Metacognitive awareness of reading strategy use in Arabic as a second language

This paper reports a study that investigated university students’ awareness of their reading strategy use when they read Arabic academic texts. One hundred and twenty-two undergraduate L2 Arabic students mostly from Africa and Asia completed a 30-item survey of reading strategies. Results indicated that these students perceived problem-solving reading strategies to be more useful than global and support strategies. Moreover, a statistically significant relationship was found between participants’ self- rated Arabic reading ability and their overall strategy use (r = 0.233), problem-solving strategies (r = 0.236), and global strategies (r = 0.239). Finally, it was found that African background students reported more global strategy use than Asian background students, and junior and senior students reported consistently higher strategy use in all the three strategy categories compared to the first and second year students. Findings are discussed in light of the reading strategy knowledge base as well as the theoretical and practical implications

Case Studies on Sustainability Factors for Industrialised Building System (IBS)

This paper presents the outcomes of a case study to test the ability of the Guidelines for Sustainable Construction of Industrialized Building System (GSCIBS). An assessment on the implementation of IBS related guidelines in real projects contributes towards the improvement of these guidelines and ensure the significance of the decision tools in promoting sustainability. In addition, the process involved when using the GSCIBS also demonstrated how the guidelines can be used to assist designers when making a selection with regard to sustainability. Three case projects were selected based on their characteristics (location, accessibility of information, building construction, IBS project with high impact to community and high percentage IBS Score). The projects were categorized as non-residential buildings. Semi-structured interviews and documents’ review were conducted to gather information from the respondents. In total, there are eleven (11) respondents who participated in the case study analysis. The confirmation by the industry participants shows that the guidelines are applicable and suitable to be used in Malaysia. The literal replication was achieved and provides strong evidence that the number of case studies is appropriate. The participants’ comments and suggestions were taken into account in synthesising the project outputs. As a result, the GSCIBS are significant in improving sustainable deliverables of IBS application

Indonesian EFL teachers’ content conceptualization and course organization: A portray of text-based teaching

Frequent changes of Indonesian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) national curriculum have transformed EFL teachers’ role from that of serving merely as curriculum transmitters into curriculum adapters. Accordingly, this study intended to explore how a group of Indonesian EFL teachers conceptualize content and course organization as guided by the Indonesian national EFL curriculum. A qualitative multiple-case study (Miles, Huberman, Saldana, 2014; Stake, 2006; Yin, 2014) was employed to collect and analyze data. Purposive within- and cross-case sampling techniques were used to select six EFL teachers; three experienced and three inexperienced teachers of public junior high schools in the Special Territory of Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Sources of data included instructional curriculum design assessments and pre-lesson semi-structured interviews. Analysis of the data revealed these teachers’ content conceptualization focuses on blending texts and English language skills that characterize the implementation of text-based teaching in the Indonesian EFL context. Results of the data analysis for course organization showed teachers’ insufficient understanding of the selected organizing principles for teaching texts. Such understanding led to inconsistency between theory and practice. The findings of the study shed light on a misconception about implementing text-based teaching. Implications of the study address the need to equip Indonesian EFL teachers with both the conceptual and practical knowledge of implementing the methodology of text-based teaching

Identification Of Markers For Serodiagnosis Of Leptospirosis In Malaysia

Leptospirosis is one of the emerging diseases of both humans and animals worldwide, particularly in the tropics. It is a major public health problem due to the lack of diagnostic facilities for early detection which is key in preventing serious multi-organ complications. Although culture and microscopic agglutination test (MAT) are gold standard, they require time and expertise and are not useful for early diagnosis. Thus this study was performed to identify antigenic components of Leptospira for sensitive and specific serodiagnosis of the disease

Developing A Holistic Project Time Management Framework Utilizing Fundamental Supply Chain Management (SCM) Tools to Overcome Delay in Malaysian Public Sector Building Projects

Project delays have been an incessant dilemma worldwide and also for the Malaysian public sector projects. Past three Malaysia Plans (RMK8, RMK9, and RMK10) have experienced ridiculously high delay rates. Surprisingly, these poor delivery records have not led to much research on the topic locally especially those concerning past Malaysia Plans. Beyond that, despite “blame-games†being a common picture when delay occur, past studies has been short of detecting their latent contributors to make delay easier to manage. Condemnations targeted on the industry have encouraged “calls for change†and many proposed Supply Chain Management (SCM) as the way to go about. SCM has been proven to reduce delays nevertheless, level of applications are still very poor and past studies lacked holistic approach. This paper presents an on-going research aimed at developing a holistic project time management framework utilizing fundamental Supply Chain Management (SCM) tools to overcome delays in Malaysian public sector building projects. Data collections would include qualitative methods in form of expert opinion interviews and also a series of focus group sessions towards gathering vastly experienced industry practitioner to contribute towards the development of final research framework. The ultimate outcome is expected to provide a holistic guide on utilizing wide-range SCM tools towards mitigating various facets of delay contributors and with proven success from past SCM tool applications leads to a cautious optimism that it could benefit project time performances in Malaysia as a whole

The Roles, Challenges & Improvement of Project Manager in Project Financial Management in Building Development in Penang, Malaysia

Project Manager holds roles and responsibilities to ensure the success of construction projects for his organisation. And one of the roles is to ensure the well-management of Project Financial Management in his organisation. Recent research has identified project cost overrun has been a major issue in construction industry. These project cost overrun cases have been repeating and have reduced the profit and revenues of the project owners. Therefore, it comes across the researchers mind of what the project managers who work for developer companies have been doing in order to overcome repeated cost overrun cases in the near future project developments. Hence, the set objectives of the research are: 1) To identify the important roles of Project Manager in Financial Management in building project development in Malaysia, 2) To identify challenges faced by Project Manager in Financial Management of building project development in Malaysia. 3) To identity solutions to overcome such challenges faced in Financial Management in building project development in Malaysia. However, due to time constraint, this research is limited and carried out in Penang, which is the second-smallest state in Malaysia, with strong population growth and has undertaken numerous construction projects in Malaysia. The research methodology used for this study is qualitative approach. Semi-structured interviews are used as research instrument for the data collection for this research. An overall of six interviews had been conducted with highly experienced Project Managers in Penang construction industry who has the knowledge and experiences in the Financial Management of building development. The data from the successful interviews are then been analysed using content analysis method in which the data collected are categorized into groups in table forms. From the findings, the respondents had defined the Project Financial Management relating to three main aspects. Four (4) out of six (6) respondents are having moderate involvement and two (2) respondents are having high involvement in the Financial Management in building development in Penang. The research findings had also identified five (5) major roles of project manager in Project Financial Management. Furthermore, five (5) major challenges of project manager in Project Financial Management were also identified. Finally, research findings also identified four (4) major solutions to overcome the challenges faced by project manager in Project Financial Management. Ultimately, this research is anticipated to create awareness of the important roles of Project Manager in Project Financial Management to mitigate the cost overrun issues in construction projects