The present study compares the writings of a group of Arab students at the University of Bahrain in both Arabic and English. The main purpose is to investigate possible sources and solutions to the problem of textual incoherence and deviation. To this end, four hundred and sixty composition papers have been reviewed and thirty texts were analyzed in both languages to discover possible interference at the linguistic, cultural and rhetorical levels. The study investigates a variety of opinions on coherence from different perspectives such as cohesion, recoverability, continuity, development of topics, role of lexis, text structure and organization. For the analysis of texts, the researcher proposes and applies a new measurement for text coherence and topic development. The cultural, rhetorical and linguistic background of Arabic is presented as variables affecting students' performance in writing in both Arabic and English. The analysis of texts reveals that repetition, parallelism, sentence length, lack of variation and misuse of certain cohesive devices are major sources of incoherence and textual deviation in students' writing. The study is supplemented by the views of the Arabic Department staff on the quality of students' performance in Arabic. Interpretation of and solutions to various problems are suggested. The major conclusion is that there should be more concentration on the preservation of topic unity in teaching writing. A proposed plan for teaching writing based on the findings of this study is also suggested.

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) course in one of the Kenyan universities. The study was informed by concepts of discourse communities, audience expectations and language use from social construction theory, and insights from the principles of needs analysis and genre research in ESP. These concepts were used to develop a conceptual framework for pinpointing the writing requirements within the terms of the institutional culture. Research methods used included questionnaire surveys and investigation of institutional documents. An analysis was also done of samples of students' actual writing to determine their linguistic and communicative competence. The results of the study indicate that in the first year, students do not study one discipline called 'agriculture'. Instead, they study a wide range of courses half of which consist of basic courses in the sciences from which specific disciplinary requirements can be distinguished. It was also established that students are expected to produce an extensive variety of types of written work all of which are assessed and account for their final grades. The research also shows that students' proficiency in writing in content areas is limited and that they lack awareness of the conventions of scientific writing. There is also evidence that students do not always appreciate the nature of the tasks they are asked to undertake or the audience addressed.

This study investigates the teaching and learning of listening in a Thai university fundamental English course. The investigation considers how listening is taught both in the classroom and in the Self-access Learning Centre (SALC). It takes into account what happens in the classroom and the SALC. It also examines the attitudes towards the teaching and learning of listening of the teachers, students, board of directors and textbook writers. The study was conducted at the Language Institute, Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand. It was carried out through a qualitative analysis of data obtained from: (1) semi-structured interviews with the different parties; (2) semi-structured observations of five classes; (3) informal SALC observation forms completed by the students using the centre; (4) self-access learning reports/portfolios completed by students from the five classes observed; and (5) two documents about the course: the Language Institute Booklet and the course outline. The main findings are as follows. First, the lesson format used by the teachers is similar to the lesson format used in the early days of the 1950s in that the focus was on the pre-listening stage. Second, three aspects regarding the textbook listening activities were evaluated by the different parties: (1) the (in)appropriate level of difficulty; (2) the lack of authentic materials; and (3) the disappointment with word recognition listening exercises. Third, the majority of students were against listening assessment as they believed that they lack the ability to do the test. On the other hand, one of the directors and four teachers were clearly in favour of assessment. Fourth, the SALC was seen as a very low priority as it was found that some informants never or only rarely visit the centre. Fifth, none of the 170 students, including the interviewees, chose to practise their listening skills using the commercial listening materials provided in SALC 4. The study ends with the insights and recommendations for second language listening pedagogy.

