This study is a comparison of the human presence in the text of Robert Henryson’s Fables , and that of William Caxton’s 1481 edition of The History of Reynard the Fox (Blake:1970). The individual examples of Henryson’s Fables looked at are those that may be called the ‘Reynardian’ fables (Mann:2009); these are The Cock and the Fox; The Fox and the Wolf; The Trial of the Fox; The Fox, the Wolf, and the Cadger, and The Fox, the Wolf, and the Husbandman. These fables were selected to provide a parallel focus, through the main protagonists and sources, with the text of The History of Reynard the Fox. The reason for the choice of these two texts, in a study originally envisaged as an examination of the human presence of Henryson’s Fables, is that Caxton’s text, although a translation, is precisely contemporary with the Fables, providing a specifically contemporary comparison to Henryson, as well as being a text that is worthwhile of such research in its own right. What may be gained from such a study is that the comparison of the contemporary texts, from Scotland and England, with parallel or similar main protagonists, may serve to sharpen the focus on each. The aspect of the human presence to be examined may be seen in the research question. 1. What are the functions of the different strands of human presence in the two texts? The principal method used is the gathering of specific instances of human presence in the two texts, and the categorising or coding of such instances, with the aid of the qualitative-data computer program QSR N6. The human presence was thus categorised under the separate aspects of i) The tangible human presence (actual human characters who are actors within the narrative). ii) The human as social context, present in the social situations and behaviour of the animal protagonists. iii) The human presence as narrator, both within and outside of the narrative. iv) The human presence in the transmission and reception of the two texts. The resulting categories of human presence were used to generate a theory concerning the functions of the human presence within the texts. The findings for the research question are as follows: The human presence in the text serves a far more explicit moral function in the Fables than in Reynard, where it serves a primarily entertaining and satirical function. The less explicit moral function of the human presence in Reynard is found beyond the text, in the reader reception.

This research assessed students’ self-perception of communicative competence in EFL in a Mexican university. I argued there was a gap in the knowledge available in the field at the tertiary education level in Mexico that needed filling because of the impact that self-perception has on individuals’ decisions to act, in this case, to engage in communication acts in the foreign language. The objectives guiding my research were: first, to address the information gap; second, to test the scale created for this study (CCQ); and third, to explore influences on students’ self-perceptions in this context. Self-perception and its cognitive (efficacy) and affective (confidence) elements were proposed as the aspects of the self-concept to be addressed. Evidence supported identifying Language Identity, Attribution Theory, and Ideal and Ought-to Self Theory as emerging frameworks to understand students’ self-perceptions. Willingness to communicate was also related to this research. A mixed methods approach was followed: A quantitative survey (CCQ) assessed self-perception for a sample of first year university students (n=372); PCA was conducted on the scale and reliability was established (Cronbach alpha .950). Descriptive statistics of background variables displayed the characteristics of the sample. Independent samples t-tests explored differences between self-perception and two-group variables, while one-way between groups ANOVA was applied to variables with three or more groups. Effect size (eta square) helped determine the strength of the relationships found. Two focus group sessions (n=5) comprised the qualitative component of the inquiry (investigated with exploratory thematic analysis), designed to explore influences sustaining participants’ self-perceptions and concepts about English in the era of globalisation. CCQ analysis provided an overall mean score (M=2.98), suggesting a moderately positive self-perception among the sample. Contrastingly, qualitative data revealed that participants’ self-perceptions, constructed from social and personal influences, were constantly short of the communicatively competent ideal and ought-to selves. The analysis suggested complex interrelationships between self-confidence and self-efficacy were behind consistently fragile self-perceptions of communicative competence in EFL in this setting. The tension between the data (highlighted by the complementary use of mixed methods of data collection), and the contextual and methodological limitations are discussed. The implications of the investigation include both macro and micro levels of analysis. Further recommendations include longitudinal studies and individual interviews to collect richer data about participants’ personal experiences in EFL. The contributions to knowledge are: First, the inquiry addressed the knowledge gap about students’ self-perceptions of communicative competence at university in the EFL context. Second, a new context-specific scale measuring self-perception (CCQ) was developed and validated for the university setting. Third, I offer a theoretical model relating self-perception, self-efficacy, and self-confidence, and a proposition of the influence of the theories identified on the social context and the self. In conclusion, university students’ self-perceptions of communicative competence were analysed and the outcome showed an overall picture of moderately positive self-perception among the cohort. Further analysis revealed a contrasting story of very low perceptions among individual students and the influences shaping self-perceptions were explored.

