karwan Saeed
Universiti Sains Malaysia, School of Educational Studies, Graduate Student
This study was primarily aimed at developing an English-speaking proficiency test and analytic rubrics designed to measure speaking proficiency of Malaysian undergraduates. On the basis of Littlewood's Methodological Framework and Long's... more
This study was primarily aimed at developing an English-speaking proficiency test and analytic rubrics designed to measure speaking proficiency of Malaysian undergraduates. On the basis of Littlewood's Methodological Framework and Long's Interaction Hypothesis, the researchers derived three speaking tasks from four sources: (a) syllabus of the English language courses at the relevant university, (b) Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig's operationalizing conversation speech acts, (c) IELTS part B speaking test, and (d) task B speaking section of Malaysian University English Test (MUET). A total of 96 undergraduates with four levels of the language proficiency (i.e., low performers, intermediate performers, upper-intermediate performers, and high performers) from a public university in Malaysia voluntarily participated in the study. While two TESOL experts were invited to validate the content of the tasks and the rubrics, two raters rated students' test scores. Construct validity was established through a known-group validity (construct validity) for a known-group comparison of the task performance at the three difficulty levels namely, elementary, intermediate and advanced. The test scores, having good internal consistency (a= .89) and inter-rater reliability (ICC= .84), yielded speaking proficiency descriptors. This result showed that the test is reliable and valid to diagnose speaking proficiency of Malaysian undergraduates in pursuit of improvement.
Research Interests:
This study reviewed the criticisms against Brown and Levinson’s (1987) claim about necessity of violation of cooperative principles (CP) in giving rise to politeness implicatures. To support these critiques, evidences from Persian offers... more
This study reviewed the criticisms against Brown and Levinson’s (1987) claim about necessity of violation of cooperative principles (CP) in giving rise to politeness implicatures. To support these critiques, evidences from Persian offers and invitations were provided from the texts of 10 Iranian movies. As no alternative framework for analysing the content of these implicatures has been proposed so far, the researchers adopted two politeness principles namely ‘tact’ and ‘generosity’ maxims as well as the cost-benefit and directness-indirectness scales proposed by Leech (1983) to fill this gap in the area of Persian pragmatics. The results of this study showed that both generosity and tact maxims are the main reasons behind both direct and indirect offers and invitations. Besides, the results showed that cost-benefit scale can explain the politeness implicatures raised in performing these speech acts better than directness-indirectness scale.
Research Interests:
—The present study investigated the role of learner-learner interaction in the development of speaking skills of 52 international postgraduate students who enrolled in an intensive English course at the language center at Universiti Utara... more
—The present study investigated the role of learner-learner interaction in the development of speaking skills of 52 international postgraduate students who enrolled in an intensive English course at the language center at Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) after they failed in English Language Placement Test (ELPT) at the point of entry to the university. A quantitative research method was employed to examine the role of learner-learner interaction in the development of speaking skill of the language learners. The speaking skill of the participants was assessed before and immediately after the English course and, questionnaire was distributed among the participants to get a deeper insight about the role of learner-learner interaction in enhancing their speaking skill. The data gained were analysed through SPSS version 16.0 and were presented in the form of descriptive statistics which include percentages. Findings of the study indicated that learner-learner interaction played a significant role in the classroom since students were able to improve their speaking skill in the classroom atmosphere. The analysis also confirmed notable concern over employing learner-learner interaction instructions in the developing of speaking skill. The pedagogical implications of the findings suggested the need to include communicative language teaching materials which help language learners practise language in the hope of improving their speaking abilities through the interactions that take place among language learners in the classroom.