Notes from the Editors

You are reading the first issue in the twelfth volume of IJELS. The articles in the current issue fall into 4 different areas of literacy, including, linguistic literacy, music and art literacy, social science literacy, and thinking and literacy. Our authors in this issue come from Bahrain, Bangladesh, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Japan, KSA, Turkey, and Thailand

Developing an Analytic Scale for Evaluating Argumentative Writing of Students in a Malaysian Public Universities

Rating scales are useful tools that can mitigate the validity issues of objective writing tests. In addition, they can reduce the reliability problem of essay tests that are scored impressionistically. The existing instruments are not appropriate for use in Malaysian universities. They are either generic or their grading system is not suitable for this context. The only genre-specific scale developed in Malaysia (Wong, 1989) is suitable for the narrative mode. The lack of adequate scales leads the lecturers to score their learners‟ written pieces impressionistically (Mukundan & Ahour, 2009). This developmental study included design, operationalization, trial and validation of an analytic scale of argumentative writing. ESL writing lecturers‟ views on the importance, wording and inclusiveness of the criteria were investigated (through qualitative and quantitative methods) with the help of a checklist. Parallel with these studies, a number of argumentative samples (n =20) were also analyzed. Thes samples had been selected from a batch of 167 argumentative essays written by students from six different faculties of Economy and Management, Health and Medicine, Design, Communication, Agriculture and Ecology in Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM). Additionally, a focus group study helped the researcher further refine the checklist based on its respondents‟ views. They included four female senior lecturers from a Malaysian public university. As a result, a prototype scale was developed. Focus group participants reconvened to further refine the prototype, the clarity of its rubrics and their weights, the anchor papers and extended scoring guide. The result was the Analytic Scale of Argumentative Writing (ASAW). It followed an equal-weight scheme with five subscales of „content‟, „organization‟, „language conventions‟, „vocabulary‟ and „overall effectiveness‟ and could diagnose five levels of performance. The scale was tested for its inter/intra-rater and internal reliability, which resulted in moderate/high coefficients. Concurrent validity tests showed high and significant relationships between the students‟ MUET bands and the scores assigned to their written samples using ASAW. In addition, the samples were scored using four other well-established writing scales. Correlation tests indicated moderate and significant correlations between these scores and those assigned using ASAW. As for consequential validity, the raters‟ responses to a questionnaire on usefulness of ASAW indicated their moderate-very high levels of satisfaction with it. The scale can be used as a tool to benefit three main contexts in language instruction “(a) research, that is, theory building; (b) policy development; and (c) professional practice, that is, classroom or curriculum development” (Kiely, 2009:101)

