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 suggesting that the concept of an ideal L2 self may represent a more effective base for understanding L2 motivation, and secondly to explore the possibilities suggested by this approach within the context of the Japanese English learning context. The study was designed using a mixed methods approach, with a primary quantitative research instrument being supported by secondary qualitative data. The main quantitative instrument was a large-scale (n= 2,397) nationwide attitudinal questionnaire. The qualitative data was collected from three sets of semi-structured interviews with a total of 23 learners of English in Japan. Analysis of the quantitative data provided convincing support for claims that the ideal L2 self represents a viable and improved base from which to understand the motivation to learn English. The data showed the ideal L2 self to be the central element of the learner's sense of emotional identification with the values associated with a language and its speakers and to be one of the principal variables affecting efforts to learn. The research also found that in the Japanese English learning context, a significant factor in the construction of learners' ideal L2 self beliefs and motivated behaviour was perceived conflicts between national identity beliefs and English abilities; conflicts which manifested themselves in the provision of English education and learners' immediate social relationships.

This longitudinal qualitative study concerns the investigation of the impact of a professional development (PD) programme conducted at an English department in Thailand. The PD programme was carried out as a series of nine in-service workshops with five non-native English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers in the English Department. The workshops aimed to provide these teachers with theoretical and practical understanding of performance-based language assessment with a focus on the rating process. In the investigation of the impact of the PD on these teachers, individual and focus group interviews were used as the research methods. From the analysis of the data, guided by Grounded Theory, the findings show that the PD programme had a positive impact on the teachers who participated in the workshops. These teachers have become aware of their rating styles, established their own consistent rating styles, become confident when rating students’ performances, become critical to the assessment practices, realised roles of teachers in assessment, and recognised possibilities of changes in assessment. In other words, they have become more self-consistent when rating their students’ performances and they have become more critical to the assessment being used in the department. The insights gained from this research pose the implications for professional development, indigenous rating criteria and collaborative action research.

The research described in this thesis reports on a 10-month quantitative/qualitative classroom-based study, carried out at a Japanese university, investigating the potential of authentic materials to develop learners’ communicative competence. It was hypothesised that the ‘richer’ input provided by authentic materials, combined with appropriate awareness-raising activities, would be better able to develop a range of communicative competencies in learners (linguistic, pragmalinguistic, sociopragmatic, strategic and discourse competences). Ninety-two 2nd year English major students, of similar proficiency levels, were assigned to either a control or experimental group for the period of the trial. The control group received input from two textbooks commonly used in Japanese universities, while the experimental group received input from authentic materials (films, documentaries, ‘reality shows’, TV comedies, web-based sources, home-produced video of native speakers, songs, novels and newspaper articles), designed to allow students to ‘notice’ features of the discourse which could help them develop some aspect of their communicative competence. The hypothesis was tested with a batch of eight pre/postcourse measures, designed to tap into different aspects of learners’ communicative competence or language skills: a) Listening; b) Pronunciation; c) ‘C’-Test; d) Grammar; e) Vocabulary; f) Discourse completion task (DCT); g) IELTS oral interview; h) Student-student role-play. These were supported with qualitative results from learners’ diaries, case-study interviews with subjects from both groups and transcripts of classroom interaction. Univariate analysis of the pre/post-course tests, using ANCOVA, indicated statistically significant differences between the two treatment groups, with the experimental group out-performing the control group in five of the eight communicative competence measures. The qualitative results of the trial helped to account for these differences in performance, suggesting that the authentic materials, and their associated tasks, allowed learners to notice a wider range of discourse features than those generally available in textbook input. They also indicated a clear preference in the experimental group for authentic materials over textbooks, suggesting that learners found them more interesting, varied and challenging, and better able to meet their perceived future language needs. Finally, the qualitative results demonstrated that, for learners, social goals often override instructional goals in the classroom, suggesting that classroom-based research benefits from both an emic and etic perspective in order to fully account for results.

