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Common mistakes in nouns among form one students in secondary schools in Malaysia
No full textAbstract
This research was conducted to explore students' mistakes in noun components. Students need to master these in order to gain more understanding in their reading, writing, speaking and listening skills. The data was collected through grammar tests and questionnaires among 300 students in the rural area in Hulu Selangor, Malaysia. Based on the findings, most of them failed to answer correctly 70% of the grammar test and tended to make mistakes in singular and plural nouns, collective nouns and possessive nouns. It was found that students' performance in grammar components has a close relationship with family income. Most students who come from families with low incomes tend to make more mistakes in grammar and vice versa. Fun activities in learning grammar, watching films with English subtitles and learning English songs were among the suggestions to improve students' understanding of noun components. This finding showed that students' understanding of grammar could be developed through various student-centred activities and teachers' strategies in teaching grammar.
Keywords: mistake, noun, secondary school, English, Malaysi
The UN millennium development goal to achieve universal primary education: Identifying challenges
No full textAbstract
Education not only facilitate economic growth; it can also lead to the improvement of an individual's entitlements and freedoms in society, be it by being able to make more informed decisions as a citizen, or being more aware of basic social conditions. Providing good quality primary education is a long-time universal goal that has been enshrined in many international covenants and agreements, from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 to the UN Millennium Development Goals agreed upon 2000. The paper investigates the challenges contributing to the difficulty and consequential slowing of attaining the millennium goal of achieving Universal Primary Education (UPE) target by 2015. Based on secondary data, the study found that despite the various initiatives and programs to increase access to, and improve the quality of primary education, however, many developing countries and regions were reported from the latter part of the first decade of the 21" century, to be still lagging behind the goal of achieving the MDG2 target by 2015. These challenges would have need to be overcome by those countries that were off-track in achieving UPE in order to attain the MDG2 target, or at least improve things so as to get as close to as possible.
Key words: Millennium goals, primary education, challenge
Attitude changes bring aptitude changes
No full textAbstract
Being at Ming Chuan University in Taipei, Taiwan for the past 23 years has given me the privilege of teaching a variety of English classes. This school year, I went from teaching honours students to teaching the lowest class of juniors at my university. As a result, I decided to look at how attitude changes might bring aptitude changes with this group of 54 students. This presentation discusses the overall changes that occurred as a result of the adaptations I made in my teaching style and my interaction with the students. A survey was given at the beginning of the semester, which examined the students' basic attitude towards English and their previous English exposure and experience. The survey indicated that their past English experience included very little actual English-only input, and the time given for authentic English output was just as little. Their overall ranking, based on their school-wide mid-term and final exams, was consistently at the very bottom (number 61, 62 or 63 out of 63 classes). In the first few weeks of class, I made an effort to build rapport with these students and conducted the class completely in English. I was pleasantly surprised by an increase on their mid-term test scores by the 10 week. I believe that the rise in their English aptitude is a result of an attitude change, and that what I have practised in class can be applied to help educators who are working with low or remedial students throughout Asia
Innovating assessment in management education: Maintaining standards, managing dissonance
No full textAbstract
Increasingly many students in MBA programmes at Australian and New Zealand universities come from overseas and thus with different expectations of higher education. Yet students from Asian, Latin American, and even European backgrounds have been acculturated to teaching and learning practices that are often at odds with those at universities with an Anglo-Saxon heritage. One consequence then of setting innovative assessment requirements is that international students deem these to be too demanding. When these prove detrimental to them getting good grades, appeals for remarking and complaints of inadequate teaching result. Such concerns tend to be given much attention by administrators since fee-paying students are an essential source of funding in the context of on-going public funding cuts to universities. This article consists of a case-study in two graduate marketing courses in which such situations were encountered and managed. It argues that teaching and assessment needs to consider the backgrounds of the students, both cultural and academic, in order to anticipate and overcome potential pitfalls. The author proposes some ideas on designing assessments for intercultural contexts which promote deep learning and establish grading criteria which relate to real-world values, not just academic results. He concludes that it is possible to achieve one's aspirations for high standards in teaching within the market constraints of fee-paying international students in graduate management programines.
Key words: management education, assessment standards, international recruitment, student expectations, inter-cultural communicatio
Cost of Higher Education and Sources of Financing: Challenges faced by American Students
No full textAbstract
College tuition fees have continued to increase annually and this phenomenon is very common in American colleges. With today's increasing college tuition fees, very few students graduate without some form of debt and eventually develop an over-reliance on credit cards and spending above their means. Student debt carries a long term commitment with obligations that can significantly burden students for many years after graduation.
