Customizing English Language Program for EFL Learners

This paper discusses the importance of having a customized instructional approach specifically for students who are learning English as a Foreign Language （EFL） in the foreign language setting. Most of the innovations introduced by the Education Ministry of Malaysia such as the Communicative Language Teaching （CLT） and phonics are suitable for ESL （English as a second language） learners, while the EFL learners are still left behind. A suitable teaching approach which customizes the needs of the students in EFL setting, especially in the state of Terengganu should be introduced. The main focus of the program exploits reading and writing skills in providing language input since these two skills are more dominant in terms of utility and functions among the EFL students as compared with the ESL students who are enable to exploit speaking and listening skills because of the natural setting. The research investigates the prospect of developing a suitable language teaching program based on 10 basic sentence patterns （10SP） which are exploited through the principles of transformational generative grammar and customized learning experiences focusing on reading as a bridge in acquiring other language skills such as writing, listening, and speaking.     

Women and Support for Terrorism in Pakistan

ABSTRACT

While there have been many scholarly inquiries about the sources of support for terrorism among Muslim publics, to date, scholars have generally not asked whether or not gender predicts support for Islamist militancy. Instead, most scholars and officials assume that “men of military age” are the most important segment of interest. Instead, gender is usually treated as a “control variable” rather than a “study variable,” reflecting the paucity of interest in this subject. This is likely an important scholarly and policy-analytic oversight. Many terrorist groups have women’s wings and women-oriented publications and other outreach programs because they understand the important role that mothers, wives, and sisters play in a male family member’s decision to take up arms with a terrorist group. In some conflicts, women also join as combatants. In this paper, we seek to address these scholarly lacunae by examining gender-wise support for two militant groups based in and operating from Pakistan: the Afghan Taliban, which has no female outreach program, and the sectarian Sipha-e-Sahaba-e-Pakistan, which does. We leverage a dataset drawn from a relatively large national survey of Pakistanis collected in 2011 to model support for these groups using gender as an independent variable along with other demographic and control variables. We find that females are significantly more likely to support the sectarian group with a women’s outreach-wing. In contrast, there is no significant gender effect on support for the Afghan Taliban. We argue, from these results, that gender deserves more attention in understanding who supports and participates in Islamist militancy.     

On the relationship between democratic institutionalization and civil society involvement: new evidence from Turkey

This study uses a nation-wide representative survey from 2004 to explore the link between civil society involvement and civic attitudes in Turkey. The article argues that, besides civic attitudes, political attitudes are also significant in explaining membership in ‘Olson type’ institutions, while membership in ‘Putnam type’ institutions does not depend on attitudinal variables. The article concludes that low civil society participation with a gender gap and intolerance of rural participants raises significant questions about the democratic potential of civil society in Turkey.     

The exchange rate and the balance of trade: The Turkish experience

In this article, we examine the responsiveness of Turkey's trade balance to devaluation accompanied by trade liberalisation. Our results show that the trade balance was responsive to changes in the exchange rate that were brought about by the economic reforms introduced in the 1980s, suggesting that exchange rate policy was able to create and maintain a satisfactory balance of trade position in the 1980s and early 1990s.     

Adjudication of Islamic banking and finance cases in the civil courts of Malaysia

The adjudication of Islamic banking and finance (IBF) laws in Malaysia is unique given the Malaysian parallel legal systems. Although IBF is a branch of Islamic law, the civil court has the appropriate jurisdiction to decide the cases. This is due to the fact that banking falls under the items 7 and 8 of the Federal List of the Federal Constitution. The trails of decided cases showed that there are problems in resolving IBF cases in the civil courts. This paper aims to discuss the adjudication of Islamic Banking in the civil courts. The authors employed the method of legal documents analysis in analyzing the IBF cases. The analysis highlighted four obstacles in adjudicating IBF in civil courts, namely; inadequacy of existing legal framework, complications of legal documentation, competency of civil court judges and expert evidence. It also analysed the four approaches adopted by the civil courts in deciding IBF cases; the ‘parties to be bound by their agreement’, the ‘strict adherence to civil law’, the ‘justice and equitable’ and the ‘looking into the substance’.