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Research in academic writing initially focuses on the output of writing, but it is now increasingly turned to writer identity. This article analyses how the acceptance of self as academic writers is difficult. The acceptance of self as an academic writer is quite complex, especially for first-year doctoral students who must engage with the demands of academic language in an academic context. Research acknowledges that self-acceptance as academic writers come with many implications and doctoral students are often hesitant to describe themselves as academic writers. This article seeks to address this complexity through empirical research focused on self-perception in the construction of an academic writer identity. This study involved ten first-year ESL doctoral students in the field of education at an established Malaysian institution. From the findings of this study, we identify four aspects that they experienced in becoming academic writers: creator, interpreter, communicator and academic presenter. These four aspects are experienced in different ways by each participant, illustrated by narratives of their life history and writing practice. In particular, it is hoped that this article can provide some pedagogical implications for the teaching of academic writing in institutes of higher education and offer a lens through which researchers and teachers of writing can further explore academic writer identity. Keywords: Academic writer identity; academic writing; ESL doctoral students; life history; writing practice

This article details an attempt to understand better how first-year doctoral students construct persuasive arguments in academic writing by exploring the patterns of boosters in drafts of doctoral research proposals. Eight Malaysian first-year ESL doctoral students produced 43 drafts of doctoral research proposals across four areas of study in education during their first year of doctoral studies. These drafts were analysed by coding the various linguistic items used to persuade readers of a text, and the analysis was based on Hyland’s (2005) model of metadiscourse. Results show that the (i) overall frequency of booster markers used is relatively low (n=158), reinforcing the argument that first-year doctoral students lack understanding about the interaction between booster markers and the context in a more complicated discussion in academic writing such as the doctoral research proposal. Then, the (ii) further analysis of booster marker sub-categories indicates that Malaysian first-year doctoral students struggle to make appropriate booster markers with different meanings and strengths in academic writing when used in context. Therefore, our study suggests that direct and explicit teaching of using various booster markers categories should be implemented in postgraduate writing courses to heightened the students’ perceptiveness regarding semantic features associated with creating convincing arguments in academic writing.

The importance of critical thinking is championed in education, but it is also acknowledged that developing critical thinking is challenging particularly in a context like Malaysia where be...

In this paper, we propose a continuous-time stochastic intensity model, namely, two-phase dynamic contagion process(2P-DCP), for modelling the epidemic contagion of COVID-19 and investigating the lockdown effect based on the dynamic contagion model introduced by Dassios and Zhao (2011). It allows randomness to the infectivity of individuals rather than a constant reproduction number as assumed by standard models. Key epidemiological quantities, such as the distribution of final epidemic size and expected epidemic duration, are derived and estimated based on real data for various regions and countries. The associated time lag of the effect of intervention in each country or region is estimated. Our results are consistent with the incubation time of COVID-19 found by recent medical study. We demonstrate that our model could potentially be a valuable tool in the modeling of COVID-19. More importantly, the proposed model of 2P-DCP could also be used as an important tool in epidemiological modelling as this type of contagion models with very simple structures is adequate to describe the evolution of regional epidemic and worldwide pandemic., 29 pages, 14 figures

This paper reports one aspect of a larger project that set out to narrow the literacy gap among Malaysia’s rural and urban children in terms of their literacy achievement. Using Perak as a case-state, this overall project scrutinises why despite the Education Ministry being the biggest recipient of the recent national budget 2020, with an estimated allocation of RM64.1billion, there are still children especially in rural schools who are unable to master the ability to read and write, even in their own mother tongue language. Through this project’s on-going work which attempts to connect the theories of literacy with actual-on-the-ground issues of children’s reading experience especially in rural schools, important matters were flagged up. This paper will highlight these matters as they are uncovered vis-à-vis the verification of “My reading experience” questionnaire which was one of the main research tools that was used for this project. Mainly, these matters were located along three aspects of literacy i.e. context, definition and language as they relate to how the questionnaire was designed. This has important implications towards how a sustainable literacy education framework can be shaped.

