Perception of 'voicing' among Malaysian ESL learners

English has been described as a language with a voicing contrast. However, Avery and Idsardi(2001) in their proposal of a new phonological organization for laryngeal contrasts argued that English has a contrast for aspiration instead of voicing. Using results from a discrimination task involving minimal pairs that contrast in voicing/aspiration in two contexts, word initial and word final contexts, the study presents empirical second language acquisition data from bilingual speakers of English iii Malaysia with Malay, Mandarin, Tamil Li backgrounds to examine the predictions of these two opposing proposals. The results show support for the new phonological model proposed by Avery and Idsardi (2001). The study also show that second language learners are rather successful in acquiring a new system of contrast at the segmental level, but they are less successful when the contrast involves integration of information at the suprasegmental level

A framework for an online forum for a writing course.

The bane of teaching writing is that there is a scarcity of CALL (computer-assisted language learning) courseware that can effectively teach writing. Conventional CALL systems are unable to interact realistically and meaningfully with students and to provide the motivation for students to write. The success of e-Learning 2.0 that creatively applies technologies for social networking to education has pointed out a new direction for CALL. Based on insights from e-Learning 2.0, an online forum was developed and implemented as the CALL component of a writing course for ESL English as a second language) learners in a university in Malaysia. The online forum project was conceptualised with the specific aim of helping to achieve the objectives of the classroom-based writing course it complements. With proper planning and implementation, the forum technology can be successfully utilised to complement writing instruction. This paper presents the framework that was used to guide the designing of the forum. It describes the five basic components of the framework, that are course objectives, the model adopted for the forum, pedagogical considerations, control, and teacher role

The interrelation between the perception and production of English monophthongs by speakers of Iraqi Arabic

The assumption that performance in second language (L2) speech perception and speech production is aligned has received much debate in L2 research. Theoretical models such as the Motor Theory (MT) and Speech Learning Model (SLM) have described the relation between these two processes based on the assumption that speech is perceived with reference to how it is produced and speech production is in turn influenced by how well speech contrast is perceptible to the second-language learner. The present study aims to investigate this relation with regard to Iraqi learners' perception and production of English vowels, focussing on the role of L1 interference and English proficiency level in shaping this relation. The results of the present study showed that accurate perception may not necessarily be a prerequisite for accurate production especially for EFL learners at the elementary level. Perception and production score means were significantly different, revealing an asymmetrical relation between the two processes. The results showed that speech production of L2 learners at the elementary level exceeded their ability in speech perception. However, for the other three proficiency levels, perception and production seemed to develop in synchrony. The level of difficulty encountered in the perception and production tasks could be attributed to L1 interference, since the vowels that were better produced than perceived are all found in the L1 vowel system, while the only vowel that was better perceived is not in the L1 vowel system

The perception of sentence stress in Malay and English

There is little research on stress and prominence in Bahasa Melayu (BM). Work which has been done on varieties of Malay concluded that pitch or durational differences do not contribute to the production or perception of stress. This study aimed to investigate the role of intensity in the perception of stress in BM among two groups of listeners, 16 native speakers of BM and 30 of BrE, in comparison with spoken British English (BrE) and Malay Speaker English (MSE). Listeners rated 30 low-pass filtered sentences, ten from each language, indicating all syllables they perceived as stressed. Comparisons of listener identification of stress with syllable intensity yielded no statistically significant difference in the BrE and MSE conditions. In the BM condition, BrE listeners rated significantly more syllables as stressed with low to mid intensity than the BM listeners. The results are discussed in terms of the contribution of intensity to perceived prominence in languages

The association between vocabulary size and language dominance of bilingual Malay-English undergraduates

Bilingual learners' inadequate English vocabulary size is one of the most frequently stated problems in applied linguistics. Using mostly qualitative case studies, earlier findings reported several factors (e.g. negative attitude, lack of exposure, poor proficiency, and age of acquisition) as related to bilingual learners’ insufficient English vocabulary size. Therefore, the present study undertakes an in-depth quantitative study to measure language dominance, which encompasses language history, use, proficiency, and attitude towards Malay, the first language (L1), and English, the second languages of 96 Malay-English bilingual undergraduates. It also examines the relationship between vocabulary size and overall dominance scores. The 20,000 Vocabulary Size Test was used to measure English vocabulary size and the Bilingual Language Profile (BLP) was used to determine the dominance score. The results show that most of the Malay-English bilinguals are Malay dominant. A positive and statistically significant association was found between the overall language dominance score and English vocabulary size. One of the most striking findings to emerge from this study is that the language dominance score accounts for 30% of the variability in the vocabulary size of Malay-English undergraduates

Issues and challenges in courseware development : a project managers perspective.

