According to [1], motivation is one of the main determinants of second language (L2) or foreign language performance. Research in the field of attitudes and motivation has increasingly investigated the nature and role of motivation in L2 learning process, and many are inspired by Canadian psychologists, Robert Gardner and Wallace Lambert [1]. However, in Malaysia, there has been only a meagre number of researches that investigate teachers' perceptions on attitudes and motivation of students from religious school background. It is of great significance to explore the attitudes and motivation of these groups of students because the students appeared to be weak in the English language and they also held negative perceptions toward the language [2, 3]. The present study is needed to attain authentic information about possible connections between teachers' personal experiences, their perspectives and their practices regarding teaching and learning of students from the aforementioned background. This qualitative research study contains in-depth teacher interviews that document their personal perceptions, ways of dealing with students in the specified setting, and their suggestions on improving the attitudes and motivation of learning English for students from religious school background. Findings are presented according to the research questions intended for the study and several conclusions were drawn from the data.

This study investigates the impact of using smartphones to develop Arabic speaking skills among Arabic non-native speakers through a language game. The experiment was conducted by introducing the independent variable (language game on smartphone) on the study sample of 15 University of Sydney students learning Arabic at the beginner level. The experiment was conducted throughout semester 2/2015. Students spent 24 hours of self-study using the language game via smartphones. They were subjected to a pre-and a post-oral test to measure the impact on the speaking skill development in four major aspects namely confidence level, pronunciation, grammar and understanding. The data were analysed quantitatively using T-test and findings showed significant statistical differences On the whole, this study shows that using language games on smartphones has a positive effect on the speaking skill development of the students.

No abstract

This paper describes the results of a study that examined the attitudes of Malaysian primary school boys and girls toward reading in English as a Second Language. Using the Students' Reading Attitude Survey, which the researchers adapted from McKenna and Kear (1990) Elementary Reading Attitude Survey, 2,666 responses were analysed using the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test. The findings reveal that the students had positive attitudes toward recreational and academic reading in English as a second language, but that the girls scored significantly higher on all the dimensions of reading attitudes compared to the boys. The results provide some insights into the gender gap between boys and girls in reading literacy.

No abstract