Metadiscourse refers to linguistic items, which functions to establish a connection with imagined readers of a text (Hyland, 2004). The use of metadiscourse has received much attention in various contexts, yet, little works are focusing on disciplinary metadiscourse, that has been carried out. To address this gap, this study explored, described, and compared the use of disciplinary metadiscourse by eight Malaysian first-year ESL doctoral students across four areas of study in education. The study reported in this article focuses on development or changes in writing over time. This study is quantitative in nature with a corpus-based approach utilizing AntConc (3.4.4) to examine the frequency of three dimensions of academic discourse in their writing, namely textual, engagement, and evaluative The results of this analysis show that (i) the engagement dimension (3.1%) was the lowest of all three dimensions in written work, reinforcing the argument that first-year ESL doctoral students are less experienced at using textual metadiscourse resources, and (ii) frequency of all three dimensions of academic discourse in their writing differs across time between first written drafts to the final written drafts. These are first-year ESL doctoral students, who are writing in different fields of educational research. The implication is that teaching and learning of disciplinary metadiscourse should involve explicit explanation, demonstration, and practice of its use, and development in the academic writing process.Academic writing; corpus analysis; ESL doctoral students; metadiscourse

In this paper, we propose a continuous-time stochastic intensity model, namely, two-phase dynamic contagion process(2P-DCP),for modelling the epidemic contagion of COVID-19 and investigating the lockdown effect based on the dynamic contagion model introduced by Dassios and Zhao (2011). It allows randomness to the infectivity of individuals rather than a constant reproduction number as assumed by standard models. Key epidemiological quantities, such as the distribution of final epidemic size and expected epidemic duration, are derived and estimated based on real data for various regions and countries. The associated time lag of the effect of intervention in each country or region is estimated. Our results are consistent with the incubation time of COVID-19 found by recent medical study. We demonstrate that our model could potentially be a valuable tool in the modeling of COVID-19. More importantly, the proposed model of 2P-DCP could also be used as an important tool in epidemiological modelling as this type of contagion models with very simple structures is adequate to describe the evolution of regional epidemic and worldwide pandemic.

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM)-based herbal therapies have gained increasing popularity worldwide, raising concerns of its efficacy, safety profile and potential interactions with Western medications. Antithrombotic agents are among the most common prescription drugs involved in herb-drug interactions, and this article focused on aspirin, one of the most widely used antiplatelet agents worldwide. We discussed herbs that have potential interactions by exploring Western and TCM approaches to thrombotic events. Common TCM indications for these herbs were also highlighted, including possible scenarios of their concurrent usage with aspirin. With greater awareness and understanding of potential herb-drug interactions, TCM and Western physicians may collaborate more closely to identify, treat and, most importantly, prevent adverse drug events.

This article explores some of the complexities involved in the act of localizing English literature as a school subject. Informed by Goodson and Marsh’s stages of subject development, I explore the ways in which post-16 English literature was localized in Malaysia from an introduced and mythologized subject entitled “English” to its reconceptualization as “Literature in English” in the year 1998. The main question this article asks is: can a mythologized subject be sustained when it is introduced into another context (i.e., Malaysia)? This question is explored through attempts made to localize it by the subject’s governing body in Malaysia, namely the Malaysian Examinations Council. Relevant documents as well as an interview with a subject committee member involved in the subject’s reconceptualization form the data of this article. Analysis suggests that not only were acts of localization incoherent in the subject’s implementation, the rationale for localization was also not shared by some constit...

In this paper we obtain a recursive formula for the density of the double-barrier Parisian stopping time. We present a probabilistic proof of the formula for the first few steps of the recursion, and then a formal proof using explicit Laplace inversions. These results provide an efficient computational method for pricing double-barrier Parisian options.

Procrastination has been found to negatively impact academic and job performance. However, little attention has been given to the effect of procrastination on creative performance. Moreover, past studies have mainly focused on the antecedent role of anxiety in procrastination. The impact of procrastination on anxiety is not clear, though literature has suggested that procrastination may induce anxiety. The primary question addressed in the present study is whether and how procrastination influences creativity. Some exceptional studies have indicated that procrastination allows incubation and hence is conducive to creativity. However, on the basis of the literature, we argued and hypothesized that procrastination may impair creativity through state anxiety. A total of 218 Malaysian undergraduate students were recruited via social networking sites and responded to a packet of online survey questionairres, including self-report of procrastination tendency, state and trait anxiety, and creativity. Results showed that procrastination was positively associated with state and trait anxiety and negatively correlated with creativity. A negative relationship was also observed between state and trait anxiety and creativity. In addition, mediation analysis supported our hypothesis that state anxiety mediates the relationship between procrastination and creativity after controlling for the effect of trait anxiety. Specifically, people tend to experience feeling anxious when they postpone task completion. The high level of anxiety, in turn, is negatively associated with creative performance. As a whole, the findings not only offer the first empirical evidence supportive of the detrimental effect of procrastination on creativity, but also reveal the underlying process. Future directions and limitations are also explored.

