This paper investigates the communication apprehension (CA) and a form of anxiety which affects the engineering undergraduates’ oral communicative skills in English and particularly in oral presentations. However, this study was mainly based on the research question to be investigated: What barriers prevail among undergraduates that handicap their successful language learning and oral communicative skills in English? This study used qualitative instruments for collecting data; the instruments used were included as semi-structured interviews with eight participants and two focus group discussion to explore the barriers among Pakistani undergraduates. The data were analyzed using content analysis of the gathered data. The results revealed that communication apprehension can cause the variety of barriers among undergraduates during oral presentation. The results provided positive insights to communication practitioners and language educators on the issues related to communication apprehension; therefore, certain measures need to be taken to surmount the identified barriers.

This study aims to investigate the factors affecting oral presentation skills of undergraduate-learners of English that influence their academic performance which potentially can affect professional career. The study has used quantitative instrument as questionnaire partially adopted from McCroskey (1982) for data collection among 100 undergraduate-participants on factors affecting oral communication skills at one Public Sector University. Purposive sampling method was used since participants were selected on specific criteria of only first year engineering undergraduates. The data were analysed through SPSS, v.20 for obtaining percentage, mean, median, standard deviation, and standard error of mean to be measured. The findings revealed that oral presentation skills as the most problematic for engineering undergraduates. The results also revealed that the several factors affected engineering undergraduates' oral presentations.It has been noticed the oral presentation skills in English are essential in present day academic career as well as for professional success. Effective communicators know how it is crucial to possess effective communication skills. Graduates require an ever-increasing variety of skills to maintain relevance with global atmosphere of the new millennium (Riemer, 2007) and ever-growing need for good communication skills in English has emerged on high demand around the world (Richards, 2006). 21st century demands the graduates to acquire effective oral presentation skills. Research studies in a recent decade have indicated that 60% graduates spend their time in communication with people (Trevelayan & Tilli, 2008). Oral presentation skills in English are essential for undergraduates in this modern means of communication era.

The research investigated the effects of teachers' motivation on students' learning English in public elementary schools of Nawabshah, Pakistan. It focused at examining intrinsic and extrinsic motivation of teachers while teaching English language. This research paper took Dornyei's (1994) model in which only Teacher-Specific Motivational component was adopted. The research employed quantitative research method in which questionnaire was distributed among the participants. Data was collected from Pakistani public elementary schools in which randomly 50 male and 50 female teachers participated. The research also collected the data from 230 elementary students. The collected data was analyzed by statistical Package for social sciences (SPSS) software version 20 th . To accomplish the aim of the study three research objectives and research questions were prepared. A descriptive statistics was performed for question 1 and 3 and independent T-test was done for question 2. The findings indicated that teachers are more extrinsically motivated in public elementary schools. Their extrinsic motivation effects their students' mot`ivation too. A comparison of male and female teachers was done via constructing a hypothesis i.e. there is no significant difference between male and female teachers' motivation for teaching English in public elementary schools. The findings rejected the null hypothesis and the independent t-test revealed that there is significance difference between the group and female teachers are more motivated (80.2916) to teach English than male teachers (70.8788). Students believe that teachers brighten their future and help them to be confident at speaking English. The results also indicated that teachers' intrinsic motivation plays more positive role for motivating students to learn English. The study suggested that it is essential to shift teachers' extrinsic motivation into intrinsic motivation for teaching English language.

Motivation means a lot when human does something which is not very common in day to day life. Literature review indicates that there are rarely available studies on motivation for reading the holy Quran in Pakistani context. Therefore, the current study intends to find out basic types of motivation for reading holy Quran, factors involved that motivate to read with and without translation in their L1. Last but not least, gender based motivational (if any) difference. To research a quantitative study was adopted in which a survey based questionnaire was filled via Google form from randomly selected 218 students of 7 universities of Sindh, Pakistan. Collected data is descriptively analyzed by Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS Version 22). The findings revealed three most important motivating factors for reading the holy Quran: (1) it is the best book for mankind (∑4.6422); (2) it is a guideline to live better and happier life (∑4.6009); (3) it is compulsory for every Muslim to read (∑4.5642). Moreover, university students are more intrinsically (∑41.1651) than extrinsically (∑34.0642) motivated for reading the holy Quran. Meanwhile a great difference is being found in university students’ motivation for reading the holy Quran with and without translation. The Mean score of reading without translation is ∑9.8073 and with translation is ∑4.9862. An independent t-test informed that there is no significant difference between male and female students’ motivation for reading the holy Quran. The research claims that youth are losing their intrinsic motivation for reading the holy Quran because of extensive use of social media. It suggests that university students should read with translation because it helps their academic as well as personal life.

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