Urbanisation and related insufficiency of food sources is due to the high urban population, insufficient urban food sources, and inability of some urban communities to afford food due to rising costs. Food supply can also be jeopardised by natural and man-made disasters, such as warfare, pandemics, or any other calamities which result in the destruction of crop fields and disruption of food distribution. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the impact of such calamities on the fresh food supply chain in Malaysia, especially when the Movement Control Order (MCO) policy was first implemented. The resulting panic buying caused some food shortage, while more importantly, the fresh food supply chain was severely disrupted, especially in urban areas, in the early stages of implementation. In this regard, urban farming, while a simple concept, can have a significant impact in terms of securing food sources for urban households. It has been used in several countries such as Canada, The Netherlands, and Singapore to ensure a continuous food supply. This paper thus attempted to review how the pandemic has affected Malaysian participation in urban farming and, in relation to that, the acceptance of urban farming in Malaysia and the initiatives and approaches of local governmental and non-governmental organisations in encouraging the urban community to participate in urban farming through peer-reviewed journal articles and other articles related to urban agriculture using the ROSES protocol. About 93 articles were selected after screening to ensure that the articles were related to the study. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the surge in Malaysians’ awareness of the importance of urban farming has offered great opportunities for the government to encourage more Malaysian urban communities to participate in urban farming activities. Limitations such as relevant knowledge, area, and space, however, are impediments to urban communities’ participation in these activities. Government initiatives, such as the Urban Community Garden Policy (Dasar Kebun Komuniti Bandar (DKKB)), are still inadequate as some issues are still not addressed. Permanent Food Production Parks (TKPM) and technology-driven practices are seen as possible solutions to the primary problem of land and space. Additionally, relevant stakeholders play a crucial role in disseminating relevant and appropriate knowledge and methodology applicable for urban farming. Partnerships between government agencies, the education sector, and the private sector are necessary to develop modern urban agricultural technologies as well as knowledge, knowhow, and supports to build and sustain urban community participation in urban farming activities.

In Malaysian universities, writing in English is taught in several settings: writing for general purposes, writing for academic purposes and writing for specific purposes. Writing in these settings allows learners to learn to write in different genres, such as research, reports, and persuasive writing genres. One of the standard genres is persuasive because it is used to convince readers of what is researched or reported. To be competent in persuading or arguing, using the appropriate rhetorical and linguistic structure is crucial. The appropriate rhetorical and linguistic elements will help to achieve the writers' objective and intention. This paper will examine rhetorical and linguistic structures used by the ESL writers in producing a persuasive essay. Fifteen persuasive essays written by tertiary learners were analysed in this study. The researchers employed Stephen Toulmin's Model of argument (1969) as the tool of analysis in identifying the rhetorical and linguistic structures realised in the students' essays. The analysis outcome indicates that the 15 ESL writers under investigation comply with Toulmin's model except for the rebuttal stage, which was not visible in the essays. The findings will explain the common and uncommon rhetorical and linguistic elements used based on the model that Toulmin has developed. The implications from the findings are twofold; first, academic writing teachers can focus on the necessary elements to produce competent persuasive ESL writers, and secondly, textbook developers may produce their books based on the findings drawn from this study.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought academic face-to-face classes to a halt, globally. Schools, higher institutions, and all learning centres were forced into emergency mode searching for platforms to ensure the continuity of teaching and learning (UNESCO, 2020). Online classes were made mandatory, and instructors curated lessons to best deliver their lessons. However, frustrations emerged where teachers shared their experience of talking to the abyss of their computer screens as students did not switch on their cameras during online lessons. A link to a Google form questionnaire which is quantitative (questionnaire), qualitative (short answer questions) in nature was given to the author’s communicative English class students. Fifty students in an English communicative course responded and the chairperson of the course was interviewed (qualitative) to find challenges teachers faced in their online classes. The author focused on one issue - students’ refusal to turn on their cameras. The findings revealed the main reasons for not turning on the cameras during lessons as lack of internet data, poor internet connection, social norms, not being physically presentable, and not being comfortable to be looked at by peers. Instructions from teachers and class assessments affect students’ choice to turn on the camera, too. These findings serve as knowledge contributions for teachers to understand students and to do content curation.

In order to convince someone of what one is saying or writing about, the use of the appropriate persuasive technique is very important. At tertiary education level, academics who focus on teaching communication either in the written or spoken form emphasises on being persuasive. In communication, either in daily activities, academic or workplace, persuading someone is often used. The sender of the message needs to persuade the receiver to believe, agree, acknowledge and obey the message that one wants to convey. In this study, Aristotle’s triad of ethos, pathos, and logos is usually used to explore whether a text is persuasive. Aristotle's triad focuses on credibility (ethos), emotion (pathos), and facts (logos) in persuading a person on a certain issue that is being presented. The present study attempts to identify how ESL writers write to persuade. Samples of English as Second Language writers’ written assignments produced for an English for Occupational Purpose Module are used in this study. The assignment is in the form of a proposal paper written to propose an activity. The objective of a proposal paper is to propose an idea, and it is written in the hope of persuading the person reading the proposal to agree, approve and support the proposal. By studying the use of Aristotle’s triad of persuasive appeals, it is hoped that it will assist academicians to focus on what to teach in their communication class and to be able to produce competent ESL writers who are able to persuade and make one agree with their ideas and issues.

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