Prosody and particles: a study of interaction in a Malaysian academic meeting

This article examines prosody in interaction in the context of a 66 minute meeting to agree on assessment marks as part of a pilot project studying assessment procedures. The data is drawn from a larger set of data of approximately 10 hours of academic meetings. The three participants are female colleagues involved in English Language teaching. The raw data in the audio file was subjected to a three stage process of annotation, analysis and presentation. Findings show that particles can be sorted into emotive particles, artefacts of vocalisation, and those concerned with the sharing of knowledge between speaker and addressee. They can also be classified according to their relationship to speech, and whether or not they are linguistically and phonologically organised. What is also interesting is that when prosody co-occurs with particles it operates in a different way than when it illustrates syntactic or information structure or plays a role in turn taking. Prosody appears to operate as an independent component of particles, using salience to draw attention, or lack of salience to accompany activities which are not intended as interruptions

The Effect of Familiarity with Content Knowledge on Iranian Medical Students’ Performance in Reading Comprehension Texts: A Comparative Study of Medical and TEFL Students

This study considers the effect of relevant background knowledge (schema) on reading comprehension in a group of Iranian medical students. The participants were selected using random sampling from two different groups: thirty students enrolled in an MA course in TEFL, and thirty medical students in years 4 to 7 of a seven year medical course. The selection requirement for all participants was an IELTS score of between 6 and 7. All participants were asked to respond to two texts. The first was an academic text with a tendency towards using sub-technical medical terms (e.g. asthma, air ventilation), and which was part of a sample text for an IELTS reading skill test. The second text contained highly technical or subject-specific medical terms from neurology as a specific area of medicine. Both texts were selected by a medical specialist who had also taught English for Medical Purposes (EMP) for several years in medical colleges in Iran. After reading each text, students were asked to answer questions based on the text. The results obtained from an analysis of the scores using SPSS indicated that background knowledge plays an important role in text reading comprehension for medical students in Iran (p< 0.05). The study also considered the three phases of reading (pre-reading, reading, and post-reading) and ways to build and activate background knowledge (schema) to achieve better reading comprehension

“Ink Me”: A Representation of Transparency in Election Administration

The Malaysian Election Commission has to present itself as fair, transparent and competent in its preparations for elections. Malaysia recently went through its twelfth general election, and while the Election Commission was busy with its preparations, it also had to be seen to be neutral in its treatment to all Malaysians, including the contesting parties. This paper shows how the Election Commission was represented by the media in the days following the announcement of the general election. Besides that, the analysis is also focussed on the strategies used by the Election Commission to present themselves more credibly and transparent to all the relevant parties and voters concerned. The study uses the technique of critical discourse analysis to analyse a corpus of articles taken from The Star from 13 February to 7 March 2008

Assessing ESL undergraduate performance in a group oral test: Rater orientations

Group oral testing has attracted increasing interests in performance-based assessment, mainly due to its ability to measure interactional competence. Increasing attention has consequently been paid to the performance of raters, whose orientations have an impact on the scores in view of their role as mediators between performances and scores. Studies have shown that despite training, raters’ personal constructs can lead to different assessments. This study examines rater orientations before and after viewing student performance in an oral test, to discover whether raters subscribe to the view that interaction is individual-focused and is mainly a representation of cognitive or within-language user construct, or whether they believe in a social perspective of interaction. Fourteen participants were interviewed to ascertain their personal constructs for assessing group oral interaction, as well as their justifications for rating a videotaped group oral performance using these personal constructs. The findings show that while raters valued a number of qualities including linguistic abilities, their focus was on interaction. This suggests an inclination towards the social interactional perspective, as they seem well aware that successful interaction is co-constructed, and cannot be achieved through individual language ability alone

"Great Technology, Football and...": Malaysian Language Learners' Stereotypes about Germany

