Online social network to engage students meaning making in Shakespearean drama

Technology has become an integral part of everyone’s life. Students nowadays are adept at using technology especially online social network such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and so on in their everyday life. This has helped them to connect and communicate with friends and relatives easily. It also helps them to develop and connect meaning from their inner world to the outside world. It is important for teachers to take this opportunity to integrate online social network in the teaching and learning processes as it may encourage engagement and enjoyment among students. In the case of introducing Shakespearean drama in literature lessons, technology in the form of social media can become an effective platform for students to become active meaning makers. Through a case study of twenty teacher trainees, this paper uncovers how Shakespearean drama can be taught and learnt through online social network in particular Facebook. The findings generally show that when students got to express their thoughts and feelings through Facebook they were able to develop their linguistic, cultural and personal competence as they connect and communicate personal meaning openly which in turn encouraged participation in classroom learning

Supporting and improving reflective practice among pre-service teachers through whatsapp

The purpose of this study aimed to investigate the use of WhatsApp, an instant messaging application tool, to improve and support pre-service teachers’ reflective practice during their teaching practice. Freeman (2002) suggests that reflective practice must become a central pillar in teacher education. Pre-service teachers should be reflective by thinking of their knowledge and methodology learnt in the college and applying and putting them into practice in the classroom. However, they find it difficult to link theory to practice and they need the support and help from others when they start teaching in school. Therefore, the tool of WhatsApp is used to help these teachers to bridge theory and practice during their teaching practice. This case study involved eight participants who taught English language for twelve months in school. An assessment rubric for classroom observation was analysed descriptively for quantitative data while the weekly reflective journals, responses on the WhatsApp prompts and the focus group interviews were analysed thematically for qualitative data. This paper explores the support given by the supervisor during the teaching practice can help to improve the pre-service teachers’ teaching and learning experiences in the classroom

Applied Drama in English Language Learning

This thesis is a reflective exploration of the use and impact of using drama pedagogies in the English as a Second Language (ESL)/ English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom. It stems from the problem of secondary school English language learning in Malaysia, where current teaching practices appear to have led to the decline of the standard of English as a second language in school leavers and university graduates (Abdul Rahman, 1997; Carol Ong Teck Lan, Anne Leong Chooi Khaun, & Singh, 2011; Hazita et al., 2010; Nalliah & Thiyagarajah, 1999). This problem resonates with my own experiences at school, as a secondary school student, an ESL teacher and, later, as a teacher trainer. Consequently, these experiences led me to explore alternative or supplementary teaching methodologies that could enhance the ESL learning experience, drawing initially from drama techniques such as those advocated by Maley and Duff (1983), Wessels (1987), and Di Pietro (1983), and later from process drama pedagogies such as those advocated by Greenwood (2005); Heathcote and Bolton (1995); Kao and O'Neill (1998), and Miller and Saxton (2004). This thesis is an account of my own exploration in adapting drama pedagogies to ESL/EFL teaching. It examines ways in which drama pedagogies might increase motivation and competency in English language learning. The main methodology of the study is that of reflective practice (e.g. Griffiths & Tann, 1992; Zeichner & Liston, 1996). It tracks a learning journey, where I critically reflect on my learning, exploring and implementing such pedagogical approaches as well as evaluate their impact on my students’ learning. These critical reflections arise from three case studies, based on three different contexts: the first a New Zealand English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) class in an intermediate school, the second a Malaysian ESL class in a rural secondary school, and the third an English proficiency class of adult learners in a language school. Data for the study were obtained through the following: research journal and reflective memo; observation and field notes; interview; social media; students’ class work; discussion with co-researchers; and through the literature of the field. A major teaching methodology that emerges from the reflective cycles is that of staging the textbook, where the textbook section to be used for the teaching programme is distilled, and the key focuses of the language, skills, vocabulary, and themes to be learnt are identified and extracted. A layer of drama is matched with these distilled elements and then ‘staged’ on top of the textbook unit, incorporating context-setting opportunities, potential for a story, potential for tension or complication, and the target language elements. The findings that emerge through critical reflection in the study relate to the drama methodologies that I learn and acquire, the impact of these methodologies on students, the role of culture in the application of drama methodologies, and language learning and acquisition. These findings have a number of implications. Firstly, they show how an English Language Teaching (ELT) practitioner might use drama methodologies and what their impact is on student learning. While the focus is primarily on the Malaysian context, aspects of the findings may resonate internationally. Secondly, they suggest a model of reflective practice that can be used by other ELT practitioners who are interested in using drama methodologies in their teaching. Thirdly, these findings also point towards the development of a more comprehensive syllabus for using drama pedagogies, as well as the development of reflective practice, in the teacher training programmes in Malaysia. The use of drama pedagogies for language learning is a field that has not been researched in a Malaysian context. Therefore, this account of reflective practice offers a platform for further research and reflection in this context

Comparative analysis of text classification algorithms for automated labelling of quranic verses

