Academic success greatly depends on the ability of students to capitalise the information available at their disposal through improved reading skills. However, the emergence of digital texts has transformed the nature of academic reading as online reading is reported to be different from traditional printed reading. As such, this paper which is based on a study conducted on students in a particular university in Malaysia, was written to investigate the extent of the use of strategies when reading online, in an academic setting and also to investigate whether differences in the use of the strategies between students in different field of studies exist. Findings suggest that students are all users of strategies and field of studies has no bearing on the type of overall strategies preferred. However, significant difference was found for support strategies. One of the implications is the need for class instruction in raising students' awareness on the importance of varied usage of strategies when reading materials online.

The ability to communicate confidently in the English language is highly demanded of administrative officers in an organisation dealing with international clientele. However, the ability could be impeded due to high apprehension level. The study was conducted to investigate the communication apprehension among the administrative officers in a public university in Malaysia. To measure the level of apprehension in various settings, an instrument-PRCA 24 (McCroskey and JcCroskey, 1988) was distributed to 150 officers holding various positions in different departments. The findings indicate that the officers experience a moderate level of apprehension. Additionally, females were reported to be more apprehensive in all communication settings. Another finding is, with regards to the types of communication, public speaking was found to have caused the highest apprehension while interpersonal communication the least. A conclusion that can be drawn is apprehension level is influenced by the nature of the communication. The more formal the communication is, the higher the apprehension level will be. An important implication is the need to develop (introduce) continuous in house training to lessen the level of anxiety among the staff should be considered. Contribution/ Originality: This study is one of very few studies which have investigated the phenomenon of communication apprehension among administrative staff at a university. Besides, this paper's primary contribution is finding the areas where most of communication apprehension in using English occurs, namely in the context of meeting and public speaking.

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Numerous higher education institutions around the world must shift their instructions from face-to-face (FTF) to online learning due to Corona Virus Disease in 2019 (Covid19). Furthermore, with the increase in popularity of group work in higher education, especially in the language classroom, and the pivotal changes over the last years, the group works encounter new challenges as they transition to the online world. The study aims to explore the experiences of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students' engagement in online group works to explore the benefits and challenges in a new learning environment. The qualitative research design provided an in-depth understanding of the students' perceived value of online group work. Further, an interview was used as the main technique in collecting the data from the entire participants. Furthermore, the findings demonstrated that students had generally good attitudes about online group work; however, some students noted that language and communications concerns presented difficulty at times. Nevertheless, the findings also demonstrated that the benefits of this experience surpassed the drawbacks. Thus, the study's findings can be valuable for practitioners and curriculum designers since they highlight the benefits of group work in an online learning setting and the students' problems they may confront during these classes.

Learning a foreign language is a monumental undertaking for many adult learners. This study was conducted to mainly explore university students' beliefs about foreign language learning. It was also to investigate whether differences in their beliefs were present among different foreign languages. Students, pursuing diploma in TESL in a public university in Malaysia, were chosen as respondents. An instrument, BALLI, which is a measure of students' beliefs about language learning was the primary instrument for data collection. Since this is a quantitative study, statistical techniques namely descriptive and a one-way ANOVA were employed. Findings indicate that generally, the beliefs held by the student teachers are positive. Nonetheless, significant differences in the beliefs were noted among the foreign languages. The findings have a number of pedagogical implications. One of which is the importance of instilling realistic beliefs among students in learning foreign languages.