Effective health communication is important for making healthcare decisions. The Internet facilitates patients to learn about their treatments and diseases. More than 70 000 websites disseminate health information and 50 million Internet users seek health information online. The interaction between online health information seekers and healthcare providers has helped the growth of medical tourism industry. For medical tourists, one of their sources of information is hospital websites. Since patients are from different backgrounds, hospital websites should be written for the general public. This study was conducted to analyze the readability levels of Malaysian medical tourism hospital websites. Out of 44 hospital websites, 32 fulfilled the criteria for this study. SMOG Grading and Fry Readability Graph were used in this research. Using Fry and SMOG indices, it was found that these websites were written at a college level (Grade 15 and 16) and graduate training level (Grade 17 and 18). This suggests that these hospital websites were difficult and very confusing for the general public to comprehend.

This study aims to investigate the needs of mosque officers and workers for learning Arabic Language and to present the topics related to mosque matters. These are clarified through the four skills of language especially the speaking skill. The research methodology combined descriptive, survey and analytical approaches. Questionnaires were distributed and interviews were conducted to obtain more information from four mosques in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor. The number of respondents reached seven officers, 47 workers and five tourists. After analysing the interviews and questionnaires it is clear to the researcher that they need a special academic module to aid their handling of mosque matters. An example of the module was presented based on the learners’ needs, followed by training to use the terms, linguistic structures and the grammatical rules.

This study attempts to discover characteristics of the academic unit or module that suits teaching the Arabic language for shari‘ah officers working in Islamic banks in Malaysia. This is based on special priorities and needs, analysed through the interviews that were held with five officers (four male and one female). The study was conducted using the method of descriptive analysis in order to collect the desired data. Then, the data was used to design a prototype of academic unit, which are as follows: the feel of mastering the Arabic language for their career, and usage of the language. In addition, the respondents are in dire need of Islamic banking and finance terms. Hence, the four language skills have to be added in the lessons with a greater focus on reading and writing in accordance with the respondent’s grasp of the language. Based on the findings by the researcher, an Arabic language module for shari‘ah officers is recommended.

The emergence of Web 2.0 allows users to share information online. Since then, the world has been introduced to YouTube. YouTube is a video sharing website where people upload videos and write comments on the video. YouTube has been popular among people as it has become a platform where one can promote themselves as well as spread information on certain issues or for entertainment. Ever since the number of viral videos has risen, these videos have become one of the preferred methods of sharing information online. The question is what is it that makes videos become viral in Malaysia especially in the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM)? This study attempts to answer questions about the categories of viral videos that students of IIUM share and the factors that make them share certain viral videos. Additionally, how Islamic teachings influence their sharing behaviour is also examined in this study. This study employs qualitative face-to-face interviews method to gather and analyse the data. The findings of the study show that students of the International Islamic University Malaysia prefer to share videos that are related to food, cooking and animals. In addition, videos that contain practical values and those that could bring an awareness to others are more likely to be shared by the students of IIUM. From an Islamic perspective, the study shows that IIUM students check the accuracy of the video contents before they share them online and also avoid sharing videos that contain the elements of fitnah and ‘aib.

This is a genre-based analysis study of a move-structure of online tourist travel guides of three Asian countries: Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. Kathpalia’s nine-move structure (1992) for advertising is adopted as a framework to analyse the selected travel guides using Atlas ti (a qualitative data analysis software). The selection of data is based on the latest edition of Asian online travel guides. The main purposes of this study are to analyze the move structures, their strategies and communicative purposes, identify the prevalent move(s) in the selected travel guides, and find out whether the selected travel guides have the same move structures. The findings of this study show that Malaysia Travel Guide (MTG) has eight moves, six of them are the same as Kathpalia’s framework (1992) and there are two new moves. In addition, Thailand Travel Guide (TTG) has five moves, three of them are related to Kathpalia’s study (1992) and the rest are new. Moreover, the Philippines Travel Guide which is entitled ‘Your Guide to the Philippines’ has six moves, four of them are the same as Kathpalia’s and two of them are new. The prevalent moves in these three travel guides are ‘Headline’ and ‘Appraising the Country’; whereas the peripheral moves in the selected travel guides are ‘Targeting the Market, Important Contact Numbers and Websites, and Extra Information’. Interestingly, all the realized moves have different strategies in each travel guide. Finally, the results highlight the diversity of moves in the selected online travel guides which are related to the nature of the country, perception and aims of the writer.

