Tahap Pengetahuan dan Penggunaan Internet dalam Mencari Maklumat di Kalangan Pelajar Tingkatan 4 di Sekolah-Sekolah Menengah di Kuantan

Pendidikan masa kini bertujuan menyediakan pelajar ke arah masyarakat bermaklumat selaras dengan visi negara untuk menjadi tunggak dalam perkembangan teknologi maklumat di alaf baru. Sehubungan itu, kajian ini bertujuan meninjau sejauh manakah tahap pengetahuan dan penggunaan Internet dalam mencari maklumat serta tumpuan pencarian maklumat. Seramai 100 orang pelajar tingkatan 4 di lima buah sekolah menengah di Kuantan terlibat dalam kajian yang memerlukan mereka menjawab soal selidik yang ditadbirkan kepada mereka. Kajian yang dijalankan berbentuk kajian deskriptif dan penganalisisan data telah dibuat dengan menggunakan perisisan SPSS 7.5 dan dibentangkan dalam bentuk peratus dan frekuensi. Hasil kajian menunjukkan kesemua pelajar yang terlibat mempunYal pengalaman mengakses Internet tetapi tumpuan mencari maklumat mempunyai peratusan yang tinggi dalam beberapa bidang tertentu yakni hiburan, permainan, pendidikan, berita, sukan, diskusi, komunikasi dan e-mail. Justern itu, mereka mcmpunyai tahap pengctahuan dan pcnggunaan Internet yang tinggi iaitu pada tahap 'mahir' dan 'sangat mahir' dalam bidang-bidang tersebut berbanding dengan bidang-bidang lain yang mereka kurang mahir iaitu perniagaan, kesihatan, pelancongan, pengiklanan dan membeli-belah melalui Internet. Di samping itu juga, kajian ini menyaksikan pandangan positif pelajar terhadap Internet, kekangan yang mereka hadapi serta cadangan yang diutarakan untuk mempertingkatkan penggunaan Internet. Penyelidik mencadangkan agar kajian yang lebih mendalam berhubung tahap pengetahuan dan penggunaan Internet dikalangan guru pula dilaksanakan untuk mempertingkatkan proses pembelajaran dan pengajaran serta keberkesanan penggunaan Internet dalam pendidikan. Kajian-kajian seperti ini diharapkan dapat dimanfaatkan demi kepentingan kecemerlangan pendidikan di alaf baru

Emotions of children with special needs and its social meaning.

The word emotion refers to a broad repertoire of perceptions, expressions of feelings and bodily changes. Emotion is a feeling that is private and subjective, a state of psychological arousal, an expression or display of distinctive somatic and autonomic responses and actions commonly "deemed", such as defending or attacking in response to a threat. This paper focuses on selected social stories to be told to a group of children with Asperger's syndrome in Malaysia. Social stories are a tool for teaching social skills to children with autism, Asperger's syndrome and related disabilities. The selected social stories would be based on Malaysian culture and the children's emotions and conversation were videotaped and analysed for its social meaning by using the content analysis approach. There are six basic emotions grouped in three pairs of opposites; joy and sadness, acceptance and disgust and anger and fear. Four subjects with aspergers's syndrome from a school in Malaysia were chosen for the purpose of this study. Three social stories were read to them repeatedly for two a day for three weeks. Subsequently, the children were able to use the social stories in their everyday lives

Online Collaboration Via Email: Analyzing Students Knowledge Construction In The ESL Classroom

This study explores students’ knowledge construction in an online collaboration via email discussion. The primary focus of this study centres on how participants communicate via email in a collaborative learning environment incorporating process writing approach and pair work activity. The data for this study embraces the email messages and writing assignments. Findings are that participants’ knowledge construction process transpired from an interactive process focusing on three main categories: questions, clarification and support. The findings will contribute to the development and testing of the efficacy and flexibility of process approaches to ESL writing instruction through e-mail. The study offers positive views for further study to be explored in order to attain a better understanding of how learners interact and construct knowledge in a collaborative learning environment via email discussions

Boom with the social media

Effective teaching methods and resources have to be taken much emphasis to promote active participation and interaction of students in classroom activities. Social media is gaining tremendous favour in the educational system specifically in the field of language teaching and learning, as such, the possibilities for social media in education are equally exciting as it is a platform to enhance students’ education. Thus, we provide various types of social media applications that is possible to be implemented in English as a Second Language Classroom namely facebook, email, instagram, twitter and blogs. We explore the past researches that have been done and look at the impact of the social media as well as identify issues and ways to overcome the problems related to using social media in ESL classroom. Additionally, we insert the steps for creating new accounts to assist the newcomers of social media. We strongly believe that this publication will be of great assistance to language teachers and learners to be involved in the era of global technology

Instagram in ESL classroom

The canvas of language teaching and learning has experienced major changes in the decade of emerging technologies. The use of various applications through computers and smartphones have paved the way for ESL (English as a Second Language) instructors to innovatively shape their strategies and approaches in language teaching and learning. Students of today's world are complacent in a dynamic, digital and social world with a wide range of ever changing technologies. In fact, by applying social media in language classroom, namely facebook, instagram, blogs and twitter, learners will be highly motivated to interact socially with their peers. As such, instagram has a beneficial characteristic as it falls on the category of social networking and the main source of networking is communication. This study seeks to reveal the students experience in applying the tool to motivate as well as enhance their interest to participate and interact with their peers. It investigated students' participation in online discussions and their feedback on the use of instagram as the platform for language learning activity. The results of the study revealed that instagram is no doubt an effective tool for students' interactions especially in the discussion of their task-related activity. The subjects involved seemed to be more motivated and they love to participate and interact with their peers as instagram has fueled their interest towards learning. It is hoped that further research will focus on some essential tools of instagram such as special intelligence, linguistic intelligence and interpersonal intelligence that could benefit for educational purposes

