AN EXPLORATORY STUDY ON INTERFERENCE ERRORS FROM MALAY LANGUAGE TRASNFER TO MANDARIN LEXICON LEARNING

Language transfer is one of the main factors affecting foreign language learner from learning a target language well. In Malaysia, the number of non-Chinese students learning Mandarin is increasing. However, differences in their language and cultures could impose more difficulties to the non-Chinese students when learning the language. The present study explored the interference errors from Malay language to Mandarin learning of non-Chinese students in terms of lexicon. To this end, learner corpus containing collection of the students’ compositions, dialogues and examination scripts was compiled and analyzed in the study. Four types of lexicon interference errors were focused on, namely (1) improper usage of words (2) word orders error (3) improper usage of collocation and (4) improper usage of culture images. The findings reveal the highest interference error occurs in improper usages of words followed by word order errors, improper usages of collocation and improper usages of culture images. The finding calls for a more effective teaching to be incorporated to raise the students’ awareness on the negative transfer of their native language into Mandarin lexicon learning

Antibiotic susceptibility of Staphylococcus epidermidis among undergraduate students in Malaysia Public University Health Campus

Staphylococcus epidermidis (S. epidermidis) has become one of the major concerns in the hospital setting due to its ability to cause hospital-acquired infection particularly from medical device contamination. The management of S. epidermidis infections become more challenging with the increase of antimicrobial resistance cases over the past years. Limited reports on S. epidermidis antibiotic resistance among healthy people leave uncertainty about the magnitude of antimicrobial resistance spreads among the community. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the antibiotic susceptibility pattern of S. epidermidis isolated from healthy undergraduate students in one of Malaysia public universities-health campuses. Ninety-six hand palm swab samples were collected and undergo several tests, including microscopic, biochemical identification tests and antibiotic susceptibility test for erythromycin, oxacillin, gentamicin, penicillin and tetracycline following Kirby-Bauer test. A total of 43 samples showed the presence of S. epidermidis (44.8%), where 72.1% of the isolates showed resistance towards at least one type of antibiotic. The highest and lowest resistance was observed for penicillin and gentamycin, respectively. Although there is no significant difference of antibiotic susceptibility pattern was observed between genders, the presence of high antibiotic resistance in S. epidermidis among these healthy communities should warrant further investigation since the spreading of the resistant strain could occur in the wider community population without notice