This study explores the potential of teaching intercultural competence in foreign language courses through the example of a pedagogical experience in a higher education institution. Language research increasingly acknowledges the intercultural dimension of foreign language education and foreign language teachers’ social and moral responsibilities. Successful intercultural interactions presuppose unprejudiced attitudes, hence learners’ intercultural competence: tolerance and understanding of other cultures as well as cultural self-awareness. Intercultural communicative competence can therefore be considered as one of the central aims of foreign language education so that learners can successfully communicate with people from different linguistic and cultural worlds. However, there have been few empirical studies which illustrate intercultural competence with a view towards assisting its integration into classrooms. The main purpose of this investigation is the increased understanding of my practice in order to reconceptualise it as one of a social justice educator, which entails the construction of an understanding of intercultural competence teaching and learning in the foreign language classroom. The study incorporates insights from critical pedagogy, critical multiculturalism, and intercultural competence theories and examines the ways in which the research process has influenced and reshaped my practice, paving the way forward to further improvements for the future. During a classroom-based study over two academic semesters, I created an intercultural syllabus for my teaching of an English writing course which aimed to facilitate new understandings and insights around cultural diversity and contribute to learners’ responsible citizenship in a democratic society. Participants included all students who were enrolled in these two university classes. Using an action inquiry methodology, the project was a study of my educational practice which addressed five broad research questions. Qualitative data collection and analysis endeavoured to answer these questions by investigating student perceptions of cultural diversity and assessing their response to the syllabus; hence by focusing on the enhancement of students’ intercultural competence, the study sought to identify successful strategies for teaching intercultural competence. Data collection methods included student interviews, student essays, and my reflective diary. Findings reveal that most learners construct cultural differences as problematic, resort to negative stereotyping, and reproduce essentialised images of the self and of otherness; however, analysis also surfaced a more fluid and ambiguous understanding which portrays cultural others in more positive ways. Additionally, greater and deeper student understanding of intercultural issues is evidenced with reflection on the concept of culture and on migration, increased cultural self-awareness, expression of empathy and solidarity, acknowledgement of heterogeneity within national cultures, and awareness that insufficient knowledge of cultural groups may lead to misconceptions. The identification of ineffective strategies has assisted me in revising the intervention, while the self-reflective process brought to light my own biases towards otherness, assumptions which inform my practice, and ethical dilemmas involved in transformative teaching. Implications include the significance of affective learning, of student agency in the knowledge production process, and the connection of the educational experience to their lives. They point to the empowering experience for teachers of shaping the curriculum and living out their values in their practice but also to the challenges involved in transformative practices, teaching values, and assessing intercultural competence.

This mixed methods study was based on teacher case studies examining classroom practices of four EFL teachers of the same department of an underperforming secondary school in a socially-disadvantaged area in Hong Kong. Beside two international classroom observation instruments used for the quantitative classroom observations, extensive qualitative field notes were collected concurrently. Confirmatory factor analyses using the lesson as the unit of analysis generated a six-factor and a three-factor of model teaching behaviours respectively. For both instruments, results showed strong validity and reliability for strongly correlated underlying dimensions of teaching practices. Considerable differential teaching effectiveness in terms of inconsistency in observed teaching behaviours of the four teachers was noted across the various dimensions and across contexts. The qualitative field notes provided evidence that increased understanding of the variation in observed practice. Two teachers showed teaching behaviours more inconsistent across dimensions and lessons, though their effectiveness in certain dimensions in some lessons was found. Their fluctuating teaching effectiveness seemed to be under the influences of student year groups, class composition, subject content, school policy on learning, rather than class size. Themes emerged from the interviews with these teachers, the department head and the school principal suggested that cultural and school contexts might result in inconsistent teaching behaviours and revealed challenges and contradictions at individual, department, school, and system levels. This study was significant in demonstrating that both the generic and differentiated theories of teacher effectiveness may be required to account for the full spectrum of observed teaching behaviours. It also contributed to testing validity and reliability of two classroom observation instruments as it indicated that the high-inference instrument used by the inspectors might be slightly better in predicting overall judgment of lesson quality, while the lower inference instrument developed by the academics tended to generate underlying dimensions that were more distinguishable.