This study looks at the rising costs of tuition fees and the options available to students for financing the college price tag. Rising college tuition fees sometimes may result in an increase use of credit cards. This study first discusses the different types of loans American students can obtain for financing college. It then looks at how students use credit cards and the amount of overall debt students accumulate by graduation. It concludes with discussions on how these habits are sometimes carried on into their career-building years
Learning Strategies of Portuguese as a Foreign Language: Face-to-face vs distance learning
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In a globalised society where the specific qualities of individual learners must nonetheless be recognised and valued, we will examine learning strategies in formal settings utilised by adult foreign language students of differing provenance-linguistic, generational, professional, cultural, gender, among others-in both face-to-face and distance settings. To this end, we propose to present a postgraduate research project in Language Didactics currently being conducted under the auspices of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Porto (Portugal). Given that the understanding and appreciation of practical knowledge is equally as important as, or even more important than, declarative knowledge, we shall argue in favour of a reflective, critical, constructive and proactive teaching method aimed at enhancing and developing cognitive, metacognitive and motivational strategies for foreign language learners
Going global, staying intercultural: The e-competencies in Portuguese foreign language learning
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In recent years, the new technologies have had a major impact in foreign language teaching and learning, especially in a globalised modern world, where mastering foreign languages is indispensable to foster a successful intercultural dialogue. This can be achieved by an internet-mediated constructivist approach, which is even more significant when it comes to bridging the gap in a non-immersive language-learning context through the development of the learners' autonomy and interaction skills. This article is meant to discuss how the use of diverse Web 2.0 tools like Facebook, Skype and YouTube can effectively convey cultural traits and enhance the learners' intercultural communication competence and awareness, by determining their initial cultural expectations, assessing their motivation in getting acquainted with other ways of life, interpreting and mediating between different cultures and their own, analysing them critically and eventually changing points of view, and gradually shifting towards a cross-cultural adaptation. This approach promotes a more conscious understanding, and a mutual respect, of the other's language and culture in a globalised yet multicultural world. We also propose to take into account some practical suggestions of a project developed within this perspective, involving students from different nationalities, mother tongues and backgrounds in the scope of a post- graduate course in Foreign Language Didactics at the Faculty of Arts from the University of Porto in Portugal.
Keywords: Foreign Language Learning; Intercultural Communication Competence & Awareness; Cultural Expectations and Adjustments; Web Tools
Cambodia and Aid Effectiveness from an Agriculture and Education Perspective
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Discussions concerning the effectiveness of Aid generally and specifically for particular sectors or countries have a long history and both are covered during the course of this paper. The general assessment is that in respect of economic growth aid is not particularly effective for whatever reason and the paper shows no reason to suspect that this conclusion should be revised. In terms of particular countries and sectors the case of Cambodia educational Aid to the agricultural population the paper considerers the outcomes and finds whilst aid may be effective it is not always in the way in which donors anticipate. The prospect is raised that in judging Aid effectiveness it is important to determine from whose perspective effectiveness is to be judged
Bringing the world to the classroom - towards 'virtual reality' pedagogies for international education
No full textAbstract
The 'field' is an integral part of international education at the tertiary level. Students are taken to the field in order to experience, first hand, the themes, processes and people that they learn about in the classroom. Despite the critical importance of the fieldtrip mode of teaching and the positive impact it has on learning, budget constraints mean that fieldtrips are becoming less common in tertiary curricula, especially when they involve learning about international topics. One potential way to counteract this is to identify how we might construct a 'virtual' field. This article reflects on this process in general and presents two case studies that attempt to bring the field to the classroom.
Keywords: international education, development studies, geography, tourism, virtual reality, simulation games, virtual fieldwor
Adopting an intercultural stance in EFL teaching and learning in a Vietnamese university: insights and outcomes
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Intercultural language learning has become an important goal of foreign language education in response to the need for people to function in an increasingly multicultural world. Many foreign language programmes around the world have adopted an intercultural pedagogy which seeks to integrate into the language teaching experience opportunities for developing intercultural competence for language learners. This paper reports on an ongoing study that investigated the effect of adopting an intercultural stance on developing learners' intercultural competence in a tertiary EFL class at a Vietnamese university. Over a nine-week teaching period, eighteen English speaking lessons for two intact, equivalent classes of English-majoring students (N=38, N-33) were observed. For one class, the lessons were adapted to reflect the principles of intercultural language teaching and learning. For the other, no changes were made. The results showed that the intercultural competence of learners in the intercultural class increased significantly more than that of learners in the standard class. In particular, the students in the intercultural class were able to better articulate ethnorelative awareness and attitudes towards their home culture and the target culture. Overall, the study provided evidence for the feasibility and benefits of intercultural language learning in an Asian context. It also showed that intercultural language learning cultivated learners' affective capacities, which were usually overlooked in the EFL classroom. Implications about the classroom tasks that enhanced learners' intercultural competence are also mentioned