English for Specific Purposes (ESP) has received greater attention than general English from curriculum experts and materials designers in view of the specificity of the work. In the area of ESP, vocabulary development has also received special emphasis, particularly in terms of semi-technical vocabulary. A review of the literature indicates a much needed investigation on semi technical vocabulary in introductory psychology written discourse. This study was undertaken to examine semi technical vocabulary in introductory psychology texts and provide a pedagogical framework in designing an ESP course for psychology students using semi-technical vocabulary. A combined framework of Hutchinson and Waters (1987), Dudley-Evans and St. John (1998) of semi technical vocabulary and Widdowson (1983) framework of designing an ESP course, and the framework of McEnery and Wilson (2001) of using corpora to provide specific materials for language learning and teaching were utilized for the purpose of this study. A qualitative study was conducted on a sample of 30 students with three lecturers from the department of Psychology, of a public institution of higher learning in India. A variety of qualitative tools were employed for eliciting information, namely, discourse analysis of the authentic writing samples of the students, content analysis by language and psychology experts, and text analysis of the authentic psychology textbook used by the students and teachers. The data obtained highlights the semitechnical vocabulary from the written discourse of psychology. The discourse and content analysis findings reveal the semi-technical vocabulary used by the students and the understanding of the students of those words. The text analysis findings reveal the semi-technical vocabulary list according to the frequency of its occurrence in the text obtained by a word count and frequency statistics software. Based on the findings of the study, a pedagogical framework is recommended for designing lexical syllabus using semi-technical vocabulary for psychology students. The framework includes the approach for the lexical course, the syllabus organization, the frequency and range of the words, teaching methods, scope and sequence, and the assessment method for lexical based ESP syllabus using semi-technical vocabulary. The proposed lexical course addresses the immediate needs and interest of the ESP teachers in designing the course, while keeping in mind the course organization, teaching methods and content organization for the vocabulary needs of the students because of its relevance to their specialization and English language.

The globalization of world markets which led to the hegemony of English language over all other languages has required experts and professionals from different fields of specialization to equip themselves with English communicative abilities and skills with which to communicate effectively with their clients and partners at the local level, and with their counterparts at the international level. Nonetheless, a review of research shows that a vast number of graduate engineers lag behind in the required English language speaking skills in the workplace. This is usually as a result of mismatch between the language skills taught in the university and the communicative skills used in the workplace. Due to the extra-ordinary importance frequently attached to the spoken English in the workplace worldwide which indicates the necessity of producing graduate engineers with workplace communicative competency, this study was an attempt to investigate the respondents’ perceptions on the type of English courses taken by both undergraduate engineering students at a public university in the Kwara State of Nigeria and industry workers in the state. It also sought to compare how they self-rated their speaking interaction and production skills as well as their perceptions on the importance of speaking interaction and production sub-skills at workplace. In an effort to actualize this end, an online survey through questionnaire was conducted to obtain information from both groups of respondents. The questionnaire, which was adopted and adapted from different sources, was piloted on a group of university engineering students in Malaysia using SPSS which gave the reliability result of Cronbach Alpha Coefficient of 0.763 and 0.801. The data were then elicited from the respondents and were subsequently analyzed using both descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. The researcher found that the type of English courses taken by undergraduate engineering students in the Kwara State of Nigeria is English for Proficiency, while those of industry workers in the state are English for Occupational Purpose. Industry workers rated their own level of speaking interaction and production skills higher if compared to students. Moreover, industry workers perceived more speaking interaction and production sub-skills to be important at workplace, unlike the university students. The study concluded with a suggestion for the restructuring of the university’ English curriculum for engineering students so as to equip them well for their future workplace communication.