This thesis is an investigation of how a group of foreign and local English language teachers and students at the Language Department of the University of Guanajuato, Mexico construct ‘culture’. Through an ethnographic approach, with the use of interviews and classroom observations as the means for gathering data, the stories of eight teachers and twenty four students were explored, in order to unravel their constructions of ‘culture’. Given the abstract nature of the concept ‘culture’, critical incidents from my personal and professional experience were used to spark the participants into sharing their stories. It was through the telling of these stories that the thoughts, ideas and feelings of the participants regarding the Self and the Other were revealed. The construction of ‘culture’ was found to be a complex process in which teachers and students struggle in negotiating diverse sources of knowledge—from the personal (parents and upbringing), to professional and/or public discourses. The processes of relativization, recognition and transformation, as understood in the cosmopolitan tradition, were adopted to explore individuals’ capabilities in constructing ‘culture’. When constructing people and ‘cultures’, individuals are seen to traverse personal and professional trajectories, making the ability to relativize worldviews a challenge. Thus, the cosmopolitan imagination, which foresees Self and societal transformation, is seen to aid the individual in effecting the relativization of worldviews, so that recognition from the perspective of the Other and transformation are made possible. Constructing ‘culture’ was found to be a non-linear process, sometimes smooth and sometimes a struggle. Indeed, this thesis proposes that there are many intersecting factors in the construction of ‘culture’: the concepts which are invoked, the processes involved, and the abilities utilized when deliberating over ‘culture’. The individual is seen to draw upon all of these resources according to the specific contextual factors of the intercultural event.

In the context of rapidly expanding English-medium higher education in the UAE (United Arab Emirates), this thesis investigates how a group of native speaker English language teaching professionals perceive the social aspects of the environment in which they are working and the extent to which these perceptions affect the conceptualisation of their professional identities. Specifically, it focuses on how a complex interplay of cultural, economic, religious and political ideologies may impact upon the working lives of the respondents. This research was carried out at eleven higher educational institutes in the UAE and data was gathered through interviews with English language teachers, teacher trainers and managers. The study’s findings reveal a complex, diverse and often conflicting picture of the way the respondents perceive the context in which they are working and a wide variety of attitudes regarding the ideological issues identified as impacting upon ELT in the region. However, emerging from the data was a dominant discourse of fear related to issues of power, religion, gender and money, maintained by uncertainty regarding the extent to which a censorial approach to teaching was required. The perceived precariousness of the respondents’ employment was also identified as the source of practises which raise ethical questions about the construction of professionalism in a context dominated by a discourse of fear and, in turn, implications for both practitioners and institutions. Overall, this study reveals that in a context where ‘Gulf Arab/Muslim’ students interact with ‘Western native-speaker’ teachers, the preconceptions that often adhere to such labels in their respective societies may bear little resemblance to the attitudes, actions and beliefs of the individuals concerned. This raises implications both for the training of English teachers in the importance of contextual considerations and for the construction of the native speaker teacher in the literature.