Die folgende Studie untersucht stereotypische Wahrnehmungen in Bezug auf 'Deutsche' und 'Deutsche Kultur' unter den Studenten der Germanistik an einer großen öffentlichen Universität in Malaysia. Das Forschungsprojekt beleuchtet nicht nur stereotypische Repräsentationen des Landes 'Deutschland', sondern hinterfragt auch deren Bedeutung und Salienz - in einer Weise, wie es bisher noch nicht geschehen ist. Die Forschungsergebnisse haben erbracht, dass die auf Deutschland bezogenen stereotypischen Wahrnehmungen der Student(inn)en sowohl vielschichtig als auch vielfältig waren. Sie waren darüber hinaus auch überwiegend positiver Natur. An der Spitze des Deutschlandbildes der befragten Student(inn)en standen die drei Kategorien 'Technologie', 'berühmte Persönlichkeiten' - überwiegend Fuß...This study focuses on stereotypes about Germany, its culture and people, held by learners of German in a big public university in Malaysia. It examines not only the stereotypical representations of the target language country but also assesses its favourability and salience, which has not been done previously. The findings revealed that the students' stereotypes about Germany were varied and diverse. Also, they were overwhelmingly positive. The top three salient categories of images about Germany were related to technology, famous personalities - for the most part football players and scientists - and cars. The findings also indicated that very few references had been made to German culture and to its great cultural figures. The results of the present study suggest that students could benefit from a wider and deeper exposure to German culture in the language classroom

GENDER DIFFERENCES IN SELF-ESTIMATES OF MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES AMONG LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

According to Howard Gardner, human intellectual ability cannot be measured by a unitary concept of general intelligence, and the performance of cognitive tasks draws on different types of intelligence, including linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, spatial, bodily-kinaesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, natural, and existential. Despite the lack of adequate empirical support and recent doubts raised about its validity, this view of multiple intelligences has been extensively employed for the characterization of learners and the development of tasks for language teaching and learning. Whereas gender differences in the learning and use of language have been extensively researched, context-specific information on gender differences in different domains of multiple intelligences has not been seriously examined. The survey reported here is based on the hypothesis that multiple intelligences vary not only at the individual level, but also in the case of gender at a cultural level, and uses Mckenzie's Multiple Intelligences Survey to explore possible gender differences in Gardner’s intelligences. Questionnaire data relating to each of the nine intelligences was elicited from 300 undergraduate volunteers studying English at the University of Kashan in central Iran. The questionnaire included 90 statements and 10 items on each intelligence, and was used to identify the intelligence profile of the participants according to their own self-estimates. The scores for each intelligence type were calculated, analyzed and compared across genders. The results of the study showed that in contrast to the trend observed in previous research, female learners tended to rate themselves higher on most intelligences and their means were significantly higher than those of male learners in the areas of naturalistic and existential intelligences. The findings have both theoretical and practical implications not only for the reconsideration of previous claims that males rate themselves more highly with regard to intelligences, but also for the MI theory itself. 

eXTRA: A Culturally Enriched Malay Text to Speech System

This paper concerns the incorporation of naturalness into Malay Text-to-Speech (TTS) systems through the addition of a culturally-localized affective component. Previous studies on emotion theories were examined to draw up assumptions about emotions. These studies also include the findings from observations by anthropologists and researchers on culturalspecific emotions, particularly, the Malay culture. These findings were used to elicit the requirements for modeling affect in the TTS that conforms to the people of the Malay culture in Malaysia. The goal is to introduce a novel method for generating Malay expressive speech by embedding a localized ‘emotion layer’ called eXpressive Text Reader Automation Layer, abbreviated as eXTRA. In a pilot project, the prototype is used with Fasih, the first Malay Text-to-Speech system developed by MIMOS Berhad, which can read unrestricted Malay text in four emotions: anger, sadness, happiness and fear. In this paper however, concentration is given to the first two emotions. eXTRA is evaluated through open perception tests by both native and non-native listeners. The results show more than sixty percent of recognition rate, which confirmed the satisfactory performance of the approaches