This thesis reports on a mixed methods classroom research study carried out at a British university. The study investigates the effectiveness of two different explicit teaching approaches, Illustration – Interaction – Induction (III) and Present – Practice – Produce (PPP) used to teach the same spoken discourse markers to two different groups of Chinese learners at the same level of language competency. It was hypothesised that one explicit teaching approach would be more effective than the other in terms of both short and longer term acquisition and both would be more effective than no teaching when viewed objectively with test data and subjectively by the learners themselves. Thirty six Chinese learners (fourteen male, twenty two female) at the same level of language proficiency were assigned to three groups, experimental group 1 (III), experimental group 2 (PPP) and group 3 (control). The average age of the learners was twenty two and all were taking a three week pre-sessional in academic English. Each experimental group received ten hours of explicit instruction on the target language. The control group received no instruction on the target language. The III group were taught using activities which presented the language in context and encouraged them to notice features of the target language by sensitising them to differences between spoken and written modes of language and by comparing the target language with their first language. This group were not given any practice of the target language in class. The PPP group were taught using activities which presented the language in context, checked meaning and form and provided them with opportunities to practice in class. The hypothesis was tested through the use of a free response speaking test used as a pre-test, an immediate post-test and a delayed post-test of eight weeks. The tests were analysed for the amount of target DMs used and learners were rated for interactive ability, discourse management and global achievement. In addition, diaries kept by each learner in the experimental group and focus group interviews were analysed to assess the extent to which this qualitative data supported or added to the quantitative data. Raw counts of the target DMs and interactive ability, discourse management and global test scores indicated that both experimental groups outperformed the control group in the immediate post-test in terms of the target DMs used but that this was weaker in the delayed test. Raw interactive ability, discourse management and global scores weakened in the immediate post-test but improved in the delayed test, suggesting that the increase in use of target DMs did not have an impact upon these scores. Univariate analysis of the pre- and post-tests, using one-way ANOVAs, indicated statistically significant differences between the experimental PPP group and the control group in terms of a higher mean usage of the target DMs in the immediate post-test, whilst the III group's score did not indicate a statistically significant difference when compared to the PPP and control groups. The analysis of the interactive ability, discourse management and global scores did not demonstrate statistically significant differences between the groups. The qualitative results were analysed with Computer Assisted Qualitative Data AnalysiS (CAQDAS) software and supported some of the findings from the test results. This data demonstrated that both groups felt that instruction on the target language was of value to them and the PPP group found their method to be generally more useful, which tallied with their better performances on the tests. The III group showed more evidence of having noticed aspects of language, such as the difference between the target language and their first language and how these spoken forms differ from written ones, although both groups displayed some metalinguistic awareness. Both groups were generally in favour of practice within the classroom but also expressed some strong doubts about its usefulness and articulated a desire for a different kind of practice to be used in class, based on rehearsal for real world tasks. This suggested the need to re-conceptualise practice within III, PPP or other teaching frameworks.

There is an ever-increasing demand for higher education in Malaysia. In order to fulfil this demand, the government has introduced numerous measures to expand higher education opportunities. These plans have included the expansion and development of distance education. Prior to the mid-1992, only one public university, i.e., University Sains Malaysia, offered distance learning courses. Presently, six out of the eight public universities are participating in off-campus/distance education schemes. The distance learning courses offered by these universities can be divided into two categories: content courses and language courses. Research into the effectiveness of the distance learning content courses has been undertaken, but so far, no research has been carried out on the distance learning language courses. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the effectiveness of the distance learning English Proficiency Programme of one of these universities, i.e., Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, in meeting the learning needs of the distance learners. This thesis undertakes three studies that investigate the distance learners' conception of their learning styles in learning English, their approaches to studying in general and their perceptions of their English Proficiency Courses. On-campus learners are included to enable a comparison to be made. The thesis adopts an integrated approach comprising both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The instruments used are questionnaires and interviews. The questionnaires are adapted from those of Willing's (1988) and Entwistle and Ramsden's studies (1983). The semi- structured interviews are used to elicit information regarding distance learners' views of their English Proficiency Courses. The data are analysed statistically (with the used of SPSS 9.0) as well as qualitatively. The purpose of this research is to devise a strategy for developing a distance learning English as a Second Language programme suitable for university learners in Malaysia and, possibly, to provide insights which might be applicable to other similar contexts.