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 and read them. By this means I have been able to examine the literacy of a group of readers in a specific region. This thesis is divided into three main parts. The first describes the spproach taken, and critically assesses the field of historical literacy before examining the value to the study of modern theories of literacy. It includes an overview of late-medieval medical practice in order to place the manuscripts in their immediate context. The second section consists of a detailed examination of the primary material and presents a corpus of some thirty-seven manuscripts dating from the nid-fourteenth to the late-fifteenth centuries. Each manuscript is described in terms of its physical appearance and the types of texts it contains. Provenance information is supplied for owners and readers in the Middle Ages. The third section draws together these findings in the light of the literacy theories adopted, analysing the information in terms of the types of text included (both medical and non-medical), the types of book (whether basic or luxurious productions), and the types of owner (graduate physicians, rural practitioners or interested laypeople). My conclusion shows that the vernacular medical literature from late-medieval East Anglia provides a picture of literacy that is more complex than previously suggested. Several shifts in literacy practices for groups and individuals can be discerned from the evidence of this survey. The increase in production and use of vernacular texts cannot be simply described as a broadening of literacy and increased accessibility of texts. Rather than a growth of literacy per se, the vernacularisation of medicine in late-medieval East Anglia seems to have been both the cause and effect of shifts in literacy practices. The increased use of written texts in medicine during this period can be shown to be a process that involves participation in literacy events, broadening of background knowledge and the acquisition and development of practical skills in reading and writing.

This longitudinal mixed methods study concerns the professional development of eight non-native English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers in Slovakia. Raising awareness of the teacher's role in creating conducive learning environments has not traditionally been part of the aims of EFL teacher education programmes. This study therefore set out to explore the impact of a 20-hour experiential in-service teacher development course that had been informed by theoretical principles drawn from within as well as outside the domain of applied linguistics, including second language motivation research, group dynamics and educational psychology. A combination of quantitative measures (pre- and post-test questionnaires measuring students' perceptions of their classroom environment) and qualitative measures (interviews, observations, and written course feedback) were employed to assess the course impact on the teachers' conceptual change. The results show that although some traces of impact were found in the participants' teaching practice, conceptual change did not occur despite their positive appraisals of the programme. Further interrogation of qualitative data about the reasons for this outcome has led to the generation of an integrated model of Language Teacher Conceptual Change (LTCC), which accommodates and thus interprets the variable and individual ways in which the eight teachers responded to the course input. The fact that the complex and idiosyncratic growth patterns fitted comfortably into the proposed conceptual framework provides validation for the theoretical construct, and the LTCC model is therefore believed to offer an integrated, theoretically-informed and empirically-grounded framework for future research on language teacher development and for designing effective teacher education interventions.

This ethnographic study investigates identity and participation in a workplace English language training classroom in Thailand. As a practitioner’s enquiry, the research methods of participation observation, interviews and questionnaires were employed in exploring a 40-hour training classroom which acts as a workplace community of practice for both the teacher and the student participants. Through the lens of communities of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991), the research shows the significance, despite common assumptions of shared interests and choice to participate in communities of practice, of gatekeeping and legitimacy defined by the Human Resources department. As a formal corporate training classroom with an outside language instructor, there is evidence of multiple identities and forms of participation. The identities of expert newcomers, semi-expert newcomers as well as non-expert old-timers pose questions about forms of participation, especially legitimate peripheral participation and full participation, in the communities of practice model. Reversal of identities in the classroom between teacher and students emphasise pedagogical roles in the community. Identities are negotiated and constructed amongst the interrelationships of legitimacy, power relations, and social structures of the community of practice. Within the different layers of social practice (classroom, organisation and Thai cultural and social norms), legitimation conflicts arise. English language proficiency, and skills and knowledge regarding the organisation and engineering, coupled with the role of ‘seniority’ in peer relationships expressed in the pseudo-sibling relationship in Thai culture, are common causes of tension. Individual participants must exercise their agency to negotiate their identities and power among these conflicts and tensions. Using both verbal and non-verbal language, language-related identities contribute to identity negotiation and construction. ‘Joker’ and ‘silent member’ identities suggest the use of humour and silence as a discursive practice. Code-switching from English to Thai enables language to be used as a shared repertoire in the community. Specific use of pronouns in Thai represents the identities of classroom participants. The research shows that language use and culture should be central to the analysis of identity and participation in communities of practice. The thesis concludes by discussing implications for researchers on communities of practice, and practitioners in English language corporate training and English for Specific Purposes.