No abstract

This study aims to identify how addiction to mobile phone usage affects academic performance. Mobile phone addiction has become a deterrent in student learning as teenagers may focus totally on their mobile phones to a point that they become dependent on them. In turn, dependence on mobile phones in their daily lives may affect teen academic performance. This study investigates mobile phone usage among teens and how it impacts their concentration on academic matters. A quantitative approach was undertaken to determine how the level of mobile phone addiction could affect their academic performance. A total of 200 respondents among secondary school students in Shah Alam were selected through purposive sampling. The questionnaire was designed in two sections, which consisted of demographic information and mobile phone usage behaviours that influence academic performance. The results show that the more the students use their mobile phones, the more it will affect their academic performance. In other words, addiction to mobile phones will affect the student's academic performance. Thus, student attention may divert away from their academics if they have high addiction to their mobile phones. As a result of this study, it has been validated that mobile phones have transformed communication and connectivity among members of the public, students in particular, and that these objects have become indispensable in this contemporary era.

Teaching English as a second language is a long and complex undertaking, particularly when it is done in multilingual rural areas where English serves a limited purpose. The purpose of this phenomenological case study was to shed light and describe the lived experiences of ten English teachers who persist in rural schools in Sabah, Malaysia. Data gleaned from in-depth interviews and observations and were thematically analyzed. The research questions captured teachers' perceptions of the existing teaching and learning environment, sources of stress and coping strategies through interviews and observations. The findings depicted that rural schools do not benefit from a conducive environment to support English teaching and learning due to the limited English environment, shortage of teaching resources and poor physical environment. The findings also revealed that dealing with low English proficiency (LEP) students was their main stressor in teaching English in rural schools, followed by students' disruptive behaviours, excessive workload and lack of support. To cope with the stress, teachers first evaluate and assess possible solutions through a stress appraisal process. The present study identified that the personal, social, professional, and institutional coping strategies were used by teachers to cope with stress faced. The findings have implications for the teaching of English in rural schools and could offer recommendations for changes in educational practices in which the authorities, school administrators and teachers could collaborate in improving English education in rural schools and thus students' learning, achievement, and school reputation.

ZnO thin film was successfully deposited on different substrate by sol-gel spin coating. Zinc acetate dihydrates, diethanolamine and isopropyl were used as starting material, stabilizer and solvent respectively. Two different substrate used in this work are p-type silicon wafer and porous silicon. Porous silicon was prepared by electrochemical etching. In order to study the surface morphology, field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) was employed. It is found that, ZnO thin film was composed by ZnO nanoparticles. The averages size ZnO nanoparticle is 23.5 nm on silicon and 17.76 nm on porous silicon. Based on Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) topology analysis, surface of ZnO thin films on porous silicon was rougher compared to ZnO thin films on silicon due to substrate surface effect. Photoluminescence spectra shows two peaks are appear for ZnO thin film on silicon and three peaks are appear for ZnO thin film on porous silicon. PL spectra peaks of ZnO thin film on silicon are correspond to ZnO and ZnO native defects while peaks of PL spectra on porous silicon are corresponds to ZnO, ZnO native defects and porous silicon.

The effect of precursor concentration ranging from 0.1 to 0.5 M using the mixture of zinc nitrate hexahydrate (Zn(NO3)2.6H2O) and urea (CH4N2O) at 60 oC evaluated in this study. ZnO nanostructures have been prepared by solution immersion method on gold-seeded silicon substrate (Si/Au). Solution immersion method was adopted with the intention to develop a large area deposition at low-temperature benign method of preparation. As concentration increase, the morphologies are seemingly changed from rod (~300 nm) to accumulated nanosheets that consist of many pores. The structural and optical effect of changing the precursor concentration on the synthesization of ZnO films were investigated by X-ray diffractometer (XRD) and room temperature photoluminescence (PL) measurement, respectively. A unique development of size and growth orientation is seemingly affected by the change of the precursor concentration.