The aim of this thesis is to provide a detailed account, within a 'systemic' framework of those properties of English sentences containing modal verbs, which will allow us to make predictions about the potential directiveness of some such sentences but not others, about ambiguity of communicative function, and about certain social properties of directives. Part I develops a model suitable for describing all the relevant aspects of modalised directives. We argue that no systemic model so far proposed Is, by itself, adequate for this task. We also show that the communicative function of an utterance is to be accounted for, not at the semantic level, but in terms of discourse function. Illocutionary properties are seen as relevant to the Interpretation of discourse function from the meanings of sentences uttered in contexts. A multi-level model, based on the principles of Hudson's 'daughter dependency' grammar, is proposed. Part II provides descriptions of three areas crucial to an account of modalised directives, using the framework set up in Part I. A network and realisation rules for the discourse level are proposed, and the role of directives in discourse discussed. There follows a formalised account of the semantic properties underlying mood, and the meanings of the modals. In Part III we predict, from the semantics of mood and modalisatlon, which modalised sentences will be acceptable as directives, and which of the acceptable sentences will be classified as orders, requests and suggestions, when used directively In a given social context. We also predict that, again in a given social context, certain forms of directive will be regarded as more polite than others. The results of an informant programme designed to test these hypotheses are then presented, and found to corroborate very strongly the predictions made.

This dissertation arises from an attempt to answer the question whether it is possible to teach conversational skills through literature; and, if 'yes', how any benefit can be made accessible to both privileged and non-privileged sections of society. The stimulus for the present study derives from the view that, in order to develop the capacity of students in the EFL language class, the teaching of language should be taught using literary pieces and should move away from a teacher-centred approach towards a student-centred one. Having used an activity-based and process-oriented integrated approach as a framework, the present study illustrates the impact of the proposed way of literature teaching in an EFL context, specifically in the context of Bangladesh. It is designed to encourage students to experience literary texts directly as a part of a process of meaning creation that develops their thought processes, imaginative faculties and interpretative skills and ultimately has a strong impact on their speaking ability. Such a systematic approach to literature teaching in developing learner's speaking skills, therefore, is likely to enable teachers to have a more student-centred classroom. The present study also utilises the devised teaching activities based on prediction initiating personal growth, in an actual teaching/learning context in a selected research environment and explores students' responses to the proposed approach. The study groups involved in the research consist of two comparable groups: an experimental group (EO) and a control group (CG). The EG was exposed to the proposed teaching approach, whereas the CG followed the usual traditional teaching methods. The data for the study were gathered through interviews, questionnaires, observation sheets and field notes. Qualitative and quantitative investigation techniques were applied to the data and they were compared and contrasted for both the groups. The analyses of the data revealed significant differences between the groups in the nature of the students' responses to the teaching approaches. It was observed that there was a considerable relationship between the teaching methodologies employed in both classes, and levels of motivation, involvement and appreciation of the literary text under study and finally in the development in oral expression. The findings suggested that application of the teaching approach proposed by the study notably changed the classroom dynamics in a positive way.

This thesis addresses a largely uncharted area within language motivation research, which is the motivation of teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL). A qualitative research approach was employed to identify and document different motivational influences affecting EFL teacher motivation. The method of analysis employed in our dataset, which consisted of a series of in-depth qualitative interviews with Greek state EFL and non-EFL teachers, followed the principles of grounded theory. Most of the findings coincided with insights from other teacher motivation studies; namely that the intrinsic aspect of teaching was the most satisfying, and thus the most motivating, of all motivational factors, while the extrinsic aspect both within and outside the school context was one of the main contributors to teacher demotivation. However, the findings have also highlighted an area that had not been paid much attention to in the literature, the temporal dimension of teacher motivation, which plays an important role in the development and motivation of the teacher due to the fact that teaching as a profession is a lifelong engagement. The study has offered several insights into EFL teacher motivation and the results are hoped to facilitate the alleviation of the problem of teacher demotivation and dissatisfaction. The thesis concludes with implications for future work in this novel area of research.