This study aimed to identify the technical terms present in Malaysian touristic masjid da’wah pamphlets and gauge whether their occurrence has any significant impact on the difficulty level of the content. A total of 25 English language Islamic da’wah pamphlets were analysed in order to reach the conclusions found by the study. Two instruments were employed to collect and analyse the data; the first instrument was a four level scale to classify lexical items and the second instrument was a readability formula developed by textbook publisher Robert Gunning. The findings of the study show that a considerable amount of technical vocabulary is employed in the pamphlets. Consequently, most pamphlets analyzed were found to possess a low readability level due to their scores being above the easy-reading line. As past studies have demonstrated, the vocabulary of a text plays a major part in the understanding of it, thus, this research would assert that the lexical items employed in these da’wah pamphlets may hinder readers from appropriately grasping the Islamic concepts elaborated within them.

This research is to identify the current curriculum of teaching Arabic used by Darul Quran JAKIM in Malaysia and to identify the needs in learning Arabic for the purpose of understanding and fasten the memorization of Quran. The research also aims at identify the needs based on their specialization of study. A questionnaire divided into five sections was distributed to hundred and eighty-three (183) students who study level 3 Arabic at this institute. The results indicated that learning Arabic helps students to understand the meanings of Quranic verses and its interpretation, as well as helps them in the speed of memorization and stays it in heart. The results showed that they need to learn Arabic because it helps them in their specializations of studies. The proper content to be preserved in the subject of Arabic is through the Quran itself; which include the morphological, grammatical and rhetorical examples taken from the Quranic verses and quote texts from the Quran. The findings suggested the highest rank of objectives to learn Arabic is to understand the meanings of the Quranic words.

Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is a new online phenomenon that allows a massive number of learners to participate in a course. A MOOC is accessible to public with no geographical boundary. In order to promote Malaysian education globally, Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education encourages Malaysian higher learning institutions to develop MOOCs that reflect their niche. Many Malaysian higher learning institutions have adopted it into their teaching. It includes MOOCs to teach English for Occupational Purposes (EOP). However, the existing MOOCs on EOP have their limitations such as inaccessibility to the public as it requires an access code to access the content of the MOOC. To address this issue, an EOP MOOC was developed aiming to teach job application skills and language use for job application to undergraduates and fresh graduates as its main targeted learners. ADDIE instructional model was adopted in this study. A survey was conducted among 30 graduates at the analysis stage and 30 English for Specific Purposes students at the evaluation stage. The evaluation stage was done by gathering students’ perception towards the usefulness and ease of use of the MOOC. Davis’ Perceived Usefulness and Ease of Use survey was adapted to gather the ESP students’ perception. The study found that the MOOC was positively perceived as useful and easy to use by the students. Only two issues were raised. One is the need for clearer voice overs and the need for guidelines on navigating around the MOOC.

