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The present study was conducted to analyse the use of word order in job interviews. The data was collected from participants in an organisation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Ten candidates of different races between the ages of 23 and 25 participated in the study. Radford's syntactic theory of word order was employed to qualitatively analyse the data. It was found that positive sentences were predominantly used by the selected (n = 10; 47.4%) compared to the not selected (n = 10; 44.0%) and keep in view (KIV) (n = 23; 39.0%) job candidates. The findings further revealed that the types of word order used in utterances by the selected candidates were different compared to those who were not chosen for interviews. Selected candidates used more negative sentences, subordinate clauses, and time expression in sentences, whereas those who were not selected utilised adverbs of manner in negative sentences, subordinate clauses, and time expression in sentences, while the not selected candidates only used the position of adverbs. On the other hand, the KIV candidates used positive sentences, subordinate clauses and word order in questions in their utterances. The study can provide important contributions to knowledge on the use of English when developing employment course modules emphasising word order as an essential element in portraying good English language proficiency in job interviews.

This study applied a "moves analysis" approach to examine job application letters written by 25 Malaysian graduates obtained from an outsourcing organisation in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The letters were analysed as to whether they adhered to the seven aspects of the "moves structure" used to analyse job applications (i.e. establishing credentials, introducing candidate, detailing advantages, enclosing relevant documents, ending appropriately, offering incentives, and using pressure tactics). Additionally, interviews were held with five human resource managers from five different organisations. From the interviews, the managers emphasised that it was important that job application letters should contain at least five of the seven moves from the framework. The findings obtained revealed that Malaysian graduates employed five out of the seven strategies from the moves structure and had covered the basic format of the job application letter. Most applicants omitted Move 5 (using pressure tactics), but the findings suggest that this variation did not hinder the communicative purpose of the letters.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the words and phrases used by student graduates in job interviews. Twenty-Seven Malaysian graduates participated in the study. "How to face challenges" was the focal theme chosen for analysis of the data. The findings indicated that successful interviewees covered six out of seven important employability skills, while interviewees on the reserve list covered only four of the employability skills, and the unsuccessful interviewees covered only three of the seven skills. Successful interviewees were deemed able to portray high level proficiency by using the most salient words and phrases to express their employability skills in the interviews. It is expected that this study will encourage current undergraduates to develop high level language proficiency regarding their employability and foster training in this area by educational institutions so as to benefit their students.

This study focuses on the spoken conversations between Millennial undergraduates and their lecturers regarding the manner in which the students plead with their lecturers for additional time to complete their assignments. The research aimed to investigate the approaches used by these students through analyses-based politeness strategies and also whether approaches divergent from those strategies have been introduced by the Millennial undergraduates. Ten undergraduates were selected for participation in simulated situations in which their assignments were delayed for submission to their lecturers. The duration of each simulation was 3 minutes, and they were recorded and transcribed with annotations based on transcription notation symbols and coding based on the politeness strategy. The lecturers involved in the study were interviewed to determine their perspectives on the students' ability to converse courteously and their perceptions on the potential for success in obtaining assignment submission deadline extensions. Apart from findings related to politeness strategies, the research revealed that Millennials also employ approaches such as negative courteousness, positive courteousness, and off-record indirect strategies to achieve their goal of extending the deadline for assignment submission. These Millennials used of politeness strategies can therefore be incorporated within (Brown and Levinson 1978) politeness theory as a separate kind of hierarchy of needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study was to examine how various speech act strategies were used in email communication. The data were collected from engineering students enrolled in an English language proficiency class. A qualitative methodology was utilized with the analysis based on Searle (1969) five illocutionary speech act types: assertive, directive, commissive, expressive, and declarations. The results showed that expressive utterances were predominately used (n = 22; 33.8%) by the students compared with directive utterances (n = 16; 24.6%), assertive utterances (n = 12; 18.4%), commissive utterances (n = 8; 12.3%) and declarations (n = 7; 10.8%). These expressive utterances were found to be convincing in persuasive contexts where they were integrated with attitudes or social behaviors. The study suggests that students should be exposed to the appropriate use of speech acts in their writing tasks to make their writing more convincing and interesting. Finally, the study finds that integration of speech act theory into writing classes can benefit students in their persuasive writing skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective communication skills are shown to foster the relationship and collaboration in professional interactions. Particularly in job interviews, communication skills play an important role since it turns out to be of the major criteria of employability ever since the 20th century. This is apparent as many university graduates are unable to secure a job within 3-6 months after graduation due to poor communication skills. This paper aims to investigate the importance of communication skills for employment and by adopting theory of communication, it wishes to address in detail employer's expectations. Five fresh graduates from local and private universities and two human resource officers (HR) from one organisation participated in this study. A semi-structured questionnaire was utilized as a tool to collect the data. The findings show that a majority of fresh graduates were weak in communication skills in relation to clarity, completeness, conciseness, and correctness. The inaccurate vocabulary (clarity), incomplete sentences (conciseness), unable to provide detailed answers (completeness), and error in grammar in the utterances and sentences (correctness) were found in the communication skills by these graduates. The study suggests the integration of 4Cs (clarity, conciseness, completeness and correctness) into the current communication skills course modules, facilitation of simulated interviews to assist undergraduates enhance their communication skills prior to attending any actual job interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]