Manvender Kaur Sarjit Singh

RICKSHAW WRITINGS – A REAL MIRROR TO PAKISTANI SOCIETY

Cultural diversity can be seen in many forms. One specific area of interest would be the use of language in expressing opinions related to many aspects of a society. This particular study reports on the use of culturally influenced language, in order to express opinions as reflected on auto rickshaws in Lahore, Pakistan. Data was gathered by observations while travelling to various areas in Lahore, Pakistan. The qualitative analysis of the written discourse showed various aspects of life of the Lahorites, through different modes as were reflected by the writings on the rickshaws plying throughout the town.

The role of mobile phone and powerpoint in enhancing writing skills: Lecturers' reflections

These day mobile phones are being resorted to as indispensable pedagogical tools for imparting language skills to the present day students who are termed as ‘Generation Y’, ‘Net Generation’ and above all ‘Digital Natives’. Mobile phones have the potential to be reliable pedagogical tool to teach writing which is the most neglected skills to the intermediate students. The current paper examines the perceptions of two lecturers regarding the use of mobile phones and PowerPoint in teaching descriptive essay writing skills to intermediate students at M.A.O. College, Lahore. The qualitative data for this purpose was collected by means of semi-structured interviews from those two lecturers who taught experimental as well as control groups respectively. The findings of the study indicated that the lecturer of experimental group was very much in favour of mobile phones to be incorporated in the teaching writing class. Even the lecturer of control group favoured the use of new technology as she was not in favour of PowerPoint to be used for teaching writing skills. Moreover, the findings of the study indicated that the mobile phones can very easily, successfully and conveniently be employed as pedagogical tool to impart writing skills as they can motivate the lecturers for teaching as well as the students for learning the writing skills.

Investigating level of understanding and compliance of written work procedures to reduce occupational harm at MMHE

Over the last six years (2007 to 2013) Malaysian Marine and Heavy Engineering (MMHE) has recorded four fatality cases, 36 cases of Lost Time Incident (LTI), 24,964 lost work days, 24 Restricted Work Case, 28 Medical Treatment Case, 83 First Aid cases with recorded 196,352,113 man hours worked. On average, it has approximately 29 workers sustaining occupational harm annually. This paper reports the findings of a survey conducted using a set of questionnaire, in order to identify the main causes of occupational harm occurring in MMHE. Data was gathered using 150 workers from various different work stations in the company. The findings indicated that the main causes of occupational harms were the workers (70% foreigners (from 7 nations) and 30% locals) were not following or understanding the written work procedures and the work procedures were not being enforced by managers or superiors. The findings were used to justify the need of research into investigating the effectiveness of written workplace procedures and to reduce workplace occupational harms