The basic accounting principles is one of the courses in the Accounting curriculum which comprised the concepts of accrual, conservatism, conceptual consistency, historical cost, entity, full disclosure, concern, corresponding, materiality, financial unit, reliability, revenue recognition and time period. Students who lack understanding of basic accounting principles are usually unable to perform well in their next level of accounting discipline. Students also need to embrace the right attitude in studying this course in order to perform as required. Hence, the relationship between attitudes towards accounting practices and knowledge of accounting principles will influence the students’ performance and their chances of success in practical skills application. Therefore, these issues were being focused in this research study. This study uses quantitative cross-sectional design, which applies descriptive and correlational statistical approaches in analyzing the data collected from surveys to answer the three research questions: 1) level of attitudes and knowledge in basic accounting principles as well as accounting skills of the participants, 2) relationship between some demographic aspects of the students with their attitude, knowledge and skills and, 3) relationship between the three elements of attitude, knowledge and skills. The participants of the study are 154 accounting students from Darulnaim College of Technology. The instruments developed are in the form of survey questionnaires that consist of items that examined students’ attitude according to the three constructs of attitude – cognitive, affective, and behavioral. Students’ knowledge of basic accounting principles was tested in another section of the questionnaire. In addition, the final score of the exam comprising 40% of the assignment (coursework) and 60% of the final exam is used to measure the students' skills in basic accounting principles. The findings show that students’ attitude towards accounting principles is quite positive (Mean = 3.77 measured using a Likert scale of 1 – 5), and their knowledge is quite good (with mean score of 8.53 out of a total score of 9). It was found that female students have better attitude (especially the affective attitude component) as compared to males. The other significant finding is that female students score significantly better in knowledge of basic accounting principles as compared to males. The result also shows that students’ attitude influences their knowledge of basic accounting principle. Other significant relationship found are between students’ attitude and students’ current Semester Study and between students’ skills and interest to pursue accounting related field. However, no relationship was found between the variables of attitude, knowledge and skills. Hence, more studies of this nature are recommended in other institutions to confirm and find out the possible causes.

This study aims to analyse the linguistic features in travel food vlogs. The focus is on investigating the use of adjectives by the vloggers when describing the food that they eat. The adjectives were separated into its suitable category based on Dixon’s (1982) semantic categorization of adjectives. The categories are; Dimension, Color, Value, Age, Physical Property, Human Propensity. The objectives of this study are to investigate the semantic categories of adjectives that are frequently used by the vloggers, and to identify which lexemes out of the adjective group are frequently used by the vloggers. A total of six famous travel food vlogs on YouTube have been chosen. The data was collected by using two computer-based software; AntConc and Nvivo. The results show that the adjectives under Value category is used the most by the vloggers as compared to other categories. This study also shows that the lexeme good has the highest frequency in term of its usage by the vloggers in the video.

Conversational repair plays a vital role for human beings to keep a conversation going. Conversational repair prevents a continuous conversation from being interrupted and helps to minimize the potential for misunderstanding. It is important to identify how conversational repair is organized in a question and answer session. This study explored how intersubjectivity is maintained between Dr. Zakir Naik and his audience in comparative religion question and answer sessions. Intersubjectivity can be defined as the mutual understanding gained by both the speaker and the audience in a conversation during a question and answer session. Eight different audience members who participated in the question and answer sessions of Dr. Zakir Naik were taken from the YouTube channel. In those conversations, the videos were transcribed and analyzed by the researcher to investigate the repair organization. Using the conversation analysis (CA) method, this study explored how conversational repairs are organized to achieve mutual understanding between the speaker and the audience. The study found that self-initiated self-repair is the most common type of conversational repair used by the speaker and audience, followed by other-initiated self-repair, self-initiated other-repair, and other-initiated other-repair. The study also found that the approach to intersubjectivity, self-knowledge, paralinguistic, 'particular value' and rejoinder contribute to the achievement of mutual understanding between Dr. Zakir and his audience during question and answer sessions. In addition, the study found that Dr. Zakir used the term 'brother' and 'sister' when referring to his audience to show brotherhood in Islam, friendliness, relationship, respect and cultural influence in his conversations. Finally, the findings revealed that Dr. Zakir Naik used English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and Language for Specific Purposes (LSP) (i.e. Bible, Quran, chapter, verse, Allah, Alhamdulillah) in the selected comparative religious dialog videos to address a multi-religious community. KEYWORDS: Conversational repairs, Intersubjectivity, brother, sister, ESP, LSP, conversation analysis.

