Preliminary analysis of Malaysian Corpus of Financial English (MaCFE)

This paper presents the findings of the preliminary analysis conducted on the Malaysian Corpus of Financial English (MaCFE). MaCFE is a specialised corpus consisting of written documents compiled from banks in Malaysia and the corpus is currently housing approximately 4.3 million word tokens. The aim of the analysis was to evaluate the suitability of the texts chosen to represent the financial domain. The preliminary analysis involved generating the word list and lists of co-occurrences from MaCFE. RapidMiner Studio Educational 7.5.001 and an in-house Java programming solution was utilised to perform the analysis. The word list and lists of 50 most frequent two-word and three-word co-occurrences generated from the analysis reveal that the text compilation is representative of the financial domain in Malaysia. The study concludes by discussing the pedagogical implications of the findings

Code-switching: How ESL learners react towards it

The use of more than one code of language among the Malaysian English language instructors and ESL learners in the context of formal classroom settings is widely acknowledged (Kow, 2003; Then & Ting, 2009). Many factors may contribute to the occurrence of code-switching or in other words, there must have been certain communication purposes associated which cause the code switching to occur. This study aimed to uncover the attitudes of ESL Learners towards the functions of code-switching employed by English language instructors at tertiary level. It addressed two research questions: (1) What do ESL learners think about code switching in the English classroom? (2) When does code switching serve its best functions in the English classroom for the ESL learners? Forty five diploma students were randomly selected as the respondents for this study. A survey questionnaire which focused on the students’ attitudes, usage and opinion of code switching in the classroom was utilised in the study. It was found that most of the ESL learners have positive attitudes towards code switching. The ESL learners were also reported to believe that code switching facilitates them in understanding the target language. The findings suggest that the use of code switching is necessary when the situation requires the use of first language in the classroom

Differences in Reading Strategies: How esl Learners Really Read

Students’ comprehension of a text relies much on the use of appropriate reading strategies during the activity. The use of such strategies would improve students’ comprehension of the text, which, in turn helps them in their academic achievement at large. This study aimed to investigate the reading strategies used by ESL learners at tertiary level. Specifically, it aimed to identify the reading strategies frequently used by the ESL high and low achievers. It also aimed to find out whether there was any significant different in the type of strategies used by each group of ESL achievers. Forty undergraduate students were randomly selected as the respondents for this study. A twenty-eight-item questionnaire, which focused on the frequency of use of pre, while, and post-reading strategies was utilised in the study. It was found that both of the ESL high and low achievers frequently used certain reading strategies to grasp the meaning of the text. The ESL high achievers were also reported to significantly use post-reading strategies more frequently as compared to the ESL low achievers who tended to use while- reading strategies more frequently. The findings suggest that the use of appropriate reading strategies should be exposed to students to help them enhance their comprehension of a reading text and make them become better readers

ESL Learners Reactions Towards Code Switching in Classroom Settings

The use of more than one code of language among the Malaysian English language instructors and ESL learners in the context of formal classroom settings is widely acknowledged (Then & Ting, 2009). Many factors contribute to the occurrence of code-switching or in other words, there must have been certain communication purposes associated which cause code switching to occur. This study aims to uncover the attitudes of ESL learners towards the functions of code-switching employed by English language instructors at tertiary level. It addresses two research questions: (1) What do ESL learners think about code switching in the English classroom? (2) When does code switching best function in the English classroom for the ESL learners? Forty-five diploma students were randomly selected as the respondents for this study. A survey questionnaire which focused on the students” attitudes, usage and opinion towards code switching in the classroom was utilised in the study. It was found that most of the ESL learners have positive attitudes towards code switching. The ESL learners were also reported to believe that code switching facilitates them in understanding the target language. The findings suggest that the use of code switching is necessary when the situation requires the use of first language in the classroom to enable the learners to become more confident in mastering English

The development of Malaysian Corpus of Financial English (MaCFE)

This paper presents the processes involved in the design and development of the Malaysian Corpus of Financial English (MaCFE); a specialized corpus containing a wide range of online/internet documents (i.e. communiqué) from various financial institutions in Malaysia. It describes in detail the processes involved in the collection and selection of data and preprocessing of raw data, which includes data digitizing, cleansing and tagging. This paper also introduces the user interface for MaCFE with its built-in linguistic analysis features. MaCFE was designed and developed with the intention of providing corpus linguistic researchers with the avenue to explore the field and for ESP/EAP practitioners in Malaysia, as the resources for the development of local-based ESP/EAP curriculum and teaching and learning materials. It would also serve as a learning avenue for future financial professionals in their training. MaCFE corpus has approximately 4.3 million words from 1472 electronic documents retrieved from banks and financial institutions’ official websites. At present, users can make queries to the MaCFE database using its built-in concordancer. In the future, its language-data-processing facilities will be expanded to include tools for keyword, wordlist and word collocations queries

Revalidating a Writing Strategy Scale for Undergraduate Students: A Fuzzy Delphi Approach

The purpose of this study is to get expert consensus and comments on the Writing Strategy Scale for undergraduate students. The general consensus is that students who write in a language other than their mother tongue frequently struggle with coherence, consistency, syntax, and word choice. The Fuzzy Delphi approach is used in this study to collect information from 5 experts from Malaysian public institutions utilising a 7-expert scale. Experts are people who have put in the effort to earn their credentials, training, experience, professional membership, and peer recognition. The questionnaire consists of 29 items on the writing strategies used by undergraduate students. For data analysis, Fuzzy Delphi approach Logic Software (FUDELO) was employed. A triangular fuzzy number and a rating of the defuzzification procedure for each construct element were used to analyse the data. The findings of the study and expert consensus indicate that the Agreement's Value is adequate. This confirms that the Writing Strategy Scale items for undergraduate students were highly regarded by experts. The components that the experts agreed on in consensus are organized in order of importance. Thus, researchers were able to offer a fundamental framework for adopting writing strategies for learners in general and undergraduates specifically

ESL Learners' reactions towards code switching in classroom settings

The use of more than one code of language among the Malaysian English language instructors and ESL learners in the context of formal classroom settings is widely acknowledged (Then & Ting, 2009). Many factors contribute to the occurrence of code-switching or in other words, there must have been certain communication purposes associated which cause code switching to occur. This study aims to uncover the attitudes of ESL learners towards the functions of code-switching employed by English language instructors at tertiary level. It addresses two research questions: (1) What do ESL learners think about code switching in the English classroom? (2) When does code switching best function in the English classroom for the ESL learners? Forty-five diploma students were randomly selected as the respondents for this study. A survey questionnaire which focused on the students’ attitudes, usage and opinion towards code switching in the classroom was utilised in the study. It was found that most of the ESL learners have positive attitudes towards code switching. The ESL learners were also reported to believe that code switching facilitates them in understanding the target language. The findings suggest that the use of code switching is necessary when the situation requires the use of first language in the classroom to enable the learners to become more confident in mastering English