This thesis is about two things. Firstly, drawing on Michael Hoey’s Lexical Priming, it aims to extend the research represented in that book – into the roots of the concept of priming and into how far Hoey’s claims are valid for spoken English corpora. The thesis traces the deve…
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This thesis investigates students’ perceptions towards English classes in a Mexican public university. I argue that the lack of engagement of a small group of students taking part in English classes which are a compulsory component in their tertiary program is not a product of a…
Over the previous few decades there has been an increased emphasis on the cultural aspects of English language teaching. However, in settings where English is used as a global lingua franca the cultural associations of the language are complex and the role culture plays in succe…
This thesis is an examination of vernacular literacy in late-medieval East Anglia, using the evidence supplied by English medical texts datable to between 1350-1500- It addresses not only the texts, but also the manuscripts in which they survive and the people who wrote, owned a…
This thesis explores the implications of high frequency collocation for adult second language learners. It addresses three main questions. First, it asks to what extent high frequency of occurrence in a corpus indicates that collocations are independently represented in the mind…
This thesis attempts to reinterpret language learning motivation through a consideration of the possibilities of applying theories of the self to L2 motivation theory. There were two overriding aims guiding my research; firstly to empirically test theoretical proposals suggestin…
In Taiwan, a reading comprehension component is included in the English test of the Senior High Academic Ability Examination (SHAAE) – a national examination which can be regarded as a university entrance examination for students in their final year of senior high. This reading …
This study relates corpus-driven discourse analysis to the concept of collaborative knowledge construction. It demonstrates that the traditional synchronic perspective of meaning in corpus linguistics needs to be complemented by a diachronic dimension. The fundamental assumption…
This thesis examines the intellectual history of male friendship through its articulation in non-Shakespearean early modern drama; and considers how dramatic texts engage with the classical ideals of male friendship. Cicero’s \(De amicitia\) provided the theoretical model for pe…
The issue of teaching and learning communication strategies has been controversial over the past few decades. Whereas some theoretical arguments reject the benefits of teaching of communication strategies, many practical and empirical studies make pedagogical recommendations and…
This three-phase, sequential mixed methods study explores two aspects of communicative language teaching in Taiwanese senior high schools. Firstly, it examines the extent to which the communicative approach is implemented in the English classroom in Taiwan and secondly it invest…
Speechreading is a complex skill affected by both the observer's method of extracting visual speech information and talker-specific variation in speech production. This thesis focuses upon accent, a factor that can influence both an observer's viewing strategy and talker speechr…
Many Koreans not only feel strongly motivated to study English but they also enthusiastically pursue learning the language, and yet when real contact situations arise in which English could be used, many Koreans remain unwilling to do so. Better understanding this phenomenon cou…
The study presented in this thesis focuses on teacher-student talk-in-interaction in three Italian classes for beginners taught by two teachers, one British and one Italian, in two British universities. The aims of the study are to: (1) investigate the views of language and of l…
It is well understood by international students who are studying in an English speaking country that proficiency in English is crucial to success. English for Academic Purposes has conventionally aimed to focus on a blend of language skills and study strategies to support studen…
This thesis reports a study of a corpus of 286 suicide notes collected from the Birmingham Coroner’s Office, with additional findings from 33 real and 33 fabricated notes from Los Angeles. Following some background regarding how suicide notes are treated by Coroners’ Courts and …
This dissertation applies corpus linguistics techniques to reveal patterns in the acquisition and use of personal pronouns. Setting out from Brown and Gilman's mould-breaking study of "the pronouns of power and solidarity", it argues that their focus on the metaphorical use of p…