The growing consciousness among consumers on the importance of health has resulted in the mushrooming of various nutraceuticals products in the market. Nutraceutical products have become widespread phenomenon for proclaimed benefits they seem to offer. To define what nutraceutical is, has always been confusing in certain jurisdictions especially Malaysia. Legally, they cannot be considered as mere food, and they are not pharmaceutical drugs either. The issue arises is in relation to the absence of proper regulation that controls the production of nutraceuticals products. One of the main problems is the fact that nutraceuticals products in itself is not a standalone category. In Malaysia, nutraceuticals can be classified either as food or drugs and be regulated by different regulatory agencies depending on its classification. This creates a double standard treatment as different agencies have different standard procedures to govern the product. Due to uncertainty in its categorisation, nutraceutical manufacturers have taken advantage in producing and marketing those products to consumers. Social media has been effectively used as a platform to market these products. It is observed that some online seller in attracting customers’ attention has advertised numerous claims. To some extent, there are sellers that claim that their product able to cure diseases that science had yet to find cure for such as cancer and diabetics. The popular marketing strategy by displaying the testimony of the users allows the producers to make profit out of the unproven claims of their products. As Malaysia is aimed to be the world class-leading supplier for nutraceutical products under the Economic Transformation Programme’s Agriculture National Key Economic Area, there is a need to upgrade the local herbal supplements in the sense that any health claims must be supported by clinical evidence. Thus, a proper regulation in restraining such producers from advertising unsupported health claim is highly needed and required in protecting the consumers’ interests.This study aims to examine regulatory issues pertaining to the production and marketing processes of nutraceuticals to ensure safer consumption. This study propose that there is a real need to have a specific, standard procedure to safeguard and protect consumer’s interest in the long run. The study adopts a qualitative approach that includes doctrinal analysis and semi-structured interviews with relevant authorities. It is proposed that for local atmosphere, governmental intervention is required to assure safer consumption of nutraceutical products so that consumers may truly benefit from them. Self-regulation as practiced at present has to some extent, placed the nutraceutical industry in a very complacent position, resulting in consumers’ safety at stake.

English is widely used in the hospitality industry. With rising standards of workplace English language requirements, the demands for good oral proficiency have become a major challenge to employees. This is evident from previous researches on issues and difficulties faced by hospitality staff during guest-host exchanges. While existing researches indicate that Malaysia’s hotel industry faces similar challenges, there have been only few investigations on employees’ interaction skills and self-efficacy. Malaysian hoteliers’ perceptions of their own guest interaction skills and their relationship to occupational self-efficacy, have yet to be reported too. This study aimed to investigate Malaysian hoteliers’ perception of their own guest interaction skills and occupational self-efficacy, as well as the relationship between the two, before and after gamification experiences. A survey was administered on 173 hoteliers from a hotel in Selangor, Malaysia and from a descriptive analysis done, it was revealed that all 173 respondents had below moderate to moderate perception of their guest interaction skills and occupational self-efficacy. 12 of the total respondents were then randomly selected to attend ESP classes with gamification as part of a one-group pretest-posttest quasi–experimental research. Analyses on the sample’s ratings of their own guest interaction skills and occupational self-efficacy after gamification showed that there were positive correlations with a significant difference in how they perceive their guest interaction skills and occupational self-efficacy. The hoteliers were also found to self-rate their occupational self-efficacy higher than their guest interaction skills. The findings of this study convey to both ESP instructors and hotel managers that gamification should be used in classrooms and in-house trainings as it has positive influences on how hoteliers perceive their own abilities to perform their jobs and interact with their guests. Key words: ESP, Guest Interaction Skills, Occupational Self-Efficacy, Gamification

