is a researcher in the field of applied linguistics. His areas of research include language teaching and assessment, problem-based learning, and research in the second language. His articles focus on implementing problem-based tasks in language classes.

The interest in examining the use of English among Malaysian undergraduates arose as a result of much media talk about the poor language skills that these students display upon gaining their first jobs in the work place. This study analyses simulated job interview sessions at a public university involving a group of final year students and a human resource manager. The audio recordings of the interviews were transcribed and analysed to determine the language and strategies used by participants while responding to interview questions. Micro analysis of the interview discourse, and matching it against the macro perspective of the nation’s vision to produce competent users of English for the workforce, revealed that a huge gap exists between the two “worlds”. On the one hand, the university gets students who lack language competency while, on the other, government policy is to have these students trained and ready to communicate effectively at the workplace within a period of three to four years. This is indeed a high call. The data analysed provides a glimpse into the students’ deficiencies. The article proposes that there are more issues that need to be tackled regarding the matter at hand.

The call from the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia to academics in tertiary institutions to collaborate with industry is pertinent where curriculum design is concerned. Far too often what we teach in the university does not match with real world needs. Hence this small scale study is one which aims to bridge that gap. Using a quasi-ethnographic approach, the researcher who was based at a manufacturing firm in Klang Valley, observed the company activities and carried out semi structured interviews with employees who have graduated from local universities. The aim of the study is to find out whether they have a need to improve their English language skills, and if so, in what areas would they want to be trained. In hearing their “voices”, various perspectives were obtained regarding their competence at the workplace. The findings revealed that work competency does not rely on language skills alone, but other factors come into play and these need to be given attention as well.

The spike in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) has overspilled into online political discussions enabling the free expression of political views in various platforms. This study aims at investigating the frequency of impolite strategies used by netizens in their political discussions online. The study also aims at finding out the reasons for employing such impoliteness strategies by netizens. In order to answer these questions, a total of 150 impolite feedback responses of netizens were collected from the online news portal Malaysiakini. The feedback responses formed the backbone of the data for the study. This data were analysed based on the model of impoliteness by Culpeper (1996Culpeper ( , 2005 in the field of pragmatics. The findings revealed that impolite strategies were present. The interview data further revealed that the main reasons contributing to the use of impoliteness was anger, more precisely, pent-up anger.