This Ph.D. thesis investigates the extent to which certain linguistic variables affect the perceived success of an abstract. In his opening chapter, the author situates the work as a contribution to discourse theory and formulates a set of seven basic research questions the study seeks to answer. Chapter 2 considers the most satisfactory design for the research. Part Two provides a survey of the relevant source material, consisting of reviews of: the Linguistics and Psychology literature; Artificial Intelligence computational summarising systems; and standards and guidelines taken from Information and Library Science. Part Three discusses the data collection: first, the collection of naturally occurring abstracts from a teaching establishment; second, the collection of judgements elicited by means of a set of questionnaires. The remainder of the thesis constitutes an attempt to reconcile these two types of data, words and opinions. The author draws a distinction between the qualitative and quantitative opinions of the judges (which he refers to as 'external measures') and the linguistic features present in the different abstracts ('internal measures') which determine these subjective opinions. Part Four discusses the data analysis, which draws on grammatical techniques from Systemic-Functional theory. In Part Four, hypotheses are investigated which relate the success of the different abstracts as perceived by the judges to the linguistic features present in the texts. Five different types of analysis are piloted using a small number of texts; three of these analyses are taken further and applied to all the abstracts. Part Five consists of two chapters. The first details the conclusions to be drawn from the study and explicitly answers the seven basic research questions introduced in Chapter 1. The second provides some suggestions for further research, chiefly concerning the collection of further external and internal measures. Finally, techniques from multivariate statistics are briefly sketched as a means of reconciling the two types of measure in the future. Abstract 2 This Ph.D. thesis investigates the extent to which certain linguistic variables affect the perceived success of an abstract. More specifically, answers to seven basic research questions are sought. These include: what reasons do readers give for preferring one abstract over another?; is 'success' better explained by correlation with one, or with many, linguistic variables?; to what extent do readers agree with each other in their various preferences? and which linguistic features can help to explain readers' preferences? In order to answer these questions, a total of 42 naturally occurring abstracts were collected from 29 second year Library and Information Science students at Brighton Polytechnic. 26 of these abstracts summarised General Knowledge source texts. 17 summarised Information Science (I.S.) source texts of three different types: journal articles, newspaper items and book chapters. The shortest I.S. abstract consisted of 111 words, the longest 651. Subjective data in the form of opinions of these abstracts were elicited by means of a set of six questionnaires. These questionnaires were administered to the students, to their two lecturers, and to 14 judges representing model consumers of such abstracts. The questionnaires elicited both quantitative and qualitative data. The 8 I.S. judges, for example, were asked to rank up to five different abstract versions summarising the same source text according to how helpful they believed them to be. They were also asked to provide reasons for their preferences. Different grammatical analyses from Systemic-Functional theory were employed to discover to what extent certain linguistic features in the abstracts determine their overall quality as perceived by the judges. Although some suggestions were made to overcome problems with the descriptive frameworks, analyses of generic structure and of cohesive harmony were found to be insufficiently reliable to enable precise hypothesis testing. However, the following linguistic phenomena were investigated more extensively and yielded interesting results: lexical texture; grammatical intricacy and choice of Theme. The answers to the above research questions are as follows. The reasons judges provide for preferring one abstract over another are many and varied; the two most common concern content and what might be termed 'reader-friendliness'. Success in text is a multivariate notion; anyone linguistic measure cannot explain all the variation in judges' preferences. Judges hold widely differing views of what constitutes a successful abstract: scores for Kendall's Coefficient of Concordance, W, a measure of inter-judge agreement, range from 0.109 to 0.597, suggesting that there are different drivers of success and that judges prioritise the importance of these drivers differently. In answer to the question, which linguistic features can help to explain readers' preferences?, the following results were obtained from the various hypotheses tested. Counter-intuitively, it was found that the more successful abstracts were characterised by lower levels of lexical density and were described as being 'clear'. Low levels of lexical density and lexical variation seem to be more the mark of 'reader-friendly' abstract writing, whereas higher levels of lexical density and lexical variation characterise abstracts which contain more information, but are correspondingly harder to process. In contrast to what is claimed in the literature, the hypothesis which stated that abstracts with a larger amount of clause level complexity would be generally preferred over abstracts with a smaller amount of clause level complexity was generally supported. Also, some clause combining strategies were noticeably preferred by the judges~ while others were noticeably dispreferred. However, these preferences were not shared across the different abstract sets. Judges were found to be particularly sensitive to choice of Theme. A new type of Theme was identified to complement the two already existing sub-types of topical Theme, interactional and informational: Themes are to be regarded as discoursal if they refer to aspects of the source material, or to studies which are themselves discussed by the source material. Eight hypotheses concerning choice of Theme were investigated. For example, hypothesis 8 claimed that abstracts with more informational Themes would be preferred over abstracts with fewer informational Themes. This was supported for the Tanzanian set (H8c), but falsified for the other three. The judges seem to be indicating that they deem an informational style to be more appropriate for the Tanzanian source text. The three different types of topical theme serve different functions: informational themes primarily reflect the writer's desire to enlighten, by presenting the raw facts of the message for readers' consideration; discoursal themes primarily reflect the writer's desire in orient their readers, by providing a way of navigating through the various channels in which the information is presented; interactional themes primarily reflect the writer's desire to make it easy for readers to integrate the knowledge, by showing readers how the information relates to the various people involved in its transfer.

