Making Infection Prevention & Control Smarter and User-friendly

The editorial provides information about an infection prevention and control mobile application and a corresponding website that has been developed by members of infection control committee of a tertiary care hospital. The features of the mobile app are discussed along with information shared in the form of guidelines that cover various aspects of infection control practices relevant for healthcare workers. The app can be used in different clinical settings in hospital areas by anyone who has an android or Apple phone. 

Enhancing the Writing Skills of Grade Seven Students in a Private School in Karachi

This action research, in the qualitative research paradigm, is an effort to help the students of grade VII to develop English writing skills in a private school in Karachi. Six students with their English language teacher participated in the study. Through purposive sampling the participants were selected from different levels of learners. The study was conducted in six weeks, working five days every week. Activities and materials for teaching writing skills were prepared according to the emerging needs of the students. Data were collected through two different diagnostic tests comprising: multiple choice questions and a short essay question. In addition, interviews, classroom observations, documents’ analysis and field notes were also employed as data collection tools. The analysis of the learners’ work revealed that learners had difficulty in vocabulary knowledge to support their writing, getting frequent feedback on their work, approaching different strategies to learn writing skills, verb tense agreement for sentence construction, and reading for writing. It was found that teaching strategies such as differentiated instruction strategies, scaffolding instructions, collaboration with competitors, reading-integrated writing, and use of written, oral and peer feedback provided better opportunities for the learners to enhance their writing skills. These approaches also helped me and the teacher to improve our teaching styles. The study offers valuable methodological contributions for future researchers in the field. The findings of this research will also be helpful for teachers who are involved in teaching English writing skills.