The format of post-16 literature education assessment has not varied much since formal post-16 education began in Malaysia in the late 1950s. While it still relies heavily on the writing of literature essays, conceptualisations of literature as a school subject embedded in examination papers which are constructed by different examination boards have changed in important ways. This article argues that identifying these conceptualisations through an analysis of examination papers creates an avenue to provide a different perspective in exploring the development of literature in schools. To demonstrate this, examination papers on Shakespeare and modern literature from two examination sittings administered in Malaysia, one in the year 1968 and the other in the years 2012/2013, are analysed with a focus on whether questions are writer, text or reader-centred while considering how student response, termed outcome space, is framed. This study suggests that conceptualisations of literature have shifted in two ways: the first is a shift from a balance between writer, text and reader-centred questions to a heavy inclination towards text-centred questions which is linked to another noticeable shift in student responses to literature texts that has moved from the expression of personal meaning and interpretation of the text to the demonstration of detailed textual knowledge. Such shifts demonstrate that there is a need to consider literature assessment not only as an end-product of school subject construction but as an active representation of literature that influences the teaching and learning of the subject. Keywords: literature assessment; English literature; post-16 education; Malaysia; curriculum implementation DOI: http://doi.org/10.17576/3L-2017-2301-03

We consider a generalised Vervaat perpetuity of the form X = Y1W1 +Y2W1W2 + · · ·, where $W_i \sim {\cal U}^{1/t}$ and (Yi)i≥0 is an independent and identically distributed sequence of random variables independent from (Wi)i≥0. Based on a distributional decomposition technique, we propose a novel method for exactly simulating the generalised Vervaat perpetuity. The general framework relies on the exact simulation of the truncated gamma process, which we develop using a marked renewal representation for its paths. Furthermore, a special case arises when Yi = 1, and X has the generalised Dickman distribution, for which we present an exact simulation algorithm using the marked renewal approach. In particular, this new algorithm is much faster than existing algorithms illustrated in Chi (2012), Cloud and Huber (2017), Devroye and Fawzi (2010), and Fill and Huber (2010), as well as being applicable to the general payments case. Examples and numerical analysis are provided to demonstrate the accuracy and effectiveness of our method.

In this paper, we derive a variation of the Azéma martingale using two approaches—a direct probabilistic method and another by projecting the Kennedy martingale onto the filtration generated by the drawdown duration. This martingale links the time elapsed since the last maximum of the Brownian motion with the maximum process itself. We derive explicit formulas for the joint densities of (τ,W τ , M τ ), which are the first time the drawdown period hits a prespecified duration, the value of the Brownian motion, and the maximum up to this time. We use the results to price a new type of drawdown option, which takes into account both dimensions of drawdown risk—the magnitude and the duration.

A truncated Lévy subordinator is a Lévy subordinator in R + with Lévy measure restricted from above by a certain level b . In this article, we study the path and distribution properties of this type of process in detail and set up an exact simulation framework based on a marked renewal process. In particular, we focus on a typical specification of truncated Lévy subordinator, namely the truncated stable process. We establish an exact simulation algorithm for the truncated stable process, which is very accurate and efficient. Compared to the existing algorithm suggested in Chi, our algorithm outperforms over all parameter settings. Using the distributional decomposition technique, we also develop an exact simulation algorithm for the truncated tempered stable process and other related processes. We illustrate an application of our algorithm as a valuation tool for stochastic hyperbolic discounting, and numerical analysis is provided to demonstrate the accuracy and effectiveness of our methods. We also show that variations of the result can also be used to sample two-sided truncated Lévy processes, two-sided Lévy processes via subordinating Brownian motions, and truncated Lévy-driven Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes.

In this paper, we study the excursions of Bessel and CIR processes with dimensions 0 < δ < 2. We obtain densities for the last passage times and meanders of the processes. Using these results, we prove a variation of the Azéma martingale for the Bessel and CIR processes based on excursion theory. Furthermore, we study their Parisian excursions, and generalise previous results on the Parisian stopping time of Brownian motion to that of the Bessel and CIR processes. We obtain explicit formulas and asymptotic results for the densities of the Parisian stopping times, and develop exact simulation algorithms to sample the Parisian stopping times of Bessel and CIR processes. We introduce a new type of bond, the zero coupon Parisian bond. The buyer of such a bond is betting against zero interest rates, while the seller is effectively hedging against a period where interest rates fluctuate around 0. Using our results, we propose two methods for pricing these bonds and provide numerical examples.