The ultimate goal of labelling a Quranic verse is to determine its corresponding theme. However, the existing Quranic verse labelling approach is primarily depending on the availability of Quranic scholars who have expertise in Arabic language and Tafseer. In this paper, we propose to automate the labelling task of the Quranic verse using text classification algorithms. We applied three text classification algorithms namely, k-Nearest Neighbour, Support Vector Machine, and Naïve Bayes in automating the labelling procedure. In our experiment with the classification algorithms English translation of the verses are presented as features. The English translation of the verses are then classified as “Shahadah” (the first pillar of Islam) or “Pray” (the second pillar of Islam). It is found that all of the text classification algorithms are capable to achieve more than 70% accuracy in labelling the Quranic verses

A study of potential Load Bearing Masonry (LBM) system in Malaysia construction industry

To overcome the problems in increasing of material prices, land prices, shortage of skilled workers, equipping low cost housing demands and maintained the cost of the constructing at an affordable price, there is a need to find the alternative solution for constructing method.The use of the load bearing masonry system (LBM) has been identified as a sustainable and an effective alternative method for the construction industry.The system offers several advantages in term of cost and speed of the construction, durability, strength, environmentally friendly practices and aesthetic qualities.Despite these advantages, unfortunately, this system has not been widely used in Malaysia compared to reinforced concrete (RC) frame construction. Therefore, this paper aims to discuss the advantages and potential of the system implementation to Malaysia construction industry in the future

The study of Load Bearing Masonry (LBM) system in a developing country

Load-bearing masonry is an alternative method for the construction industry especially in the housing project. The adoption of the LBM brings an enormous beneficial effect to the construction industry and organization productivity. However, research in the field of the LBM system adoption is still in its limitation. The comprehensive reviews of the literature demonstrate that the majority of the research is discussed the development and potential of the system compared to study the factors influence the adoption of the system. Therefore, this paper aims to discuss the previous studies and as a part to fulfill the gap in the mangement construction research especially for the LBM system

Load Bearing Masonry (LBM) system in a developing country

Load-bearing masonry is an alternative method for construction industry especially in the housing project.The adoption of the LBM brings a huge beneficial effect to construction and organization productivity.However, research in the field of the LBM system adoption is still in its limitation. The comprehensive reviews of the literature demonstrate that the majority of the research is discusses about the development and potential of the system compared with investigate the factors influence the adoption of the system.Therefore, this study aims to discuss the past research for LBM system in construction industry

CSLM: Levenberg Marquardt based Back Propagation Algorithm Optimized with Cuckoo Search

Training an artificial neural network is an optimization task, since it is desired to find optimal weight sets for a neural network during training process. Traditional training algorithms such as back propagation have some drawbacks such as getting stuck in local minima and slow speed of convergence. This study combines the best features of two algorithms; i.e. Levenberg Marquardt back propagation (LMBP) and Cuckoo Search (CS) for improving the convergence speed of artificial neural networks (ANN) training. The proposed CSLM algorithm is trained on XOR and OR datasets. The experimental results show that the proposed CSLM algorithm has better performance than other similar hybrid variants used in this study

Human-machine Translation Model Evaluation Based on Artificial Intelligence Translation

As artificial intelligence (AI) translation technology advances, big data, cloud computing, and emerging technologies have enhanced the progress of the data industry over the past several decades. Human-machine translation becomes a new interactive mode between humans and machines and plays an essential role in transmitting information. Nevertheless, several translation models have their drawbacks and limitations, such as error rates and inaccuracy, and they are not able to adapt to the various demands of different groups. Taking the AI-based translation model as the research object, this study conducted an analysis of attention mechanisms and relevant technical means, examined the setbacks of conventional translation models, and proposed an AI-based translation model that produced a clear and high quality translation and presented a reference to further perfect AI-based translation models. The values of the manual and automated evaluation have demonstrated that the human-machine translation model improved the mismatchings between texts and contexts and enhanced the accurate and efficient intelligent recognition and expressions. It is set to a score of 1-10 for evaluation comparison with 30 language users as participants, and the achieved 6 points or above is considered effective. The research results suggested that the language fluency score rose from 4.9667 for conventional Statistical Machine Translation to 6.6333 for the AI-based translation model. As a result, the human-machine translation model improved the efficiency, speed, precision, and accuracy of language input to a certain degree, strengthened the correlation between semantic characteristics and intelligent recognition, and pushed the advancement of intelligent recognition. It can provide accurate and high-quality translation for language users and achieve an understanding of natural language input and output and automatic processing

Factors influencing consumer’s retail formats choice for fresh fruits purchase in Klang Valley Malaysia

This study attempts to identify attributes or factors influencing consumers’ retail formats choice in fresh fruits (FF) purchase. The study covered consumers in Klang Valley area, Malaysia and period of the study is between June to December 2014. Seven hundred (700) respondents were randomly selected using multi- stage cluster sampling technique. The demographic characteristics result of the respondents includes their educational level, income level and their marital status. The product attributes considered most important by the fresh fruits consumers are level of ripening (72%), size and shape of the fruit (65%) and color of the fruits (63%). Freshness, safety of the product and product quality are the three factors yielded from the factor analysis. Likewise, convenience, entertainment and services offered are the retail formats attributes considered by the fresh fruits consumers. From the regression results it was observed that all the estimated factors have significant effect on frequency of visit to the traditional formats. However, only quality and entertainment were the significant factors affecting patronage of modern retail formats. The finding of this research will help the retail formats managers and policy makers identify the salient issues to be considered in fresh fruits marketing strategies