Challenges Faced by Female Students with Visual Impairments in Learning English as a Foreign Language: A Narrative Inquiry Study

The English language is an international language used to enhance communication in all parts of the world. Countries that do not use English as their first language experience challenges while on international forums as their ability to communicate is curtailed. Females, especially those with visual impairment problems, are mostly affected. This study aimed to investigate the challenges faced by visually impaired female students when studying English at Taif University. The study adopted a narrative inquiry approach. The researcher randomly selected the study participants from visually impaired female students who had an average understanding of English. Data were collected by administering structured interviews. Online questionnaires were used to collect data from foreign language instructors. The study finding indicated that learners found learning English easy, though faced with challenges in the classroom, curriculum design that is not wholly inclusive of the visually impaired, and lack of learning materials such as PDFs, audios, and visuals. Simultaneously, foreign language instructors had not attended any course to teach English to the visually impaired. Based on the study findings, teachers and students required training to understand and handle the VI (visually impaired) students with more attention since there is no direct provision in the department.

Project Zero: A Framework for Innovative Pedagogy in the Teaching of English in Malaysia?

This paper marks the beginning of a project aimed at trialing a Western learning model in a Malaysian context where it is yet to be tested by previous research. This paper is the first of a series of research papers written to show the process in which a framework used in a bigger study was designed. It gives a sound theoretical background to support the building of Project Zero (PZ) framework and provides a comprehensive argument to realise the needs identified by the government of Malaysia, by explaining why Visible Thinking (VT) might be a useful tool for developing a more constructivist pedagogy. Most of PZ research was conducted in school classrooms in a Western setting. This study prides itself in taking PZ research to a whole new level, that is to a higher learning institution in a Malaysian classroom setting where undergraduate students were studied, this marks the novelty of this research. The PZ framework for observation and analysis was developed by carefully studying the Visible Thinking Project to determine the thinking routines used, this in turn formed the core of the framework. Data from interviews with 3 groups of 59 undergraduate students and their 3 teachers were then analysed qualitatively. It was found that this Western learning model has positive implications for students’ learning.

An Empirical Study of ESP Learners’ Experiences Using Edmodo in a Virtual Community of Practice

This study was conducted to investigate English for Specific Purposes (ESP) learners’ experiences in using social learning network sites, namely Edmodo in a virtual community of practice environment. This study was also aimed to identify the challenges that the learners encountered in using Edmodo. Mixed-method research was employed to collect the data for this study; a questionnaire survey and a focus group discussion. The collected data was analysed through statistical and thematic analysis. The results showed that most of the ESP learners were of the opinion that Edmodo was effective as a platform for a virtual community of practice, particularly in terms of interaction and knowledge sharing. The findings also revealed that some learners have had difficulties in creating a social identity in the community because of the lack of collaboration among the team members. Therefore, it is suggested that genuine, consistent, and synergistic motivation from educators followed by the active involvement of learners will surely boost the engagement of peripheral participants in the community. This study is significant as it offers some insights into how ESP practitioners and learners use social learning networks in building an effective ESP virtual learning community to achieve the learning outcome of the ESP course.

Design Principles of a Responsive Pedagogical Model for Multimodal Skills of Oral Presentation

Within the scope of pedagogy, established methods have been found to be incongruous with the multimodal skills required of oral presentations in the 21st century. Despite pedagogical innovations situated in native-speaking and advanced countries being so productive in experimenting with pedagogical techniques for various types of oral skills, multimodal skills of oral presentations have still been overlooked. The author is a practitioner in Malaysian higher education who struggles with this pedagogical dilemma in her daily professional life. Therefore, to respond to this practical issue and theoretical gap, the author designed a pedagogical model named the Responsive Multimodal Oral Presentation Pedagogy (RMO2P) to respond appropriately and proactively to the gap in oral presentation pedagogy. A practical action research that was based on McNiff & Whitehead’s (2011) action-reflection cycle was implemented in a tertiary Malaysian classroom for 13 weeks contributed to five applicable and theoretically informed design principles of RMO2P which are based on the spirit of responsiveness. It is hoped that the explicit discussion on its design principles could inspire other teachers with no external funding and sophisticated technical expertise to embark on research for pedagogical improvement.