No abstract

No abstract

More and more Malaysian upper secondary school students are doing well in their studies and entering colleges and universities for matriculation and diploma programmes immediately after school. Besides English for General Purposes (EGP), secondary school students should also be familiarized with the 570 academic words (in the Academic Word List) that may appear frequently in academic texts. At tertiary learning institutions, academic words are essential because students have to read more specialised and complex academic texts. This research was carried out to investigate whether the Malaysian secondary school English language syllabuses cater to the academic vocabulary needs of students who enter tertiary institutions. To investigate this, the researcher put all the 1,316 words listed in the word lists (for the lower and upper secondary school syllabuses found at the end of the syllabuses’ booklets) into Range (Nation, 2005), a tool which separates words into General Service Word List (GSL) and Academic Word List (AWL). The results reveal that of the 1,316 words, only seven belong to AWL while the majority are GSL words. Although there are statements made in the syllabuses indicating that they also cater to the students’ needs for their further education, the target words specified in the word lists suggest that they are meant mainly for EGP. The students’ academic vocabulary need has apparently been neglected.

No abstract

The term “public opinion” (or “mass opinion”, “public sentiment”, “public voices”, etc.) comes from the Latin “opinio”, which means uncertain judgments that have not been fully demonstrated. Later, with the rise of Western humanism, the idea of “public opinion” came into being, which refers to the social and political attitudes of the people towards state administrators. Communication studies, which give a theoretical framework and methodological guidelines for examining the relationship between the mass media, the public, and policy agendas, are strongly linked to the development of public opinion research. Based on the Connected Papers, a document visualization research tool, this article reviews the related literature of public opinion research in a broad sense in the West, and explores the development and themes of the field. It provides a theoretical basis for the expansion of public opinion constructs and, at the same time, a reference for the further development of public opinion research methods.