Many educational institutes venturing into courseware development to create online learning materials for their own students are often not aware of the challenges that lie ahead in managing courseware development projects. This paper highlights the potential challenges a courseware development project may face. It discusses lessons learnt from development projects carried out in Malaysia for content and language-based courses. Particularly, real cases will be presented to highlight challenges and the steps that were taken to overcome them within the constraints of time, budget, curriculum demands, client expectations, and competencies of content providers

Representation of meaning in idioms in San Gua Yan Yi and their translation in Three Kingdoms

Idioms are fixed expressions, which can be challenging for translators. This paper aims to compare the representation of idioms in the source text, San Gua Yan Yi, a Classic Chinese novel with the representation in the translation enacted in Three Kingdoms. All idioms that were utilized more than six times in the source text were identified and these idioms and their translations were analyzed. The paper adopted the transitivity system in Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014) for the analysis. The representation of meaning in idioms in the source and target texts were examined closely, by focussing on the processes and other elements of the idiom and the sentences prior to and following the idiom that forms the context surrounding the idiom to describe the literal lineament in the translated texts. The results provided some insight to fathom the translators word selection and strategies for translation of idioms. The investigation revealed that some of the idioms that were reiterated for numerous times in the novel were sometimes presented differently from its source text to accommodate the need of the contexts. The analysis showed differences in distinct word selection, for the purpose of pertinent context presentation and message delivery. Ultimately, the analysis in this study strives to offer insights on idiom translation strategies by illustrating the silhouette of word concordances that may be influenced by the context of use for each idiom

Incidental and intentional learning of vocabulary among young ESL learners

Developing a rich vocabulary repertoire in English is an essential achievement for young learners acquiring English as a second language (ESL) as having a strong word knowledge base supports the development of the four language skills in the second language. Most studies on vocabulary learning, however, have been conducted with adult learners at the college levels. The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of different instructional techniques (incidental learning and intentional learning) on vocabulary acquisition among young ESL learners. The participants were 99 students between 10-11 years old in a Malaysian Tamil primary school. Stratified sampling was applied, and the subjects were divided into 3 groups; a control group and two experimental groups: extensive reading (ER) and extensive reading plus vocabulary enhancement (ER+). The ER group received treatment involving extensive reading of storybooks while, the ER+ group received treatments involving extensive reading of storybooks and vocabulary enhancement activities. The treatments were conducted as after-class activities. The control group did not attend the after-class activity but continued with regular class activities. The vocabulary levels test (VLT) was administered to all groups before and after the treatment to measure the significant difference between the three groups. The results show a significant gain for both the experimental groups with the ER+ group having higher means in both the posttest and delayed post-test scores. However, there was no gain recorded for the control group. The study provides evidence that extensive reading can enhance vocabulary learning but the blending with vocabulary enhancement activities was more effective

Representation of English front vowels by Malay-English bilinguals

This paper presents the results of a study conducted to investigate the representation of English vowels among Malay-English bilingual speakers. The study focused on five front vowels of English. There is a tense-lax contrast in high- and mid-vowels in English (Davenport and Hannahs, 2005; Fromkin, Rodman and Hyams, 2003), but this contrast does not exist anywhere in Malay (Nik Safiah et al., 2008). Thus, a forced choice identification task is constructed with PRAAT (Boersma and Weenick, 2009). Stimuli for the experiment were synthesized using the AT&T text-to-speech demo programme available from AT&T Labs. The values of the first and second formants of the vowels were checked to make sure that they were within the range given in the literature. Fifty-two Malay-English bilingual undergraduates participated in this study. The results showed that Malay-English bilinguals have only three categories of contrast for the front vowels. These results show that the vowel representation of the second language in Malay-English bilinguals is similar to the representation of vowels in the first language

Incidental and intentional learning of vocabulary among young ESL learners

Developing a rich vocabulary repertoire in English is an essential achievement for young learners acquiring English as a second language (ESL) as having a strong word knowledge base supports the development of the four language skills in the second language. Most studies on vocabulary learning, however, have been conducted with adult learners at the college levels. The primary purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of different instructional techniques (incidental learning and intentional learning) on vocabulary acquisition among young ESL learners. The participants were 99 students between 10-11 years old in a Malaysian Tamil primary school. Stratified sampling was applied, and the subjects were divided into 3 groups; a control group and two experimental groups: extensive reading (ER) and extensive reading plus vocabulary enhancement (ER+). The ER group received treatment involving extensive reading of storybooks while, the ER+ group received treatments involving extensive reading of storybooks and vocabulary enhancement activities. The treatments were conducted as after-class activities. The control group did not attend the after-class activity but continued with regular class activities. The vocabulary levels test (VLT) was administered to all groups before and after the treatment to measure the significant difference between the three groups. The results show a significant gain for both the experimental groups with the ER+ group having higher means in both the posttest and delayed post-test scores. However, there was no gain recorded for the control group. The study provides evidence that extensive reading can enhance vocabulary learning but the blending with vocabulary enhancement activities was more effective