scholarly journals A Corpus Based Study on the Use of Preposition of Time ‘on’ and ‘at’ in Argumentative Essays of Form 4 and Form 5 Malaysian Students

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (9) ◽  
Author(s):  
Darina Lokeman Loke ◽  
Juliana Ali ◽  
Norin Norain Zulkifli Anthony
Keyword(s):  
Argumentative Essays ◽  
Malaysian Students

scholarly journals The Use of Linking Adverbials in Malaysian Students’ Argumentative Essays

2020 ◽  
Vol 03 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ummul K. Ahmad ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Language Teachers ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
Southern States ◽  
Key Points ◽  
Small Set ◽  
Argumentative Essays ◽  
Writing Instructors ◽  
Esl Learners ◽  
Malaysian Students ◽  
Integrate Teaching

Many English as a Second Language (ESL) learners’ essays are deemed incoherent as they failed to signpost and facilitate readers’ understanding of their line of arguments—a task that can chiefly be accomplished through the use of appropriate and efficient use of linking devices. This study investigates the use of linking adverbials (LAs) as connective devices in argumentative essays written by pre-university students from Malaysian matriculation colleges. The learner corpus of this study comprises 95241 words from 209 argumentative essays written by students from three matriculation colleges in southern states of Malaysia. About 2465 occurrences of LAs were extracted and then coded according to Liu’s (2008) four-way categorization framework. Similar corpus of 110737 words was also extracted from BAWE corpus as reference. Malaysian learner writers overly relied on a small set of LAs and their essays largely offered one sided argumentation. Students tend to overuse ADDITIVE adverbials (e.g. furthermore) and SEQUENTIAL (e.g. next), mainly to enlist key points and rarely used the more semantically complex ADVERSATIVES (e.g. however). The corpus also revealed that certain LAs were used inappropriately. The findings offer insights for language teachers specifically writing instructors on helping students to prepare for more sophisticated writing tasks that require complex propositions and how to integrate teaching specific linguistics features such as Linking Adverbials.

A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Media Multitasking in American and Malaysian College Students

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Laura L. Bowman ◽  
Bradley M. Waite ◽  
Laura E. Levine
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Media Use ◽  
Electronic Media ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Cultural Comparison ◽  
Cross Cultural Comparison ◽  
Electronic Media Use ◽  
Reading Activities ◽  
Malaysian Students ◽  
Report Measure

Asian societies have adopted electronic media in equal measure to western societies. Media use, its impacts and correlates have been examined in western and some Asian societies, but this study is unique in examining Malaysian students' use of media. Malaysian and American college students reported their electronic media use, reading activities and patterns of multitasking with media while studying. They also were administered an academic distractibility questionnaire and a standard self-report measure of impulsiveness. Results indicated that Malaysians reported more electronic media use than Americans as well as more multitasking with media and multitasking while studying. For both Malaysians and Americans, students who reported using social networking while studying scored higher on measures of distractibility and impulsiveness. A more complex pattern of results for other types of media use and reading are described.

Beyond Differences: Assessing Effects of Shared Linguistic Features on L2 Writing Quality of Two Genres

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaopeng Zhang ◽  
Xiaofei Lu ◽  
Wenwen Li
Keyword(s):  
Latent Variables ◽  
Moving Average ◽  
College Level ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Writing Quality ◽  
Efl Writing ◽  
Test Corpus ◽  
Argumentative Essays ◽  
Complex Nominals

Abstract This study explored the relationship between linguistic features and the rated quality of letters of application (LAs) and argumentative essays (AEs) composed in English by Chinese college-level English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. A corpus of 260 LAs and 260 AEs were analyzed via a confirmatory factor analysis. Latent variables were EFL writing quality, captured by writing scores, and lexical sophistication, syntactic complexity, and cohesion, each captured by different linguistic features in the two genres of writing. Results indicated that lexical decision times, moving average type-token ratio with a 50-word window, and complex nominals per clause explained 55.5 per cent of the variance in the holistic scores of both genres of writing. This pattern of predictivity was further validated with a test corpus of 110 LAs and 110 AEs, revealing that, albeit differing in genre, higher-rated LAs and AEs were likely to contain more sophisticated words and complex nominals and exhibit a higher type-token ratio with a 50-word window. These findings help enrich our understanding of the shared features of different genres of EFL writing and have potentially useful implications for EFL writing pedagogy and assessment.

Sleep habits and their association with daytime sleepiness among medical students of Tanta University, Egypt

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Salwa A. Atlam ◽  
Hala M. Elsabagh
Keyword(s):  
Medical Students ◽  
Sleep Disorders ◽  
Sleep Duration ◽  
Daytime Sleepiness ◽  
Sleep Habits ◽  
Restless Legs ◽  
Sleeping Pills ◽  
Life Pattern ◽  
Waking Up ◽  
Malaysian Students

AbstractObjectivesThis study aimed to assess the sleep quality (habits and disorders) and the daytime sleepiness among medical students.MethodsA cross-sectional questionnaire-based study was conducted during September 2018, through November 2018 at the Faculty of Medicine, Tanta University, Egypt. The study recruited undergraduate Egyptian and Malaysian students and applied a modified form of two questionnaires, namely the Sleep Habits and Life Style and the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS)”. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS. The results were expressed as frequency, percentage, and mean ± standard deviation (SD). Chi-square test was used to explore associations between categorical variables. An independent sample t-test was used to detect the mean differences between groups. Ordinal regression analyses were done on the ESS findings in relation to demographics and sleep habits. p-values<0.05 were accepted as statistically significant.ResultsThe study included 899 medical students. Most of the participants were Egyptians (67%), rural residents (57.4%), and in the preclinical stage (79.5%). Males represented 66.0% of the study participants and participants average age (SD) was 21.98 (1.13) years. The average durations (SD) of night sleep were 7.3 (1.6) hours in work days and 8.7 (2.1) hours during the weekends. Both were significantly longer among young (<21 years-old) and preclinical students (p<0.05). Students had on average (SD) 1.33 (0.29) hours duration of napping, but 60% of the participants never or rarely scheduled for napping. Larger proportion of male and Malaysian students sometimes scheduled for napping more significantly than their peers (p<0.05). Only 16.24% of students reported that the cause of daytime napping was no enough sleep at night. The students reported sleep disorders of insomnia in the form of waking up too early, trouble falling asleep, or waking up at night with failure to re-sleep (31, 30, and 26%, respectively). Snoring (22.2%) and restless legs (22.0%) were also reported by the students. High chances of dozing off was reported by 22.02% of the participants, of which 10% used sleeping pills, 41.4% suffered psychological affection, and 34.8% reported life pattern affection. We found an increased chance of daytime sleepiness among males (0.430 times) and Egyptian (2.018 times) students. There was a decreased chance of daytime sleepiness in students from rural areas and those below 21-years-old (0.262 and 0.343 times, respectively). Absence of chronic diseases suffering was significantly associated with 5.573 more chance of daytime sleepiness or dozing off. In addition, enough and average sleep at night significantly decreased the chance of daytime sleepiness by 6.292 and 6.578, respectively, whereas daytime consumption of caffeinated beverages significantly decreased the chance of daytime sleepiness by 0.341.ConclusionThere was unbalanced sleep duration in work days and weekends as well as lack of scheduling for napping among the students. Sleep disorders as insomnia, snoring, and restless legs were associated with excessive daytime sleepiness. Some students who suffered daytime sleepiness also underwent psychological and life pattern affection including taking sleeping pills. Enough and average sleep duration at night as well as daytime consumption of caffeinated beverages decreased the chance of daytime sleepiness.

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