analyzed descriptively and qualitatively. The results indicate that university lecturers (UL) prefer impressionistic scoring while school teachers (ST) prefer criterion-based scoring. Both groups express their preferences for explicit instruction of the evaluation criteria as well as in identifying students’ weaknesses and strengths. Unlike the common belief that grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics are the most essential criteria in scoring, the results show that fluency is more important than accuracy. It is also found that years of teaching experience are not an influential factor in their responses.
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... Mereka dalam keadaan selamat tetapi kesejukkan. Raju mengambil teh panas untuk panaskan badan mereka. Chong Meng mengambil dua helaî tuala yang dibawa untuk diletakkan atas badan mereka. Aishah mengucapkan terima kasih kepada Arif. ...
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It is a fallacy to assume that Form Five students in Malaysian schools have already mastered composition-writing strategies. Classroom teaching reveals that they still need to be assisted through effective strategies in composition... more
It is a fallacy to assume that Form Five students in Malaysian schools have already mastered composition-writing strategies. Classroom teaching reveals that they still need to be assisted through effective strategies in composition writing in preparation for the SPM Examination Teachers therefore need to identify an appropriate strategy to assist them in essay writing. The strategies suggested are peer conferencing (Strategy 1) and teacher-student conferencing (Strategy 2) as revision strategies. The objectives of this study are to find out whether these revision strategies are able to improve their writing and to investigate which revision strategy can better assist students in composition writing. Results of the study showed that all students managed to get higher scores regardless of the strategy used. However, students that used Revision Strategy 2 achieved better scores than students that used Revision Strategy 1. It is suggested that teachers should use the strategies either i...
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This study focused on a group of English language teachers’ burnout (N=120) with reference to their demographics of sex, teaching experience and educational level. The findings showed that burnout was evident among Malaysian English... more
This study focused on a group of English language teachers’ burnout (N=120) with reference to their demographics of sex, teaching experience and educational level. The findings showed that burnout was evident among Malaysian English teachers at high levels in all dimensions. In addition, experience and educational level among males and females demonstrated significant relations with emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment. The findings of this study might help school system administrators regard such demographic factors as crucial in recruitment decision makings and retention programs.
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The Analytic Scale of Argumentative Writing (ASAW) was developed because of the need for a genre-specific scale to assess English as a Second Language (ESL) university student writers’ argumentative essays. The present study reports the... more
The Analytic Scale of Argumentative Writing (ASAW) was developed because of the need for a genre-specific scale to assess English as a Second Language (ESL) university student writers’ argumentative essays. The present study reports the findings of field-testing ASAW. For this purpose, argumentative samples (n = 110) were collected and remote-scored by experienced raters (n = 5) who used ASAW. Overall, moderate to high inter-rater reliability (r = 0.7-0.9), as well as high (r = 0.84-0.92) and moderate to high (r = 0.70-0.77) intra-rater reliability coefficients after short (6-week) and long (9-week) rating intervals were obtained, respectively. Some established instruments were used to score the same essays rated using ASAW to test the concurrent validity of the scale. The scores assigned by the raters using the scale demonstrated moderate (r = 0.51) to high (r = 0.77) correlations with the scores awarded using several other standard instruments. The raters who used ASAW were given ...
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The English Language Teaching (ELT) Textbook Evaluation Checklist was developed in response to the need for a reliable, valid and practical instrument to evaluate English language teaching textbooks. The checklist was qualitatively... more
The English Language Teaching (ELT) Textbook Evaluation Checklist was developed in response to the need for a reliable, valid and practical instrument to evaluate English language teaching textbooks. The checklist was qualitatively developed by a review of the literature (Mukundan & Ahour, 2010; Mukundan et al., 2011a) and was refined through qualitative (Mukundan et al., 2011b) and quantitative (Mukundan & Nimehchisalem, 2012a) methods. As the validation test results of the checklist (Mukundan & Nimehchisalem, 2012b; Nimehchisalem & Mukundan, 2013) indicated, it could be refined further to improve its validity, reliability and practicality. The present study discusses the modifications made to the checklist following the comments of a panel of experts (n=3), who were sent a copy of the old version of the checklist. They commented on the comprehensiveness, importance and clarity of the domains and items of the checklist independently. The qualitative method was used to collect and a...
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This paper will be published in Pertanika soon
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This article presents a corpus-based investigation on English prepositions which are presented in three English language textbooks used by lower secondary schools in Malaysia. The aims were to find out the distributions of prepositions,... more
This article presents a corpus-based investigation on English prepositions which are presented in three English language textbooks used by lower secondary schools in Malaysia. The aims were to find out the distributions of prepositions, its frequency order in comparison with the British National Corpus (BNC) and the differences in terms of their co-occurrence with other parts of speech. The findings showed that there is a difference between the textbook corpus and the BNC in terms of the frequency order of certain prepositions and there are similarities and differences in terms of their co-occurrence with other parts of speech. This study indicates the textbook corpus is essential in the study of prepositions and the results can guide teachers in deciding how best to supplement the text with activities that will give learners exposure to target grammar item that is not sufficiently presented in the textbook.