This study investigates a teacher’s and three students’ perspectives on shared instances of code-switching practices in a Malaysian multilingual primary classroom. It seeks to explore and compare whether students perceive the same benefit of code-switching as the teacher does. This bridges the gap of previous studies, which mostly either focused on teachers’ or students’ perspectives on code-switching. Three 11-year-old multilingual students with different levels of English proficiencies and a multilingual teacher were selected as participants for this study. Four hours of English lessons were audio-recorded, and field notes were taken occasionally throughout classroom observations. An individual interview session was conducted with the teacher, and a group interview was conducted with the student participants. The findings showed that the teacher’s code-switching practices helped clear the students’ doubts, reinforced their learning, and encouraged student participation in English lessons. One participant shared the same perspective of code-switching as the teacher did. The other two participants, however, only found it beneficial when the teacher practised code-switching for explanations, especially when constructing simple sentences. Both of these students reported that too much repetition of some words bore them as these were previously learned words. The study concludes that not all the students rely on code-switching to assist them during English lessons.

The Malaysian Education Blueprint 2013–2025 states that the aim of Malaysian education is to develop globally competitive students. English literature, on the other hand, is presented in the document as a means to increase student proficiency, enjoyment, and creativity. This chapter argues that such a conceptualization of literature education limits its potential to develop global-mindedness among students. However, analysis of desired student responses in three forms of English literature education and their assessment in Malaysia reveals that there are elements of a global perspective in present syllabi. Nevertheless, the full potential of literature education to develop global citizens while simultaneously dulling the edge of cut-throat global competitiveness is left untapped.

We define the drawdown stopping time of a Brownian motion as the first time its drawdown reaches a duration of length 1. In this paper, we propose an efficient algorithm to efficiently simulate the drawdown stopping time and the associated maximum at this time. The method is straightforward and fast to implement, and avoids simulating sample paths thus eliminating discretisation bias. We show how the simulation algorithm is useful for pricing more complicated derivatives such as multiple drawdown options.

Vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) are an important cause of nosocomial infections in acute-care hospitals (ACHs), intermediate-care facilities (ITCFs), and long-term care facilities (LTCFs). This study contemporaneously compared the epidemiology and risk factors for VRE colonization in different care settings in a health care network. We conducted a serial cross-sectional study in a 1,700-bed ACH and its six closely affiliated ITCFs and LTCFs in June and July of 2014 to 2016. Rectal swab or stool specimens were cultured for VRE. Multivariable logistic regression was used to assess for independent risk factors associated with VRE colonization. Of 5,357 participants, 523 (9.8%) were VRE colonized. VRE prevalence was higher in ACHs (14.2%) than in ITCFs (7.6%) and LTCFs (0.8%). Common risk factors between ACHs and ITCFs included prior VRE carriage, a longer duration of antibiotic therapy, surgery in the preceding 90 days, and the presence of a skin ulcer. Independent risk factors specific to ACH-admitted patients were prior methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus carriage, a higher number of beds per room, prior proton pump inhibitor use, and a length of stay of >14 days. For ITCFs, a length of stay of >14 days was inversely associated with VRE colonization. Similarities and differences in risk factors for VRE colonization were observed between health care settings. VRE prevention efforts should target the respective high-risk patients. MOH (Min. of Health, S’pore) Published version

John Yandell raises a very timely discussion regarding definitions of reading and learning in a time when education is generally perceived as a result-driven performance-focused system. Amongst the...

In this paper, we obtain the density function of the single barrier one-sided Parisian stopping time. The problem reduces to that of solving a Volterra integral equation of the first kind, where a recursive solution is consequently obtained. The advantage of this new method as compared to that in previous literature is that the recursions are easy to program as the resulting formula involves only a finite sum and does not require a numerical inversion of the Laplace transform. For long window periods, an explicit formula for the density of the stopping time can be obtained. For shorter window lengths, we derive a recursive equation from which numerical results are computed. From these results, we compute the prices of one-sided Parisian options.