Interview with Muhammad Affan Othman on Small Changes

Small Changes, a community organization in Malaysia (www.smallchangesmy.org), was founded in 2011 to raise funds and provide support for underprivileged individuals in the community. With an interesting tagline of Cultivating Volunteerism, Empowering Generations this community organizations has raised hundreds of thousands and has attracted tens of Malaysian students from local and overseas universities. The team consists of an enthusiastic group of young Malaysians who believe that it is possible to create big differences in the community with small changes. I had the pleasure of meeting the team in one of their social event in Kuala Lumpur. What you are going to read is the responses provided by the Vice President of Strategic Planning Unit, Mr. Muhammad Affan Othman, who kindly consented to an E-mail interview.The interviewVN[1]: Perhaps we could start with a short introduction of Small Changes. Could you please tell our readers about your organization and its objective?MAO[2]: Small Changes started from an idea coined by our founders in which they aspire to create social awareness by making one small change at a time. For example, they started helping flood victims in flood prone locations in Malaysia such as in Kelantan and reaching out orphanage by offering them some help in terms of financial aid. As the organization grows, they started diving into more projects that have diverse aims such as tackling education inequality, which is translated into our Seeds of Deeds initiative, which has been done annually since 2014. However, since 2016, Small Changes has decided to shift gears and start to focus on becoming an organization that offers a platform for volunteering for youths and at the same time empowering both its volunteers and its beneficiaries. These will be made possible through our projects that allow Malaysian youths to participate and become empowered as they are actively participating in a nation building effort. Through these projects, volunteers could experience a change of perspective in their worldview since most of them tend to come from a pool of people that do have a well-off background. They can see the disparities that do exist within Malaysia’s realities when they actively participate in our projects.VN: What made you think of establishing Small Changes? What makes it special?MAO: Small Changes is an organization that was established with the aim of spreading consciousness among youths and empowering them in Malaysia. We often hear complaints about structural problems that exist in our society. Problems such as why we fail to speak English properly, low self-esteem among teenagers, and how we are always backwards as compared to other individuals in the first world countries. Small Changes capitalizes in its pool of volunteers where we try to incorporate volunteers from different backgrounds such as some who are studying abroad and some who are studying in local institutions. The ones who obtain their education abroad help share their exposure; for example, utilizing strategic tools that they are exposed to abroad which could help solve certain social problems that exist in Malaysia. Our volunteers who are studying locally could share the current issues that are deeply rooted in Malaysia and they, too, help to engage in discussions with officers from governmental institutions as a way to have constructive dialogues.VN: Do you have any interesting stories from your experiences with training underprivileged (if we should call them so) children?MAO: The underprivileged students from schools that Small Changes have reached out to so far have a problem of low self-esteem and they have a tendency to internalize their problems on their own. Conflicts and dilemmas are natural aspects of living except for we deal with them with various methods. To some, they are easy to handle, but more often than not, people do not know how to deal with their conflicts. The students that we have met, I would argue, do not have the proper skill in handling their dilemma. They have to meet the expectations set by their caregivers but at the same time they do not have the resources to meet these expectations. Sometimes, just engaging a normal conversation with them is enough to know that they are struggling. What Small Changes is doing is to make our volunteers aware that everyone needs help and a person of privilege should always be mindful that the privilege that one has should be shared. On the other end of this spectrum, we are also helping the students see that they do have an important role in the society.VN: These days most academicians and researchers in the area of education are obsessed with gaps in research. Has your experience revealed any interesting areas for impactful research?MAO: I would suggest that researchers should study the effectiveness of non-governmental organization initiatives in aiding areas such as education, students’ performance after joining such initiatives, and myth about the Y generation (since most of them are doing more good than bad i.e. becoming volunteers, etc.).VN: Apart from gaps in research, do you see any gaps in educational practice that call for action?MAO: We do feel that teachers in general should be more open to the help that Malaysian students may have to offer. We do understand that there will be skepticism, but as an organization that takes pride in creating social awareness, we aspire to be held accountable in the initiatives that we implement. For example, the seeds of deeds camps are led by facilitators who have prior experience in working with youngsters and have had extensive volunteering experience. From the pool of experienced facilitators that we have, we make sure that our volunteers are trained by them with useful tips especially when dealing with high school students.VN: How can our readers (mostly academicians) join Small Changes in case they have ideas or would like to volunteer to help?MAO: As a non-governmental organization, we welcome everyone, especially university students as we want them to be exposed to certain realities that are not obvious to them. Not only that, our organization encourages people to volunteer, which means that people are forgoing their own self-interest putting others first. This is an effective mechanism in creating better human capital, as they are equipped with positive values that could help make a greater change in Malaysia.As for academicians, we welcome any form of collaborations, particularly in the area of programme content development and impact measurements. We believe research-based inputs will further refine the impact desired to our beneficiaries, solidify the aims and purposes of foundation of the organization.VN: What are some of the future directions of Small Changes?MAO: Small Changes plans to diversify in its efforts of creating more volunteering opportunities so that more people can do good and create change for the better. There is also the opportunity for the volunteers to be part of Small Changes’ committee. That is definitely what we hope to see where our volunteers would be interested in holding leadership roles within the organization and continue to spread our values.We also aim at planning more critical projects. Small Changes aspire to invest long term planning to advance community that acts as the beneficiaries. We aim to generate a sustainable model to empower community as a whole rather than children-focused motivational camp. Following long term planning of project, we do include impact measurement mechanism to obtain real quantifiable measures on the impact of our project, to refine the lacking and reiterate on the best steps to take.VN: Do you have any final words for IJELS readers?MAO: To make huge changes in a short time span may be exasperating. The reason may be we humans are inherently good and just; however, we are not taught the proper way to make effective changes. Since we uphold to the notion of “Small Changes, Big Differences”, we understand that indeed making change bit by bit can really create an instantaneous effect. Teaching a 17-year-old to speak up in a three-day-camp is challenging but to see the results, only if we were to be patient enough, is indeed a fulfilling feeling that no one ever told us about.[1] Vahid Nimehchisalem[2] Muhammad Affan Othma

Usefulness of the English language teaching textbook evaluation checklist

Textbook evaluation checklists are instruments that help teachers or programme developer sevaluate teaching materials before or after using them. This paper presents one of the phases of a project that involved the survey of a group of evaluators’ (n=82) views on the usefulness of a newly developed checklist. The questionnaire used was a modified version of an instrument developed to evaluate the usefulness of a writing scale (Nimehchisalem, 2010). Based on the results, the checklist indicates high to very high levels of usefulness. The findings are expected to be very helpful for researchers who may intend to test similar instruments

