Pronunciation plays a vital part in employability. Graduates are often unfairly judged when they fail to convince others of their capabilities due to poor pronunciation and not having the language to express themselves well. In order to present confidently to impress potential employers or enhance mobility, it is important to improve students’ pronunciation, especially those with low oral proficiency level. The primary step to counter this matter is finding out students’ problems in their pronunciation. The aim of this study is to identify the specific sounds that are commonly mispronounced by low oral proficiency Malaysian students. This study employed the qualitative methodology where data came in the form of reading aloud voice recordings. Based on the thematic analysis conducted, the sounds that were commonly mispronounced by the students were vowels (pure short vowels, pure long vowels and diphthongs), consonants (plosives, fricatives and affricates), silent letters, and the ‘-ed’ form. From the findings, this study recommends the use of the commonly mispronounced sounds as the content in producing an instructional pronunciation video for helping low oral proficiency students of the 21st century to address their pronunciation problems

The Malaysian Education Blueprint (MEB) 2015-2025 has set in motion efforts from all stages of education to align programs, courses, and syllabuses to the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) benchmark. This exercise has brought on major revamps in all aspects of English language education in the nation. This study will present such an undertaking in a public university in Malaysia and detail how the language criteria for an oral group test of an English for Occupational Purposes course have been aligned to the stipulated CEFR level. The actual assessment task involved groups of four or five students conducting a meeting of their established company. Data for the study came from an analysis of the audio recordings of nine group meetings, along with post-assessment interviews and focus group discussions involving three EOP instructors. Based on the data analysis, this study recommends a revised set of language criteria for the assessment. Furthermore, it demonstrates how an alignment of the scoring criteria with the descriptors of the targeted CEFR scale can be achieved through a systematic comparison of the language functions (LFs) produced in the meeting task to the targeted CEFR descriptor scales. The revised language component for the meeting assessment could help ease instructors’ assessment of students interactional skills and allow them to gauge better their students’ attainment of the skills required in a formal meeting context.

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Students' feedback of what constitutes useful, appropriate and relevant English course may have an impact on their learning of English. Against this background, this study explores the extent to which a specific Grammar in Practice subject meets the learning goals. It is important to note that because the primary purpose of such feedback is to improve the quality of the course and to provide direct feedback to teaching staff. In order to accomplish this, the objectives of the study focus on the students' perception of the course content, the relevance of the grammar units, the relevance of the occupational topics and the relevance of the course content as a whole in relation to their future profession. To determine this, the students' feedback is gathered from a group of TESL students taking the Grammar in Practice course in a form of questionnaire. The questionnaire consists of the Likert Scale and an open-ended questionnaire in which there are three main sections. The larger of these dealt with the aspects of the grammar units and occupational topics, and the third section is on the course reflection as a whole. The items were analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences and statistical analysis. The results of this study revealed the students' feedback of the Grammar in Practice course and their perception of the course content. The students perceived that the course content meets the objective and is relevant to their future profession.

Asynchronous mode in teaching and learning for oral communication is one way practiced by language instructors and students during the pandemic Covid-19. However, administering and learning through this mode have proven to be quite a challenge considering the lack of resources and knowledge they experienced now. This is a pilot study conducted to investigate the challenges or issues students faced in learning the oral skills online during the Movement Control Order (MCO) period. This pilot study utilised a questionnaire survey method for data collection. Recruitment of research participants was performed through purposive sampling. There were 80 participants that were involved in the study who have taken the Oral Communication in English (OCE) course in a public university in Malaysia. The participants were between 21 to 24 years old, with 60 females and 20 males. The data was analysed using SPSS version 27. Generally, participants felt that learning oral communication in asynchronous mode have helped them improve their oral communication skills. It is hoped that this study’s findings will contribute to the development of an oral communication instructional framework in asynchronous mode to meet the literacy needs of students.