The paper aims to provide insights into the current understanding of the challenges faced by in-serviced primary school ESL teachers in completing their degree on a part-time basis. In relation to the government’s effort to improve the quality of primary education, many English language teachers have enrolled in the ‘Teacher’s First-degree program’ offered by the Ministry of Education. The participants of the program, somehow, face a number of challenges. As adult learners, the ESL teachers need to follow in doing the degree part time as all of them are full time teachers and teaching in different schools. Sociocultural theory of Lev Vygotsky provided the theoretical framework for this case study. This qualitative study explored the experiences of five in-service primary school English language teachers who were involved in the program. Semi-structured interviews were carried out to identify the challenges faced by the teachers in completing a primary school teacher’s first-degree program organized by the Ministry of Education (MOE). The main data generated from semi-structured interviews was analysed using thematic analysis approach. The findings revealed that job commitments, family commitments, health mental issue and time management are the main challenges faced by them. Exploring in-service primary school English teachers challenges in furthering their studies part-timely might give the Ministry of Education (MOE) consideration in understanding of language teachers’ selves and needs while pursuing their first degree. This research might also be helpful to investigate the current practices of the professional development of primary school English teachers in Malaysia.

This paper reviews the strategies and challenges for professional development of Malaysian teachers. In relation to the government's effort to improve teacher professional development, many English as a second language (ESL) teachers register themselves to the 'Teacher's First-Degree Programme' organized by the Ministry of Education. The participants of the programme, somehow, face a number of challenges. The main challenge is the adult ESL teachers need to follow in doing the degree part time as all of them are full time teachers and teaching in different schools located at different districts across the state. The challenges reviewed in this paper may be relevant to administrative decisions concerning education policies and goals intended to prepare TESL professionals. Finally, it may also provide insights into EFL program administrators who are intending to foster greater levels of commitment and permanence of faculty members through a more holistic understanding of their teachers' needs and barriers in involving in professional development.

One of the components of learning English is Grammar, and the intrinsic part of it is Parts of Speech (PoS), where the majority of Malaysian students in higher institutions are still grappling to understand its use in sentences. This study aims to compare conventional method to e-learning method on its effectiveness in the teaching and learning of PoS. The application of Stanford PoS tagging has been used to analyze the PoS in every single word of the sentences extracted from the articles in The New Straits Times Online (NST Online). This quantitative research study adopted a comparative analysis in analyzing its findings. The results were statistically analyzed using The Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) for statistical analysis. These findings of the research reveal a significance difference between the score from students using E-paper and the score from students not using E-paper in learning Grammar. Independent t-test was carried out to compare mean between the two groups. The result shows a significance difference (p-value = 0.007, t = -2.774) between the two groups of students’ score. The mean performance of the students using E-paper shows a higher percentage compared to those not using E-paper. As students nowadays spend most of their time with electronic gadgets, this is an innovative way to capture their interest to spend more time on quality reading materials via electronic newspaper, simultaneously learning Grammar by going to the crux of its core by identifying the PoS of each word in sentences using new pedagogical strategy of PoS tagging.

SME is one of the government's initiatives to reduce the poverty rate in Malaysia and reduce the income gap between the rural and urban population. Therefore, entrepreneurs play an important role in managing the business as well as improving business income and performance. There are a few indicators in measuring the business performance. Thus, this study conducted to identify the influence of customer orientation and marketing innovation towards SME's performance. A theoretical framework is developing to give a clear picture on the area study. A set of questionnaires was distributed to the 283 SMEs entrepreneurs randomly in East Coast Malaysia. Then, the collected data was analysed by using Smart-PLS. The value of internal consistency, convergent validity, coefficient of determination, R-square, etc. were discussed. Then, hypothesis testing was conducted and the result shows that customer orientation has no relationship with business performance, meanwhile marketing innovation has relationship with business performance. This study is vital as it can give good information to academicians, consumers, businesses, and policy makers.

With a great emphasis on understanding teacher satisfaction in designing and improving professional development programs (PDPs), this study investigated the intrinsic and extrinsic aspects of satisfaction among Malaysian English as a Second Language (ESL) primary school teachers after finishing their first-degree program. A mixed-methods design was employed by using both quantitative methods (by administering survey research) and qualitative methods (through the use of items of the semi-structured questionnaire). The survey questionnaire was adapted from OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) questionnaire to measure the level of intrinsic and extrinsic teacher satisfaction among the samples. Descriptive analysis was used to analyse the survey research data collected from 30 secondary school English language teachers in Kuala Terengganu, east coast of Malaysia. The findings revealed that personal gains did not contribute much to PD activities in relation to the level of the teacher's extrinsic satisfaction after following their first-degree PD program. The study indicates that teachers differ from each other in terms of the source of their motivation for PD, whether intrinsic or extrinsic, and the type of development they aim for. This is hoped to show direction to the policymakers and organizers of PD programs in enhancing the program by taking into consideration of the teacher satisfaction, seniority, and professional background.