Browsing by Author "Maimunah Abdul Kadir, Ph.D"

This is a case study on the use of Throw Back Time (TBT), an interactive digital board game aimed at teaching tenses and aspect of grammar via the Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL). The game exclusively designed according to the Theory of Variation by Marton & Booth, emphasizes that learners understand, experience and think differently on a specific aspect of the world. As variations in the learning outcome are necessary, the game provides a variety of combinations and structures of grammar to expose learners to different aspects of learning. The application of a strategy in using the interactive digital game as part of a major research aims at presenting empirical evidence of an innovative way to teach grammar via mobile application. The study employed a qualitative content analysis in illuminating the principles of the Theory of Variation in the design of the grammar exercises in the game. A quantitative pre-test-post-test single group design was also utilized to investigate the efficacy of the game in improving the learners’ understanding and knowledge of tenses and aspect. Finally, a survey questionnaire and a semi-structured interview were administered to gauge the learners’ perception towards learning grammar using the game. The results generally show that the digital board game which matches the learners’ level of English has somewhat improved their knowledge of grammar tenses and aspect. Hence, the study suggests that the elements in the Theory of Variation governing the exercises in the game delivers positive outcomes as the learners’ performance in the series of tests improved. They considered the game to be an intriguing practice as learning of grammar used to be a daunting experience.

People around the world use different languages as a medium of communication. Without learning the correct grammar, it would be hard to understand a language. Grammar plays an essential rule for both spoken and written languages in order to convey the right meaning in communication. It is fascinating to see how all languages are changing in social media daily, but these changes have shown negative results on how social media’s users use incorrect language in their communication. This study seeks to examine (i) the types of language errors in Malaysian students’ WhatsApp messages and (ii) the effects of constant messaging on WhatsApp Messenger on students’ verbal communication. The researcher created a conceptual framework named ‘The Common Error in Writing in English’ adapted from Azar’s (2002) famous English grammar book titled ‘Understanding and Using English Grammar’ to analyse the data taken from WhatsApp messages and spoken conversation from 20 IIUM Malay students. There are four types of grammatical errors such as nouns, verbs, tenses and subject-verb agreement were identified and explained. The findings showed that students make grammatical errors on texting and it has affected their spoken communication. This may happen due to the confusion, unaware of the errors and habit of writing on social media. Social media function as mean for social interaction between the users; therefore, there is a high possibility that the way people interact with each other will get affected because of social media (Cabrera, 2018). Slowly but surely, social media have made students lose their ability to speak and write efficiently.

This research highlights the use of Islamophobic expressions as discriminatory discourses that illustrate the link between discursive constructions of Islamophobia and cultural ‘Others’ in the Facebook comments. The comments were collected from three international Facebook newspages i.e. Al Jazeera English, BBC News and CNN. The data were the comments made to the news updates surrounding three terror attacks which occurred in San Bernardino, Brussels and Orlando within the year 2015-2016. This study is significant to the current world as it gives insights on how social media such as Facebook is also a place where discriminative ideologies such as Islamophobia is reconstructed and disseminated through the use of language. To critically analyse the data, Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) as a branch of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) was used as the framework focusing on the five chosen topoi (topos of uselessness and disadvantage, topos of danger and threat, topos of burdening and weighting, topos of humanitarianism, and topos of history) as well as the intensification and mitigation strategies. These argumentation strategies from DHA help to understand and explain the intricate complexities of such identity constructions (Wodak 2011a; Wodak et al. 2009). The findings show that the discursive construction of Islamophobia is linked in great extent to Islam and Muslims being associated with negative roles and impacts on global society. This suggests that Islam and Muslims are shown as: (1) a threat to social security; (2) a community with problematic way of life and belief system; and (3) having a negative impact on humanity and global peace. This study also found that the discriminative views upon Islam and Muslims in comments found in Facebook posts were largely overt and explicit. Terms like “Jihadi”, “refugees”, “extremists”, “Arabs” etc. that have negative connotations including the above oppressive arguments and claims were used openly and aggressively to express the Positive-Us and Negative-Them ideologies against Islam and Muslims. Hence, this study reiterates the idea that, from the perspectives of language studies and critical discourse analysis, there is a dire need for all people to foster sensitivity and respect towards other’s beliefs and identities possibly through careful selection of words and language use in all realms of communication. This would pave ways to combat the ongoing Islamophobia and anti-Muslim prejudice that have been causing more harm than good.

Previous findings have discovered an increase in swearing phenomenon among Malaysian youth. This is unexpected considering the emphasis on politeness and conflict avoidance in the Malaysian culture. This research aims to identify the common swear words and phrases among Malaysian youth in Malay and English languages. This research also focuses on revealing the functions of swearing and the factors influencing the usage of swear words among Malaysian youth. All in all, 1100 tweets, retweets and comments on the 14th Malaysian General Election (GE14) were collected and ten interview sessions were conducted with 28 university students from different races in Malaysia. From the tweets, retweets and comments, 49 Malay and 22 English individual swear words as well as phrases were identified by the researcher. The most common swear words among Malaysian youth identified from both tweets and interviews are ‘bodoh’ for the Malay language and ‘fuck’ for the English language. From the analyses, among the functions of expressing emotions, insulting others, making jokes and expressing solidarity, the highest occurrence is in insulting others. However, the data from the interviews demonstrate that making jokes and strengthening relationships are the most popular functions among the Malaysian youth. Co-participants, setting of interaction, topic of conversation and mood of the speakers are factors affecting the usage of swear words with co-participants as the most important one. These findings justified why swearing phenomenon is currently in the rise among Malaysian youth. However, they still adhere to their culture of politeness and maintaining harmony. Most of the time, they use swear words and phrases with close friends with the intention of making jokes and strengthening their bonds.