The study outlined in this dissertation describes the use of reading strategies among IIUM engineering students. It also investigates the relationship between reading strategies and reading comprehension performance among IIUM engineering students. The respondents were 162 students from various departments in the Kulliyyah of Engineering at the International Islamic University Malaysia. In collecting the research data, the researcher used an adopted reading comprehension test (Intaraprasert, 2000) and an adopted Likert scale questionnaire (Kas1mi, 2012). The reading comprehension test was used to measure the students' ability to comprehend texts, while the Likert scale questionnaire was used to obtain information about reading strategies used by students in understanding the texts. Data collection of the comprehension test results and reading strategies used are collected in the span of five days. Research data were described and analyzed by using descriptive analysis and multiple linear regression analysis. The results of the study revealed that the students' levels of cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies are high. This indicates that they are high strategy users in both cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies. The research findings also showed that there is no significant relationship between reading strategies and reading comprehension performance among IIUM engineering students. The results of the multiple linear regression analysis showed that the use of cognitive and metacognitive strategies has no contribution to the students' reading comprehension performance. These findings contribute to the current body of literature specifically on the studies of reading strategies and reading comprehension among engineering majors as well as significant for professionals such as practitioners, curriculum developers and designers, and the field of teaching reading to L2 learners of English at tertiary institutions. Keywords: cognitive strategies; metacognitive strategies; reading comprehension; engineering students.

Teachers' career stages are viewed as a progression that can be affected by personal and environmental factors. There are three main types of teachers’ career phases mentioned in Huberman (1993); Beginning, Middle and Ending. These stages reflect the teachers’ behaviour and views in their work life. For many of them, experience in career phases influences how they carry out school programmes and activities. English for Camping program (ECP) is one of the many types of English enrichment programs developed for primary students as part of their yearly camping program in public schools in Malaysia. Teaching ECP to a group of primary ESL students has made it impossible to be achieved because they are not mature enough to decide the specified needs yet. To make it possible, ESL teachers of different career stages need to be prepared to understand and create ECP activities, as well as be the medium to ensure the success of the ECP program. This qualitative study attempts to examine the three ESL teachers’ views of the train-the-trainer ECP program and their preferred instructional strategies used for the program through a one-to-one semi-structured interview. The study contextualizes the ECP under the umbrella of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) which situates the teachers as ‘initial learners’ of ESP since they needed to get orientated into understanding the language of English for Camping. Findings showed that the teachers were aware of the importance of professional development and that their instructional practices employed during the ECP training were closely related to their teaching experiences. Therefore, the ESL teachers’ professional development needs to be relevant to teachers’ teaching context which enables their active engagement in content and pedagogy.

Women have been deprived of their rights to inherit throughout history in various civilizations until the dawn of Islam, where women were given their rightful share to inherit by Allah the Almighty. This dissertation acknowledges that some of Indian Muslim women are still underprivileged from their basic right to inherit due to the customs and norms of society. Nevertheless, there has been a lack of references related to these customs. Moreover, there has been another aspect covered in this study, which is connected to the misconception that states that Islam has not done justice to women in inheritance, as their portion is half of what men get. This dissertation attempts to highlight the inheritance in Islam and other civilizations and evaluate the customs of inheritance of Muslim women in Bhopal, India, and their causes and effects. This study follows four methodologies: inductive method, as it is used for extracting inheritance information; analytical method, which includes analysis of the causes and impacts of the customs; comparative method, as there is the comparison between what Islamic jurisprudence states regarding inheritance and what are the customs followed by some Indian Muslims in the city of Bhopal, India. At the same time, there is a field study where the researcher conducted interviews in Bhopal, the capital city of Madhya Pradesh, with ten Muslim scholars and ten women who were deprived of their right to inherit. Furthermore, the findings show that Muslim women of India, especially women of Bhopal, are prevented from their rights to inheritance mainly due to a lack of Islamic knowledge, following Hindu customs as per considering the dowry as inheritance for women. This prevention has negative effects socially, financially, psychologically, and, most importantly, religiously. These customs of inheritance and their causes are considered invalid because they contradict the Sharīʽah texts and rulings.