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Intensive English programs are courses in which students participate in a higher number of classes in a shorter period. The available literature on intensive English courses indicates inconsistent results necessitating further research in... more
Intensive English programs are courses in which students participate in a higher number of classes in a shorter period. The available literature on intensive English courses indicates inconsistent results necessitating further research in this area. This study investigated the effect of an intensive English program on a group of Malaysian Secondary School students (n=30) following a single group quasi-experimental design. Paired samples t-test was used to analyze the students ’ scores before and after the treatment that lasted four weeks. The results indicated that the students scored significantly higher (p =.000 <.05) at post-test. The study has useful implications for English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers, researchers, and curriculum developers. Further research is required before the findings of the study can be generalized.
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This paper analyses the discourse of science through the study of collocational patterns of semi-technical words in science textbooks used by upper secondary students in Malaysia. Semi-technical vocabulary is considered to be one of the... more
This paper analyses the discourse of science through the study of collocational patterns of semi-technical words in science textbooks used by upper secondary students in Malaysia. Semi-technical vocabulary is considered to be one of the most problematic lexical areas for second language learners learning science in English, as these words usually take on extended meanings in technical contexts. The study explores the collocational and colligational patterns of semi-technical words in a corpus of 12 science textbooks. The analysis found some common lexical and grammatical patterns which seemed to share similar aspects of meaning and also showed that collocations of semi-technical words often form compounds with extended and more genre specific meanings. Thus, it is important to focus on some sense and grammar patterns as students need to understand why even though many of these collocations share similar syntactic characteristics, the flexibility of some combinations are arbitrarily ...
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This research aims to provide an overview of studies carried out on media representation of Islam, Muslims and Iran. The study intends to present theoretical and methodological approaches used to focus on media discourse as well as the... more
This research aims to provide an overview of studies carried out on media representation of Islam, Muslims and Iran. The study intends to present theoretical and methodological approaches used to focus on media discourse as well as the findings of research on the treatment of Islam and Muslims by the mass media. Drawing on approaches such as framing paradigm, Foucault’s notion of power/knowledge, Van Dijk’s ideological square and critical discourse analysis, the previous literature illustrated the role of media discourse in the production and reproduction of Islam and Muslims as the negative Other.
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Research Interests: Psychology and Narrative
Research in materials evaluation has been an important focus in ELT since the 1980s. The objective of the present study is to evaluate the general attributes of the textbooks and to evaluate the learning-teaching content. In this study, 944
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The writer developed an alternative to traditional checklist-based textbook evaluation by assembling a composite framework. A 4-phase procedure was used in the development of the framework. Phase 1 tested the Skierso Evaluation Checklist... more
The writer developed an alternative to traditional checklist-based textbook evaluation by assembling a composite framework. A 4-phase procedure was used in the development of the framework. Phase 1 tested the Skierso Evaluation Checklist (SEC) for reliability and item difficulty. Phase 2 tested the capabilities of the concordance software (WordSmith Tools 3.0) to provide data on the patterns of presentation of vocabulary and structures in textbooks; to determine the extent to which the software would help discriminate between the books; and to determine to what extent the analysis would provide greater illustration to responses to items in Section D of the SEC. Phase 3 tested the capabilities of the reflective journal in providing greater illustration to responses to items in Section E (Exercises and Activities) of the SEC. Finally, in Phase 4 the writer assembled aspects of the two complementary components into a framework which had the checklist as the main instrument. The framewo...
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Teachers of English in Second language and foreign language situations who teach writing have had to face many challenges, some of which have come about from rapid changes in the teaching of writing in the developed nations. The dilemma... more
Teachers of English in Second language and foreign language situations who teach writing have had to face many challenges, some of which have come about from rapid changes in the teaching of writing in the developed nations. The dilemma that teachers face is a big one – whether to totally embrace the changes (which are advocated by these developed nations as being necessary to achieve better teaching and learning, or to adopt and adapt where necessary. This article provides the over-view of problems faced by writing teachers in SL/FL situations and provides some suggestions as to how teachers can deal with “paradigm shifts” as in the ones that have affected the field of
This paper reviews the literature on Socratic Method as a teaching/learning tool to enhance critical thinking skills. It starts with a short history of Socratic Method by introducing its founder and briefly provides an overall picture of... more
This paper reviews the literature on Socratic Method as a teaching/learning tool to enhance critical thinking skills. It starts with a short history of Socratic Method by introducing its founder and briefly provides an overall picture of the method. Then, a number of definitions of critical thinking is presented and discussed. Next, taxonomy of Socratic questioning is presented. The taxonomy provides a detailed description of questions that can be used when employing Socratic Method. Afterwards, a number of previous studies are reviewed to show the influence of Socratic approach on critical thinking skills. Finally, a brief conclusion will close the paper.