Notes from the editor

We are pleased to announce that IJELS releases her last issue of Volume 10. Our October issue presents several research articles with very interesting topics related to education and literacy studies

A review of genre-specific writing scales in ESL/EFL testing contexts

As an important part of language assessment, assessing English as a Second or Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) writing has long been the topic of interest among researchers. Writing scales have been used for quite some time in order to decrease the subjectivity of raters' evaluations. While most of the available scales are generic, there are also genre-specific scales which have been developed to be sensitive to the variations that are caused by different genres in the content, organization and structure of the written works to be evaluated. Having discussed the merits and challenges of using writing scales for evaluation purposes, the current paper presents some possible ways in which the usefulness of writing scales can be improved. The paper reviews a number of genre-specific writing scales and concludes with a discussion on their pedagogical implications

Vocabulary knowledge: Malaysian tertiary level learners' major problem in summary writing

The ability to summarize and paraphrase written pieces is one of the essential skills tertiary level students need in order to succeed in their academic endeavor. It involves the process of decoding a text, and then re-encoding it by making changes to the structure and vocabulary of the original text while maintaining its content. The present study analyzes a group of tertiary level students’ written samples to diagnose their main areas of difficulty in writing business report summaries. For this purpose, a sample of 69 samples was collected from an intact group of learners. Two raters used an analytic writing scale to score the samples individually. Based on the results, majority of the students (about 70%) achieved ‘excellent to very good’ scores for the ‘content’ of their written samples. However, regarding the ‘organization’ and ‘vocabulary’ of their written pieces, respectively 75% and 97% of these students scored ‘Fair to poor’. ‘Good to average’ results were achieved for a majority of the students’ ‘language use’ and ‘mechanics’ skills. The findings of the present study accentuate the urgent need for remedy courses to help these students improve their organization and vocabulary skills in ESL writing. Further research is necessary to diagnose the learners’ difficulty areas in other genres of writing such as argumentative and narrative modes

Rhetorical structure in the problem statement section of Iranian postgraduate students' research projects

This paper reports the results of a study that investigated the structure of the Problem Statement (PS) section, following Swales’ (1990) Create-A-Research-Space (CARS) model as the first objective. Move analysis was used to analyze the rhetorical moves of the PS sections of the research projects. The second objective was the identification of the specific types of linguistic features associated with each move and step based on Pho’s (2013) classification. Following Pho (2013), the linguistic features as important signals of moves were identified.  For this purpose, 30 research projects written by Iranian master’s students were purposively selected. The findings showed that the obligatory moves were Moves 1 ‘Establishing a Territory’ and 2 ‘Establishing a Niche’. All moves and steps were identified linguistically although their sequence and arrangement were not the same as what was anticipated by the model. Although the cyclic and embedded moves were defined in the rhetorical structure of the PSs, most of them were anomalous or ill-structured. The study has theoretical contributions, the most significant one of which is that the CARS model is applicable to define and analyze the rhetorical structure of the PS section

Developing a content subscale to assess university students' argumentative essays

Genre-specific scales are available to evaluate students’ writing in English as a Second Language (ESL) situations, but instructors may still feel a need to develop new scales to match their specific testing situations. In order to develop a valid instrument for their testing situation, the researchers reviewed the literature and carried out a survey as well as a focus group study. These led them to a number of subscales, namely, content, organization, vocabulary, language conventions and overall effectiveness. The paper reviews how the band descriptors for the content subscale of the Analytic Scale of Argumentative Writing (ASAW) were determined. Toulmin’s (1958/2003) model was used to analyze the patterns of argument in 20 purposely selected argumentative essays written by a group of Malaysian students. The results of the analysis provided the researchers with descriptors for five levels of writing ability. The subscale was tested for inter- and intra-rater reliability as well as concurrent validity. Positive results were observed. ESL writing instructors and evaluators may find the subscales useful for formative assessment purposes. In addition, the samples can be useful models for ESL students to differentiate the successful from unsuccessful argumentative content in writing courses

Gender representation in Malaysian secondary school English language textbooks

This study was conducted to describe the representation of gender in Forms 1, 2, 3, and 4 English language textbooks in Malaysian secondary schools. Gender-biased materials have been reported to affect the motivation of students who go through the textbooks (Treichler and Frank, 1989). Computer analysis tools and manual analysis were used to perform content and linguistic analyses. These methods in addition to discourse analysis of the text books aided the researchers to disclose the predictable patterns of sexism in the textbooks in order to identify the existence and extent of stereotypes. The results clearly indicate there is an absolute gender bias with males outnumbering females. Further, certain nouns referring to males precede those referring to females; however, males almost exclusively turn out to represent negative characters