There is a requirement, within Key Stages One to Four of the National Curriculum for English, that pupils should be taught various aspects of Knowledge About Language which draw on an explicit understanding of English grammar. Many English teachers find themselves ill-equipped t…
This thesis reports a study using a corpus of text messages in English (CorTxt) to explore linguistic features which define texting as a language variety. It focuses on how the language of texting, Txt, is shaped by texters actively fulfilling interpersonal goals. The thesis sta…
This is a report of a six-year study of working and writing practices in an engineering environment. It is an investigation into a distinctive discourse community of design engineers conducted from an ethnographic perspective. It surveys the engineers’ attitudes towards writing …
This study presents a corpus-based analysis of the use of “wh” sentences by language learners, in language textbooks and in authentic written discourse. It focuses on the polysemeous nature of “wh” words, which can be usedas interrogatives, declaratives and to introduce subordin…
In recent years, phonics instruction in early literacy education has gained in popularity due to its critical role in facilitating phonological awareness and processing skills, said to enable the self-teaching mechanism inherent in an alphabetic language. These claims are based …
A major challenge in second-language pedagogy and research is that of determining linguistic competence. Spontaneous oral production gives some indication of the state of a learner’s interlanguage, but the presence of non-target-like forms in such production confounds the analys…
This thesis explores how students can be helped by learner autonomy-focused instruction to develop motivation in learning English in a Japanese university EFL setting. It also aims to ascertain the factors in learner autonomy support that account for its relationship with a high…
The purpose of the present study is to investigate effective ways of designing taskbased collaborative writing lessons in the EFL classroom in South Korea. In this research, a group of 11/12 year-old children were involved in repeating three different writing tasks three times. …
Morgan (1997:16) observes that any form of education aims to bring about changes in students. It must, therefore, have in view both what an educated person should be and the ideal society to whose relationship they will contribute. Such educated individuals will presumably contr…
This study investigated the provision that students with dyslexia receive in Greek state secondary schools in EFL and if it corresponds with the Education Ministry’s policy on dyslexia. A study of the literature on dyslexia in Greece has shown that there is lack of teachers’ tra…
Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials has caused controversy as well as enjoyed great popularity among readers worldwide. Its influence has created a great impact in the field of children’s literature. The purpose of this thesis is two-fold. Firstly, the thesis analyzes gender rep…
This research focuses on the reflection practices of 45 young learners of English in Brunei Darussalam. The purpose of the research was to ascertain the feasibility of employing a reflection exercise, as a core component of a writing portfolio assessment procedure, in the contex…
This study investigated the grammar needs of Chinese EAP Foundation students and developed electronic self-access grammar materials for them. The research process consisted of three phases. In the first phase, a corpus linguistics based error analysis was conducted, in which 50 …
This study consists in identifying and analyzing the theory and practice of English language teaching (ELT) in Portugal as far as issues of English as an International Language (EIL) are concerned. Through qualitative and quantitative research approaches (273 questionnaires, 22 …
This research is aimed at establishing academic writing needs of first year undergraduate agriculture students in an English as a Second Language context. The research was motivated by the need to design subject-specific teaching materials for the Communication Skills (CS) cours…
The main focus of this research was to examine the effects of extensive reading on junior high school students' language proficiency and learning attitude development, compared with those who received the current reading IR (grammar/translation-based) instruction. The potential …
The central focus of this study is to explore how learner-centredness is perceived and practised by Chinese primary EFL teachers in the recent national curriculum reform in China, which promotes learner-centred ideology in all school subjects beginning from 2001. Following an in…
This qualitative research on task motivation is based on a four-month fieldwork in a university context in China, with myself performing dual roles as a teacher researcher working closely with two classes of final-year English majors (about 120 students in total). Positioning th…
The aim of this study is to investigate the extent to which Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is adopted and/or adapted by Chinese tertiary teachers of English with the experience of teacher education overseas. It employs a case study approach in order to explore the extent …