KINESICS IN ORAL PRESENTATION: EXPLORING SPEAKING ANXIETY THROUGH NARRATIVE ENQUIRY

Teachers and educators are responsible in promoting effective teaching and learning to ensure intellectual development of the students. For that reason, being able to communicate well is essential for the students’ academic and employability purpose. Hence, it is important for every learner to be equipped with good speaking skill. However, it is common for ESL speakers to experience speaking anxiety which hinders them to communicate well. This study, therefore, explores speaking anxiety that occurs during oral presentation through kinesics. Kinesics provides meaningful information to the listener/audience, in which messages are conveyed through the speakers’ gesture, body movement and facial expression. It was found that speaking anxiety was shown by the speaker through kinesics during an oral presentation. Videos of speakers’ presentation were recorded and narrated to obtain the findings. Results of this study provide useful implication towards ESL teaching and learning

Non-verbal communication and writing: exploring writing anxiety in the writing process through kinesics / Norhartini Aripin and Noor Hanim Rahmat

The 4IR teaching and learning strategies motivate learners to construct new knowledge and skills by using their cognitive domain. The aim is to encourage learners to be competent and eligible for workplace. Hence, to successfully prepare learners for that purpose, one of the soughtafter skills called writing skill should be equipped in them. Writing process actively involves verbal communication and non-verbal communication. Non-verbal communication such as kinesics is important in a writing process. Kinesics provides additional messages obtained from writers’ gesture, body movement and facial expression. This study explores the influence of kinesics on writing process and how it can be related to writing anxiety of ESL writers. Purposive sampling wasconducted to obtain pertinent samples for this study. A Video of writer’s writing process was recorded and transcribed. Results of this study provide useful implication towards teaching and learning of ESL academic writing

CYCLE OF WRITING PROPHECY: EXPLORING BELIEFS AND FEAR IN ACADEMIC WRITING

The fear of writing stems from many reasons. Some fear the process, some fear the product, while others fear the reaction given towards their writing product. Past researchers have done many studies that investigate many angles of writing. When it comes to writing, the self-imposed belief (positive or negative) is dependent on other imposed expectations (positive or negative). This in turn affects the end result of the writing assignment. This study is done to investigate the cycle of writing prophecy and explore how this cycle is influenced by the writers’ beliefs and fear. 108 participants were purposely chosen from a few groups of students who registered for an academic writing course, they were asked to respond to the instrument. The instrument used is a survey (table 1). The survey has 5 sections. Section A is about demographic profile. Section B has 9 items on Beliefs. Section C has 15 items on Writing apprehension. Section B has 7 items on Behaviour, and section E has 25 items on result. Findings bear interesting pedagogical implications towards the teaching and learning of writing. Article visualizations

THE CYCLE OF SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY IN ACADEMIC WRITING

Fear of writing can be caused my many reasons. Some reasons come from the learners, some from the teachers and some from the surrounding environment. A learner with negative feelings towards writing may present this fear into having writing anxiety when it comes to classrooms activities. This fear can become a never-ending cycle of fear towards writing. This pilot study is done on 108 respondents to find. Out the influence of perceived difficulties, reasons for writing and writing anxiety on ESL academic writing. The instrument used is a 56-items survey with 5 likert scales. Findings of the study displayed an interesting self-prophecy towards writing. The results of the study revealed that many learners’ perception of writing difficulty started in semester one of their study. This fear can be aggravated by a non-supporting learning environment by the writing teachers. Next, cognitive anxiety such as low self-esteem added on to the negative feeling on writing. This negative feeling can be rooted from the learners past experience (somatic anxiety) on the learning of writing. Finally, learners may end up showing avoidance bahaviour such towards learning writing. They would only write essays in English if they were not given any choice.  Article visualizations

ANALYSING THE CADENCE OF GROUP CONFLICTS ACROSS GENDER DURING ONLINE LEARNING

It has been two years since the world has been forced to cope with doing things online. Even in normal face-to-face group discussions, participants face difficulties and conflicts, and now online learning has not made it any easier. This study explores the ups and downs in group discussion. 72 participants responded to a survey to find out how they perceive the conflicts in group formation. The findings in this study revealed that there were significant differences the norming stage and also performing & adjourning stage. In addition to that, the total mean score showed interesting differences across gender. Not all group formations with different genders go through conflicts. Not all team members with the same gender are conflict-free. Sometimes discussions/some activities are more difficult to carry out because of conflicts across genders are not properly addressed. Then again, not all group conflicts are negative. Conflicts are good in several ways. The conversations improve the communication and negotiation skills of the team members. In addition to that, defending for one’s point helps to sharpen critical thinking skills. The findings in this study cannot be generalized for all situations in group work. This study can be a springboard for more group formation and group conflicts research. Article visualizations