Normaliza Abd Rahim

This study focuses on the usage of Malay Terengganu dialect through coffee shop conversation. The objectives of the study are to identify the language used at the coffee shop and to analyse the conversation among the community in one district at Kuala Terengganu. The samples of the study consisted of the community who came to the coffee shop at Chendering, Chabang Tiga, Batu Rakit and Banggol Peradong, Kuala Terengganu. 120 samples were chosen randomly from all the coffee shop. Subjects were interviewed and the conversations were recorded. The conversations were selected and analysed for the purpose of the study. The results of the study revealed that subjects are much comfortable using the Kuala Terengganu dialect and confident to interact in the dialect during the conversation. The use of short forms, words that consist of the sound ‘e’, the change of the letter ‘s’ to ‘h’ and the ending ‘g’ are widely used. It is hoped that other studies in the future will focus on different community in Terengganu using different dialects.

This study examined the effect of background knowledge reading strategy among ESL learners as well as to identify the pre-reading strategies that are commonly used by the students. The sample comprised of 160 form one students from one of the semi-urban schools in Kuala Terengganu. The quasi–experimental design was used in the study. Students were divided into experimental and controlled groups. Modules were designed for the purpose of this research which contained six reading texts with ten comprehension questions for each text. For the experimental group, pre-reading activities were included in the module as the intervention.The English Language teachers conducted the module in their respective reading classes. Students were asked to answer the questions based on the module prepared for them. After the module session was done, ten students from the experimental group were selected for Think Aloud Protocol (TAP) session and interviews. The reading comprehension tasks were analysed to investigate the performance between the experimental and controlled groups. The result of the Think Aloud Protocol (TAP) sessions and interviews were analysed by the researchers to support the result of the reading comprehension marks. The study revealed that the reading strategy helped students from the experimental group in their reading comprehension performance. The findings of this study had revealed that there is significant improvement in the reading comprehension performance of the lower secondary students after being exposed to activation of background knowledge reading strategy.

This study focuses on analysing the written discourse of two song lyrics. The song lyrics were taken form the ‘Kingfisher Series’ song album copyright by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. The song lyrics were chosen due to the same adjectives and moral values in the story. The song lyrics were analyzed by using the critical discourse analysis where each stories were analysed according to song lyrics and also the storylines. The results of the study revealed that the story ‘The Stingy Man’ showed that the character ignored the poor and family and instead would prefer his money. The story ‘The Metal Fishing Rod’ showed that one of the best friends were stingy by choosing the golden rod and ignore the metal rod. This also showed that although they are best of friends, the friend will still ignore their other friend for the sake of wealth. It is hoped that other studies will help readers and listeners in the better understanding of folklores.

The study focuses on university students’ perception towards language learning in the classroom. The objectives of the study were to identify and discuss the students’ perception towards language learning in the classroom. A class of ten university focus group students involved in this study. The focus group subjects volunteered for the study. The subjects were interviewed based on their perceptions towards language learning in the classroom. The extracts from the interviews were analysed by using implicature from Brown & Yule’s (1983) theory of discourse analysis where it is the aspect of meaning that a speaker conveys, implies, or suggests without directly expressing. The results of the study revealed that the subjects preferred hands-on activities in language learning classroom due to active participation from all students. Besides that, the results also revealed that the subjects preferred small group discussion that involved digital media. It is hoped that further studies will focus on students’ perception towards language learning that involved different types of tools in the classroom.

Language being used as a communication tool is embedded with emotions. Emotions in
language are obvious in face-to-face (F2F) communication than in any other forms of
communications. Media Richness Theory explains that the richer the media is the more
successful communication will be and vice versa (Moczynski, 2010). This means text-based
communication such as letters, e-mails, memo and so forth lacking of non-verbal cues
like intonations, facial expressions, body movements and others, will not be as successful
as F2F communication. On the other hand, there are also studies which have proven that
computer mediated communication can convey non-verbal cues as effective as in F2F
communication by manipulating the fonts with capitalization or using coloured fonts to
express emotions (Mali, 2007; Boonthanom, 2004). Nevertheless, how is it possible to
communicate non-verbal informations in a language like Tamil which does not have capital
letters or colour code? The aim of this study is to identify the techniques used by Tamils in
conveying emotions through words in facebook. This paper further discusses the frequent
and helpful techniques used in Tamil communication. Samples chosen for this study were
forty active facebook users who have good language competency in Tamil.

Aizuchi, feedback and insertion are the 3 important elements in
a Japanese language conversation. Aizuchi and feedback can be
categorized as short utterance. This paper discussed short utterance
in a conversation between native speakers and non-native speakers
of Japanese language based on writer’s research findings. This is
because in general, students of Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM)
have problems in constructing a real-life conversation in Japanese
language. This paper tried to analyze the conversational situation
between two Malaysian tour guides and two Japanese tourists. The
face-to-face conversation occured when the tour guides brought the
tourists to Aquaria KLCC (G1&T1) and Istana Negara (G2&T2).
This research intended to expose the conversation between the
culture of native speaker and non-native speaker as a reference to
students who are learning Japanese language.

Life is full of thunder and lightning and we never really think that everything will change towards a better perspective and the world accepts who we are. A few lines of words, a few words of light, a few phrases of underline gestures would change our day... Thus, we started reflecting with our own experience. Our happy moments... our sad moments... calm and distress... comfort and anger... We smile when we are happy... We cry when we are down... No matter where we are, we feel that our own experiences need to be shared with others to acclimatize the journey of life... We hope that our lines will make others feel good, inspired, motivated and gratified. Smile with confidence as the tranquility and calmness in every one of us will make earth a better place to stay...

The rapid development in Information Communication Technology provides diversified methods and approaches of language teaching and learning. Effective teaching methods and resources have to be taken much emphasis to promote active participation and interaction of students in classroom activities. To date, social media is gaining tremendous favour in the educational system specifically in the field of language teaching and learning as it enriches the learning experience by allowing students and teachers to connect and interact in new, exciting ways. The rapid explosion and extensive adoption of social media has made it possible for one person to communicate with thousands people worldwide. As such, the possibilities for social media in education are equally exciting as it is a platform to enhance students’ education. Thus, it is our main aim to provide various types of social media applications that is possible to be implemented in English as a Second Language Classroom. The focus is on the research that has been done using Facebook, email, Instagram, Twitter and blogs. We explore the past researches that have been done and look at the impact of the social media as well as identify issues and ways to overcome the problems related to using social media in ESL classroom. In fact, we insert the steps for creating new accounts to assist the newcomers of social media. We strongly believe that this publication will be of great assistance to language teachers and learners to be involved in the era of global technology.