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The need to investigate the communication skills of specific participants usually arises upon demand from the stakeholders, including the employers, passengers, clients and others. The common reasons for stakeholders to consult course developers or language practitioners regarding developing a specific purpose course include poor language proficiency and lack of professional communication skills amongst personnel whose jobs require efficient communication. The needs analysis (NA) method is often used to explore the necessary communication skills at the workplace, including business, medical and aviation. In aviation, the aviation English program content is based on the stakeholders? communication requirements. Having said that, there are two main objectives of this study. Firstly, this study aims to investigate the importance of English as a medium for communication amongst AVM personnel serving in local and foreign-based companies within Malaysia. Secondly, it aims to determine the spoken and written communication activities that aviation management personnel are frequently involved in the aviation industry. Based on the findings, the NA revealed that the English language is vital in developing professional communication skills among AVM trainees as they require English proficiency for speaking and writing activities.

In this Internet age, learners need to know how to efficiently use the massive amount of information available at their fingertips and disseminated online by their teachers. In relation to this, teachers and learners need to embrace online technology to make learning more engaging and interesting so that effective learning takes place. Malaysian universities have begun to implement online learning or e-learning to meet the needs of tertiary education. The purpose of the present study is to investigate management, lecturer and student perceptions of quality in online learning. Survey data from 3 academic managers, 15 lecturers, and 96 students from one faculty of a premier public university in Malaysia were employed. Qualitative data analysis revealed the top 8 quality features as ranked by number of references. The results also revealed similarities and differences in the rankings of the 8 quality features among managers, lecturers and students. The findings should be considered and reflected on in online course design, teaching strategies, and student support.

This article compares two studies, investigating administrator, faculty, and student perceptions of quality in online/blended courses conducted in two different contexts, namely (1) two midsize public universities in the United States, and (2) a college in a public university in Malaysia. The research question explored in both studies was: What is the meaning of "quality" in an online/blended course to administrators, faculty, and students? Survey data from the three constituents in both contexts were obtained. Qualitative data analysis revealed the top 7-8 quality features of each context as ranked by number of references. The results revealed similarities and differences in the rankings of the quality features between constituents and between contexts. Similarities suggested that different constituents had different priorities with regards to quality features while differences appeared to be based on where each institution was on their distance education trajectory. These findings should be considered and reflected on in online course design, teaching strategies, and student support.

TV advertisements are multimodal and can effectively unfold social meanings through the representation of narratives and storytelling. To explore the social meanings through the multimodal narrative construction in the visuals of TV advertisements, this article analyses a Pakistani TV advertisement featuring Shan Thematic 2020's #MoreThanJustACook. It is argued that a multi-perspective approach can significantly facilitate interpreting the social meanings of visual texts. Therefore, the current study draws on social semiotics by Kress & van Leeuwen for its analytical framework, along with Ryan's narratological insights and Fog et al.'s storytelling elements. The investigation of multimodal narrative processes in the TVC unveils physical and psychological behaviours of the actors in the visuals, which represent social relationships through the description of a family from a Pakistani socio-cultural context. The story in the visual composition of the TVC aims to promote the idea of strong family ties, gender roles and women empowerment. This paper contributes towards knowledge on the application of multimodal socio-semiotic and narrativity theories. It is hoped that the proposed analytical approach can serve as a foundation for effective multimodal narratives in TV advertisements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the role of visual resources in constructing the brand identity of Chinese universities. By drawing on the theoretical concept of corporate visual identity (CVI), this study analyzed universities' logos and typography of names from the social semiotic approach. Nine elite Chinese universities were selected as the corpus to qualitatively investigate how the institutions' logos and typography of their names are designed and utilized for corporate branding. The analysis shows that both the logos and names are graphically and typographically designed as effective visual elements and semiotic resources with meaning potentials to signify the Chinese universities' brand identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]