This thesis on metaphor and metaphor study covers theoretical and practical issues in the past and the present both in the occidental and oriental worlds. Metaphor in rhetoric, cognitive and applied linguistics is described briefly, mostly as a theoretical issue. It states that metaphor was treated as part of rhetoric in the past, however, recently it has developed more broadly into a facet of human cognition. As a practical issue, professional studies assessing metaphorical competence are highlighted, which inform the measurement of metaphorical competence of Japanese learners of English (Japanese EFL students, hereafter). The author developed her original measurement instruments (tests and evaluations of metaphorical competence) to assess the receptive and productive metaphorical abilities of Japanese EFL students. The tests aims to measure Japanese EFL students' metaphorical competence and discover the answers to what factors affect their comprehension and use of English metaphorical expressions and what kinds of metaphorical expressions are salient or opaque for them. This study showed that the Japanese EFL students' receptive ability was better than their productive ability. It further indicated that the size of their mental lexicons, the elasticity of their linguistic ability, the degree of semantic expansion, and their cognitive flexibility (e.g. analogical reasoning, mapping and networking) were important factors affecting their ability to handle metaphorical expressions. Another important discovery was that L1 transfer might play an ambivalent role. As for the salience and opacity of metaphorical expressions, the degree of clarity of expressions was an important element. For example, the expressions with images easy to visualise were the easiest for the Japanese EFL students to understand and use metaphorically. The highly conventional idioms involving metaphorical meanings were problematic for them to understand and especially to use.

The main research question investigated in this thesis is: In an era when English is increasingly used in international contexts, how relevant are the grammatical findings of native speaker spoken corpora in the ELT classroom? In terms of original research data, the thesis draws, initially, on data from a large-scale quantitative survey into the attitudes of students and teachers to conforming to native speaker norms. The data from this survey shows that a desire to conform to native speaker norms is not restricted to learners with an obvious need to interact with native speakers. The research evidence also indicates that there is some interest among both teachers and students in conforming to native speaker spoken norms, though there is uncertainty about what these norms are, and reservations about whether they should be part of the learner's productive repertoire. The thesis includes a set of materials designed to be consistent both with the results from the attitudinal research and with current methodological insights from second language acquisition research. The thesis describes how these materials were evaluated and piloted, both to elicit further research evidence concerning the attitudes of learners and teachers to native speaker spoken norms, and to assess the potential viability of the materials in the classroom. In the light of the theoretical arguments and research evidence presented, the thesis concludes that it is both possible and potentially desirable to design materials which raise awareness of aspects of native speaker spoken grammar, while respecting that English is no longer the exclusive property of its native speakers. The wider, concluding argument of this thesis is that it is both possible and desirable for the native speaker in contemporary ELT to be an object of reference without being an object of deference.