Foco no Brasil: imagens do país por estudantes malaios de Português do Brasil

This study explores images about Brazil held by learners of Brazilian Portuguese in a big public university in Malaysia. It employs a mixed methods approach for this purpose. In the qualitative component of the study, the students’ images about Brazil were explored by analyzing their responses to an open-ended question and grouping the resultant images into categories. In the quantitative strand, favourability of the images about Brazil was accessed using the ratings that each respondent had assigned to his or her images about Brazil. The findings revealed that references to football and sporting events made up the largest share in the kaleidoscope of images about Brazil. For the most part, the students’ images about the target language country, culture and people were highly positive. At the same time, the findings indicated that the students’ mental pictures about Brazil were limited to popularly held country stereotypes. The article concludes with a discussion on pedagogical implications of the findings.Keywords: country image, foreign language education, Brazilian Portuguese, foreign language learners, mixed methods, applied linguistics.Este estudo focaliza as imagens que aprendizes de Português do Brasil têm sobre esse país. Os participantes do estudo estudam em uma grande universidade pública da Malásia. O estudo emprega a abordagem de métodos mistos. No componente qualitativo da pesquisa, as imagens dos alunos sobre o Brasil foram exploradas através da análise de suas respostas a uma pergunta aberta e através do agrupamento das imagens em categorias. No componente quantitativo, o caráter favorável das imagens sobre o Brasil foi medido usando-se o valor que cada participante atribuiu as suas imagens sobre o Brasil. Os resultados revelaram que as referências ao futebol e a eventos esportivos constituíram a maior parte do calidoscópio de imagens sobre o país. Em sua maioria, as imagens sobre o povo, a cultura e o país de sua língua alvo foram altamente positivas. Ao mesmo tempo, os resultados indicaram que as imagens mentais dos estudantes estavam limitadas a estereótipos populares sobre o Brasil. O artigo é encerrado com uma discussão sobre as implicações pedagógicas dos resultados.Palavras-chave: imagem do país, ensino de língua estrangeira, Português do Brasil, aprendizes de línguas estrangeiras, métodos mistos, linguística aplicada

Focus on Brazil: Country images held by Malaysian learners of Brazilian Portuguese

This study explores images about Brazil held by learners of Brazilian Portuguese in a big public university in Malaysia. It employs a mixed methods approach for this purpose. In the qualitative component of the study, the students’ images about Brazil were explored by analyzing their responses to an open-ended question and grouping the resultant images into categories. In the quantitative strand, favourability of the images about Brazil was accessed using the ratings that each respondent had assigned to his or her images about Brazil. The findings revealed that references to football and sporting events made up the largest share in the kaleidoscope of images about Brazil. For the most part, the students’ images about the target language country, culture and people were highly positive. At the same time, the findings indicated that the students’ mental pictures about Brazil were limited to popularly held country stereotypes. The article concludes with a discussion on pedagogical implications of the findings.Keywords: country image, foreign language education, Brazilian Portuguese, foreign language learners, mixed methods, applied linguistics.</p

Managing harvesting for forest sustainability in Malaysia : an SFL perspective

Forest management practices have been addressed widely in the forestry discipline but are rarely considered from a linguistic perspective. Linguistic exploration of the construction of meaning in forest discourses helps provide greater detail on how forest resources are governed through the forest management practices carried out by forestry professionals. This study adopted the approach from Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar to examine how lexicogrammatical resources are used by forestry professionals to institutionalise their narrative on sustainable forest management practices. Six field inspection reports issued by the Forestry Department of Peninsular Malaysia were selected as data for analysis. The reports were examined as a genre to ascertain their generic structure and the elements they contained. The findings show that the reports provide essential information concerning various aspects of forest management best practices, including technical information of the forest areas, their geographical and topographical conditions within and around the areas, the distribution of tree stands and other equally important aspects including their environmental, socio-economic and economic values. This paper suggests that a linguistic orientation employed in uncovering forestry matters such as the field inspection report allows concrete evidence of how forest managementpractices are communicated, especially in written reports and whether these practices are aptly represented through their language use