Written discourse in digital audio folklore

This study focuses on analysing the written discourse of two song lyrics. The song lyrics were taken form the ‘Kingfisher Series’ song album copyright by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka. The song lyrics were chosen due to the same adjectives and moral values in the story. The song lyrics were analyzed by using the critical discourse analysis where each stories were analysed according to song lyrics and also the storylines. The results of the study revealed that the story ‘The Stingy Man’ showed that the character ignored the poor and family and instead would prefer his money. The story ‘The Metal Fishing Rod’ showed that one of the best friends were stingy by choosing the golden rod and ignore the metal rod. This also showed that although they are best of friends, the friend will still ignore their other friend for the sake of wealth. It is hoped that other studies will help readers and listeners in the better understanding of folklores

Publication pPatterns and trends of articles published in the Journal of Sustainability Science and Management

The current study analyzed articles that appeared in the Journal of Sustainability Science and Management, using three years of publication data (2006-2008) published by Universiti Malaysia Terengganu. This study explores the patterns and trends of the research conducted by the authors of the articles published in the journal. This paper centres on articles published in the journal from various perspectives including topics, models, methodologies of data analysis, dominant academic disciplines and focus of publication as well as geographical location of the authors. The objectives of the study is to analyze the publication patterns in the journal over the past three years and to determine which are the predominant research techniques and subsequent methods of data analysis. The analysis of the study is confined to an example of one journal and thus its comparative validity is limited. As the name suggests, the journal is dominated by researchers with a background in science. Findings show that more articles are being written collaboratively and the broad publication profile was of more quantitative than qualitative papers. These findings provide valuable insight into the publication patterns of articles published in the Journal of Sustainability Science and Management. It is hoped to be of value to academics seeking to publish in particular journal as well as to reveal the publication and trends of the Journal of Sustainability Science and Management

THE APPLICATION OF METACOGNITION, COGNITIVISM, AND CONSTRUCTIVISM IN TEACHING WRITING SKILLS

Writing performance competence is not a process in which teachers transmit knowledge to students, but one in which students construct their writing performance competence on their own initiative. This article proposes a novel approach to the investigation of student writing ability. It applies theories of Cognitivism, Constructivism, metacognition, and self-regulated learning to understand how beginning writers develop the ability to participate in the communicative practices of academic written communication and develop rhetorical consciousness. This paper advocates both teaching with metacognition and teaching for metacognition. To teach with metacognition, an EFL writing instructor should reflect upon his or her own teaching, and possess both metacognitive strategic knowledge and executive management strategies. When instructors teach for metacognition, students can learn about what the strategies are, how to use the strategies, when and why to apply the strategies, and as a result, learn to regulate their cognitive and constructivism activities.  Article visualizations

The effect of activation of background knowledge reading strategy on students’ reading comprehension performance: a case study

This study examined the effect of background knowledge reading strategy among ESL learners as well as to identify the pre-reading strategies that are commonly used by the students. The sample comprised of 160 form one students from one of the semi-urban schools in Kuala Terengganu. The quasi–experimental design was used in the study. Students were divided into experimental and controlled groups. Modules were designed for the purpose of this research which contained six reading texts with ten comprehension questions for each text. For the experimental group, pre-reading activities were included in the module as the intervention. The English Language teachers conducted the module in their respective reading classes. Students were asked to answer the questions based on the module prepared for them. After the module session was done, ten students from the experimental group were selected for Think Aloud Protocol (TAP) session and interviews. The reading comprehension tasks were analysed to investigate the performance between the experimental and controlled groups. The result of the Think Aloud Protocol (TAP) sessions and interviews were analysed by the researchers to support the result of the reading comprehension marks. The study revealed that the reading strategy helped students from the experimental group in their reading comprehension performance. The findings of this study had revealed that there is significant improvement in the reading comprehension performance of the lower secondary students after being exposed to activation of background knowledge reading strategy

Media digital dalam pembangunan komuniti perempuan Melayu

Kajian ini melibatkan 120 komuniti perempuan Melayu yang berumur dari 20 hingga 50 tahun di kawasan sekitar Serdang Raya, Sri Serdang dan Seri Kembangan, Selangor. Objektif kajian ini adalah untuk mengenal pasti jenis media digital yang digunakan oleh komuniti perempuan Melayu serta membincangkan kegunaan media digital terhadap pembangunan diri dalam era digital. Instrumen kajian terdiri daripada satu set soal selidik yang diedarkan kepada subjek yang terlibat dan temu bual dirakam bagi tujuan kajian ini. Interaksi temu bual dianalisis dengan menggunakan kaedah analisis Wacana. Dapatan kajian menunjukkan bahawa komuniti perempuan Melayu menggunakan media digital untuk pembangunan sahsiah diri dan mereka berjaya menggunakan media digital tersebut dengan beretika. Kajian ini diharapkan dapat memberikan perangsang kepada komuniti perempuan Melayu untuk meningkatkan pengetahuan mereka mengikut peredaran semasa