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The act of reading is not a mere interaction between the reader and the text. It also involves the engagement between the reader and what he or she believes in. Readers find reading difficult because they have difficulties with the vocabulary of the target language used in the reading text. Next, some already have language barriers and understanding is hindered by language related issues such as sentence structure and or culture-related phrases. Readers fear reading because of top-down anxiety, bottom-up anxiety or even the classroom reading instructions. This study is done to investigate readers' perception of reading comprehension difficulties and also readers' fear of reading. Thirty respondents from social sciences faculty in a public university were randomly chosen for this study. The instrument used is a questionnaire. The survey has 3 sections. Section A is about demographic profile; section B is about perceived difficulties in reading comprehension and section C is about reading anxiety. This study has revealed that the difficulties in the reading comprehension were more worrying when it comes to reading. Readers did not blame their lack of vocabulary knowledge for their reading difficulty. They were not very confident when it comes to answering the reading comprehension questions. Learners were anxious when they were given texts they had no background knowledge of. This fear supersedes the other fear for bottom-up reading and classroom reading. Overall findings of the study bear interesting pedagogical implications in the teaching and learning of reading.

Discussions on critical thinking skills among students in higher institutions of learning continues to be an important topic for discussion. These discussions revolve around the facts that students are not capable of displaying critical thinking skills abilities or researchers suggesting on ways to improve critical thinking skills among learners. Teachers often report on learners' critical thinking (or lack of it) and how critical thinking skills influence classroom learning. Not many realize that writing and thinking are inter-related in many ways. The teaching of critical thinking skills can be embedded in the teaching of writing in the classroom. This study explores the connection between critical thinking skills and academic writing. It looks into how writing process mirrors critical thinking skills. This quantitative study is done on 207 first semester undergraduate students who signed up for academic writing course in a public university in Malaysia. Findings of this study revealed interesting implications for the teaching of writing process and critical thinking among undergraduates. Contribution/ Originality:The study contributes in the existing literature on the connection between critical thinking and academic writing. Existing characteristics of critical thinking skills is merged with academic writing skills.According to Karakoc (2016) because of the way the world is moving, there is a need to make sure learners are able to think critically. Employers prefer recruiting candidates who display critical thinking abilities. It is hoped that employers who can think critically are able to solve problems on their own and make informed choices about work and personal issues. People are talking about critical thinking-;the lack of, how to improve, yet ,not internalizing much about the characteristics of critical thinking. Many articles have been written on how to improve critical thinking skills, or what institutions can do to increase the skills. Nevertheless, have we looked into what institutions are currently doing already?

It has been two years since the world has been forced to cope with doing things online. Even in normal face-to-face group discussions, participants face difficulties and conflicts, and now online learning has not made it any easier. This study explores the ups and downs in group discussion. 72 participants responded to a survey to find out how they perceive the conflicts in group formation. The findings in this study revealed that there were significant differences the norming stage and also performing & adjourning stage. In addition to that, the total mean score showed interesting differences across gender. Not all group formations with different genders go through conflicts. Not all team members with the same gender are conflict-free. Sometimes discussions/some activities are more difficult to carry out because of conflicts across genders are not properly addressed. Then again, not all group conflicts are negative. Conflicts are good in several ways. The conversations improve the communication and negotiation skills of the team members. In addition to that, defending for one’s point helps to sharpen critical thinking skills. The findings in this study cannot be generalized for all situations in group work. This study can be a springboard for more group formation and group conflicts research. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0860/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>