The COVID-19 pandemic has brought academic face-to-face classes to a halt, globally. Schools, higher institutions, and all learning centres were forced into emergency mode searching for platforms to ensure the continuity of teaching and learning (UNESCO, 2020). Online classes were made mandatory, and instructors curated lessons to best deliver their lessons. However, frustrations emerged where teachers shared their experience of talking to the abyss of their computer screens as students did not switch on their cameras during online lessons. A link to a Google form questionnaire which is quantitative (questionnaire), qualitative (short answer questions) in nature was given to the author’s communicative English class students. Fifty students in an English communicative course responded and the chairperson of the course was interviewed (qualitative) to find challenges teachers faced in their online classes. The author focused on one issue - students’ refusal to turn on their cameras. The findings revealed the main reasons for not turning on the cameras during lessons as lack of internet data, poor internet connection, social norms, not being physically presentable, and not being comfortable to be looked at by peers. Instructions from teachers and class assessments affect students’ choice to turn on the camera, too. These findings serve as knowledge contributions for teachers to understand students and to do content curation.

In order to convince someone of what one is saying or writing about, the use of the appropriate persuasive technique is very important. At tertiary education level, academics who focus on teaching communication either in the written or spoken form emphasises on being persuasive. In communication, either in daily activities, academic or workplace, persuading someone is often used. The sender of the message needs to persuade the receiver to believe, agree, acknowledge and obey the message that one wants to convey. In this study, Aristotle’s triad of ethos, pathos, and logos is usually used to explore whether a text is persuasive. Aristotle's triad focuses on credibility (ethos), emotion (pathos), and facts (logos) in persuading a person on a certain issue that is being presented. The present study attempts to identify how ESL writers write to persuade. Samples of English as Second Language writers’ written assignments produced for an English for Occupational Purpose Module are used in this study. The assignment is in the form of a proposal paper written to propose an activity. The objective of a proposal paper is to propose an idea, and it is written in the hope of persuading the person reading the proposal to agree, approve and support the proposal. By studying the use of Aristotle’s triad of persuasive appeals, it is hoped that it will assist academicians to focus on what to teach in their communication class and to be able to produce competent ESL writers who are able to persuade and make one agree with their ideas and issues.

Students’ willingness to respond in class is an important factor to ensure language usage and language acquisition. Literature reviews reveal that learners' levels of anxiety and self-confidence are predictors of students’ willingness to communicate in class. However, there has been a lack of studies conducted in the local context regarding anxiety as a predictor of willingness to respond in English. This study looked into students’ anxiety levels while communicating in English during Occupational Purpose class and the reasons for not being willing to respond in the online class orally. The class consisted of students from Malaysia and China studying in a local Malaysian university. During class, the instructor had to call out names to get students to answer questions asked. Classes were entirely conducted online and the assessments cover both written and oral aspects. Horwitz’s Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) was adapted and Baharuddin’s three levels of anxiety mean measurement was used in this study. The FLCAS scale included 33 items of a five-point Likert scale which in this study was reversed with 1 “Strongly disagree” to 5 “Strongly agree” to measure the level of anxiety. The data obtained were analysed using descriptive analysis to include percentages and mean. The finding indicates that level of anxiety is not a predictor of WTC.

Kepesatan pembangunan teknologi komunikasi telah mengubah cara hidup dan perhubungan manusia di seluruh dunia. Penggunaan teknologi komunikasi khususnya komputer atau telefon bimbit dengan kemudahan internet telah memudahkan perhubungan manusia dan mampu menjimatkan masa tanpa perlu melibatkan pertemuan fizikal dan perjalanan yang panjang. Ancaman virus COVID-19 yang telah mengganggu dan membatasi pergerakan manusia telah menyebabkan kebergantungan terhadap teknologi komunikasi yang melibatkan penggunaan komputer dan telefon dengan kemudahan internet semakin penting dalam urusan seharian. Kajian ini bertujuan mengukur tahap literasi internet menggunakan instrumen yang dibangunkan oleh Lau dan Yuen (2014) yang melibatkan seramai 1228 orang responden dari daerah Kota Kinabalu, Sandakan dan Tawau. Hasil kajian menunjukkan tahap literasi internet penduduk di Sabah adalah tinggi. Faktor-faktor seperti jantina, umur, pendidikan, status perkahwinan, pekerjaan dan pendapatan didapati mempunyai pengaruh yang signifikan terhadap tahap literasi internet dalam masyarakat. Sebaliknya faktor daerah dan strata luar bandar dan bandar didapati tidak mempengaruhi.

The purpose of this article is to find out about a lecturer’s experience teaching online at the University College Sabah Foundation (UCSF), and also to provide an overview of the respondent’s experience. A qualitative method was implemented that consists of ten (10) semi-structured interview questions based on Creswell. (2012). There are ten (10) emerged categories (themes) from the findings. The respondent seems to be in favour for face-to-face classes since there are certain topics that could have been done better physically. Nonetheless, further, studies are needed to find more about the implications of online teaching that focuses on the state of Sabah, Malaysia.