This study aims to identify the level of difficulty, discrimination and errors based on symbols, graphs and problem-solving in mathematics achievement. The participants consisted of 315 grade 10 students randomly selected from eight secondary day schools situated in the state of Kedah, Malaysia. The mathematics written test consisted of 15 open-ended items with five items each for symbols, graphs and problem-solving and all the items were analyzed using the difficulty and discrimination index. Semi-structured clinical interviews were also carried out among 20 selected students to identify the errors they had made in mathematics. In the content analysis, the descriptor code key was used to identify conceptual, careless, problem-solving and value errors. The findings showed that item 4 (Standard Form) of the symbols, item 6 (Linear Equation) of the graphs, and item 15 (Line & Plane in 3 Dimension) of the problem-solving was the most difficult item in mathematics. All of these items had a good discrimination as well as difficulty index. Content analysis showed that 52 (57%) students made conceptual errors, 22 (24%) made careless errors, 12 (13%) made problem-solving errors and 5 (6%) made value errors. The major reasons given for errors made were a lack of understanding, procedures being forgotten, negligence in transcribing information from the question, carelessness and guesswork. This study has implications for the student learning process and understanding graphs because graphs are widely used in daily life to manage, communicate and analyze information.

<p class="apa">School-Based Assessment (SBA) was implemented in Malaysian secondary schools in 2012. Since its implementation, teachers have faced several challenges to meet the aims and objectives of the School-Based Assessment. Based on these challenges this study aims to find the level of teachers’ knowledge and readiness towards the implementation of school-based assessment (SBA). The study was conducted in 15 daily secondary schools in the state of Kedah, which is situated in the northern part of Malaysia, bordering Thailand. 155 teachers were randomly selected from a total of 260 teachers. This study used 2 questionnaires to assess teachers’ knowledge and readiness to implement SBA. The questionnaire was adapted from Alabah (2012) which was designed to assess the teachers’ knowledge (30 items) and readiness (35 items) on Nigerian teachers’ perception of SBA. This questionnaire used a 4-point Likert-type scale with strongly disagree e to strongly agree. The findings provide evidence that the knowledge of the teachers in terms of 5 dimensions, that is, conducting SBA, bands in SBA, knowledge of evaluating SBA, SBA procedural knowledge and knowledge of implementation of SBA. The overall mean (3.27) for the level of teachers’ knowledge towards SBA shows that all the teachers agree that they have the knowledge about SBA. In terms of readiness, the mean (3.09) shows that all the teachers agree that they are ready to implement SBA. The comparison of the two means suggest that teachers have relatively more knowledge but are less ready to implement the SBA. The implication here is that teachers feel that their level of knowledge is not complete and more initiatives need to be taken by the educational authorities so that teachers are more confident of their level of readiness.</p>

The purpose of this study is to determine gender differences and type of learning approaches among Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) undergraduate students in English writing performance. The study involved 241 (32.8% male & 67.2% female) undergraduate students of UUM who were taking the Process Writing course. This study uses a Two-Factor Study Process Questionnaire (R-SPQ-2F) by Biggs, Kember, and Leung (2001). This instrument assesses how students in higher learning institutions approach learning. In addition, data was also obtained from students' overall performance in the Process Writing course. The overall score for the Process Writing course was 67.58% in which female scores were above the average score while the scores for males were below the average. Overall, the vast majority of UUM undergraduate students apply the surface approach compared to the deep approach. For the surface approach learning, more students chose the surface strategy when compared to the surface motive. For the deep learning strategy, most students chose the deep strategy compared to the deep motive. Very few students used a combination of both approaches. In the context of English language writing, students need to have an intrinsic interest in what is being discussed for their writing activities. An intrinsic interest will help to make learning meaningful as in the deep learning approach. However, the findings provide evidence that most female students who applied the surface approach managed to score well in their overall performance in Process Writing.

Abstract-Communication is almost important without words. Learners with limited vocabulary face difficulties in conveying their messages to others. Therefore, they should acquire enough words to communicate their ideas in L2. Besides, knowing the right strategies to acquire words is also important to help learners in their study. Because of that, the study aims to unveil the usefulness of vocabulary learning strategies among students from the faculty of Accountancy in a public university in northern Malaysia. 52 participants (44 female and 8 male) from this faculty participated in the study. From the total of 52 participants, 30 are from the Diploma in Accountancy and the remaining 22 are the students from Diploma in Accounting Information System. The study focuses on second language vocabulary learning acquisition. Participants were asked to answer questionnaires during normal class time. The questionnaire contains seven questions on vocabulary learning strategies where participants had to choose the four options given from 'very useful' to 'not useful at all' based on their L2 study experience on their L2 vocabulary learning process. The findings show that learners preferred to communicate, read books and listen to English songs in order to acquire vocabulary. In addition, they also acquire vocabulary explicitly from their daily routine activities. These suggest that lecturers should focus more on explicit teaching vocabulary because previous research shows that this strategy helps learners in their vocabulary acquisition.Index Terms-Language learning strategies, vocabulary, vocabulary knowledge, vocabulary learning strategies.

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