Various job interview skills training have been carried out to prepare students for employment. However, the outcome of job interviews is questionable, as one of the reasons for unemployment among Malaysian graduates is their inability to... more
Various job interview skills training have been carried out to prepare students for employment. However, the outcome of job interviews is questionable, as one of the reasons for unemployment among Malaysian graduates is their inability to communicate competently in job interviews. The Malaysia Education Blueprint 2015-2025 (Higher Education) stated that unemployed graduates were also lacking in a strong command of English. Since job interviews are placed heavily on verbal exchanges between the interviewer and job candidate, the role that language plays in interaction is worth exploring. This paper investigates spoken metadis-course in 16 actual first-stage technical and non-technical Malaysian ESL job interviews. Corpus linguistics was employed for data analysis. An adapted framework of spoken meta-discourse is employed to analyse the types and frequencies of textual and interpersonal meta-discourse in the corpus. The findings revealed that both textual and interpersonal metadis-course were used, but there are variations in the distribution and composition of metadiscourse in the two categories across disciplines. Excessive use of metadiscourse was found to impede communication flow instead of assisting speakers to be persuasive in their speech. This implies the need for targeted instruction on metadiscourse, specifically among language learners in higher learning institutions to facilitate appropriate usage of metadis-course in speech.
Online media creates various platforms by which people can view and make sense of the world today. In this paper, two Malaysian columnists from two national English online portals: The Star Online and News Straits Times were selected for... more
Online media creates various platforms by which people can view and make sense of the world today. In this paper, two Malaysian columnists from two national English online portals: The Star Online and News Straits Times were selected for a corpus-assisted stylistics discourse analysis. Frequency lists were firstly compared between each columnist to identify salient words that are used by each writer. Initial observation shows that a number of words refer to law/policy [e.g. act, law(s)] and government/public (e.g. constitution, parliament). From the comparing wordlists feature, stylistic comparisons are further explored using Hyland’s (2005) interactional metadiscourse features. The use of the first-person pronoun ‘I’ was also investigated, which McNair (2008) regards as typical of commentary journalism. Although findings show that both columnists employ similar metadiscoursal features, Syahredzan projects a more assertive stance (I have, know) as opposed to John Teo who is more sug...
The discourse marker ‘so’ has been identified as being typically high in spoken discourse, but previous studies have been focusing on its use in the oral production of native speakers. This paper explores the use of ‘so’, concentrating on... more
The discourse marker ‘so’ has been identified as being typically high in spoken discourse, but previous studies have been focusing on its use in the oral production of native speakers. This paper explores the use of ‘so’, concentrating on job interview speech in the Malaysian English as a Second Language (ESL) context. It aims to explicate the multifunctional uses of ‘so’ in a self-developed corpus made up of 16 actual job interviews conducted in English, comprising job interviews in two different organizations in Malaysia. In the corpus, ‘so’ is identified as the tenth most frequent word, which also makes it the most-used discourse marker in the job interview speech. The results suggest that ‘so’ in the corpus serves five main functions, namely 1) to introduce summary; 2) to continue previous speaker’s topic; 3) to mark sequential relations; 4) to hold the floor; and 5) to introduce elaboration to justify a prior statement. Interestingly, when ‘so’ is used in turn-initials, it poin...
Apologies are common utterances. When an individual has violated a social norm, apologetic utterances are offered. This study investigates how apologies are used in relation to gender. A total of 120 ESL learners were asked to respond to... more
Apologies are common utterances. When an individual has violated a social norm, apologetic utterances are offered. This study investigates how apologies are used in relation to gender. A total of 120 ESL learners were asked to respond to a Discourse Completion Test that had 4 apology situations. Their responses were categorised into different speech act strategies. The results suggest that women tend to apologize more than men. Men and women also differ in the order of primary strategies used. There is a difference in the frequencies and the type of apology strategies used when the respondents apologized to their own gender compared to the opposite.
The present study investigated the effects of group work on English as a Second Language (ESL) undergraduates’ reading comprehension and motivation to read. Four research questions which guided this study were as follows: 1) Is there any... more
The present study investigated the effects of group work on English as a Second Language (ESL) undergraduates’ reading comprehension and motivation to read. Four research questions which guided this study were as follows: 1) Is there any significant difference in ESL students’ reading comprehension performance between those who are in the teacher-fronted instruction compared to those working in groups? 2) Is group work more effective than teacher-fronted instruction in improving different levels of comprehension? 3) Is there any significant difference in ESL students’ reading motivation between those in the control and experimental groups? 4) What are the students’ attitude towards group work in the reading classroom? A non-randomised control group pretest-posttest design was employed. Fifty eight students were divided into two groups; one worked in groups while the other experienced teacher-fronted technique. Four research instruments were used for data collection. A reading compre...
Capitalising on current students’ preference for learning via technology, this article proposes a genre-based teaching approach for ESP writing employing the technology afforded for language learning. A module was designed to teach ESP... more
Capitalising on current students’ preference for learning via technology, this article proposes a genre-based teaching approach for ESP writing employing the technology afforded for language learning. A module was designed to teach ESP writing to accounting students using sustainability reports as the basis. The module includes details of how to guide students to carry out genre analysis and corpus analysis in order to discover the language use in the reports. ESP students are reported to enjoy writing genres related to their disciplines where they are more prepared to participate. This is expected to be achieved with this module.
Technological advancements have made it possible for translation projects to be completed collaboratively. As a result, collaborative translation is becoming one of the trends in translation classrooms, particularly in tertiary education.... more
Technological advancements have made it possible for translation projects to be completed collaboratively. As a result, collaborative translation is becoming one of the trends in translation classrooms, particularly in tertiary education. Thus, this study aims to explore the practical use of online collaborative translation practices in translation classrooms and investigate the student’s perceptions and attitudes toward such activities. It also provides a clear description of the processes to conduct the online collaborative translation tasks and attempts to discuss the concept of collaborative translation from the perspective of the learners as active participants. More specifically, this study seeks to answer the question: ‘How do the student translators perceive and approach online collaborative translation projects?’ The research participants were 57 students enrolled in a 14-week translation course offered to students of an undergraduate program in a Malaysian public universit...