Research on second language learners’ beliefs, motivation, and strategies has been growing in recent decades. However, few studies have been undertaken on Chinese tertiary learners of English for academic purposes (EAP) within a broader English as a foreign language (EFL) context. The current call for a socio-cultural theory in second language acquisition (SLA) has also highlighted the necessity of a socio-cultural approach to research on learners’ beliefs, motivation, and strategies. This study thus aims to fill these gaps by following a socio-cultural approach to examining changes in beliefs, motivation, and strategies of a cohort of Chinese tertiary EAP learners in Mainland China. The study is longitudinal and situated in a Sino-foreign university where English is used as the Medium of Instruction (EMI). Data of the study were collected through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews at two stages. The design of the questionnaires and interviews was informed by current discussion on learners’ beliefs, motivation, and strategies in the literature of second language teaching and research. At the first stage, the questionnaire was administered to 1026 students upon their arrival at the EMI University and 16 students were selected for semi-structured interviews. At the second stage, after having studied EAP for one academic year at the EMI University, the questionnaire was distributed again to the same cohort of the students and semi-structured interviews were conducted with the same group of participants in order to identify potential changes in their beliefs, motivation, and strategies and to obtain an in-depth understanding of the nature of changes. The questionnaire surveys identified significant changes in the participants’ beliefs, motivation, and strategies after they had studied EAP for an academic year at the EMI University. The participants showed stronger beliefs about the difficulty and nature of language learning and autonomous language learning, a significant increase in motivation, and a higher level of use of learning strategies. Changes in the three learner variables were also found in the interviews. These changes indicate possible influence of learning context upon learners’ beliefs, motivation, and strategies. The analysis of the in-depth interviews further revealed that these changes were attributable to the mediation of various socio-cultural factors in the EMI setting, including the learning environment at the EMI University, studying content subjects in English, learning tasks, extracurricular activities, formative assessments, and other important factors such as teachers and peers. The interviews also illustrated that the dynamic changes in the participants’ beliefs, motivation, and strategies might be accounted for by the participants’ internalisation of the mediation of the socio-cultural factors through exercising their agency. Based on the findings, this research argues that the development of language learners’ beliefs, motivation, and strategies is the result of the interplay between agency and context. The present study deepens our understanding of the nature of learner development in that it contributes to the socio-cultural exploration of contextual influence on second language learning in SLA research. The study also has pedagogical significance for its practical recommendations for English language teaching in EMI settings in Mainland China and other similar EFL contexts.

The research explores an aspect of writer-reader interaction in native and non-native speaker student argumentative essays. Based on the assumption that writing is inherently a dialogue between writers and readers, this study looks in detail at key aspects of the ways in which Iranian and British students interact with their readers, bring them into the text, and involve them in the construction of the discourse and the arguments in order to contribute to the interactiveness and persuasiveness of the text. Three linguistic resources – interactant pronouns, questions, and directives – are looked at in a corpus totalling 334 short argumentative essays produced by Iranian EFL writers (at two proficiency levels of high and low and two test versions of Academic and General) and British A-level students. The texts are analyzed using specially devised analytical frameworks and with the help of WordSmith Tools, a corpus analysis software. The results reveal that both language groups use the three linguistic devices for fairly similar purposes, indicating the generic similarities in the writings of both groups of students. The findings, however, show noticeable quantitative differences: the British students use questions more frequently than the Iranian students, whereas the Iranian students use interactant pronouns and directives considerably more frequently than the British students. The quantitative differences seem to be related to distinct cultural conventions as well as the Iranians’ overall lower proficiency level. Within the Iranian sub-corpora, Iranian high-scoring and Iranian Academic students use the three interactive resources more frequently than their low-scoring and General counterparts. The pedagogical implications of the study for novice EFL writers are outlined.

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 development of the concept of priming, which was initially work done by computational analysts, psychologists and psycho-linguists, to present a clearer picture of what priming means and in how far the phenomenon of priming has been proven to be a salient model of how man’s mind works. Moving on from that, I demonstrate how this model can be adapted to provide a model of language generation and use as Sinclair (2004) and Hoey (2003 etc.) have done, leading to the linguistic theory of Lexical Priming. Secondly, throughout the thesis two speech communities are compared: a general community of English speakers throughout the UK and a specific community, namely the Liverpool English (Scouse) speakers of Liverpool, UK. In the course of this work, a socio-economic discussion highlights the notion of Liverpool Exceptionalism and, grounded in the theory of lexical priming, I aim to show through corporaled research that this Exceptionalism manifests itself, linguistically, through (amongst other things) specific use of particular words and phrases. I thus research the lexical use of Liverpool speakers in direct comparison to the use by other UK English speakers. I explore the use of “I” and people, indefinite pronouns (anybody, someone etc.), discourse markers (like, really, well, yeah etc.) amongst other key items of spoken discourse where features of two varieties of English may systematically differ. The focus is on divergence found in their collocation, colligation, semantic preference and their lexically driven grammatical patterns. Comparing casual spoken Liverpool English with the casual spoken (UK) English found in the Macmillan and BNC subcorpora, this study finds primings in the patterns of language use that appear in all three corpora. Beyond that, there are primings of language use that appear to be specific to the Liverpool English corpus. With Scouse as the example under the microscope, this is an exploration into how speakers in different speech communities use the same language – but differently. It is not only the phonetic realisation, or the grammatical or lexical differences that define them as a separate speech group – it is the fact that they use the same lexicon in a distinct way. This means that lexical use, rather than just lexical stock, is a characterising feature of dialects.

This thesis uses the philosophy of Jacques Derrida to propose a performative method of close reading, which it uses to explore the relationship between language and identity in early modern literary representations of magicians. It addresses the common assumptions we make about the authority and stability of language by exploring the tensions that arise as the magicians attempt to use performative language to realise impossible ambitions of absolute power, knowledge and self presence. The texts studied are a combination of prose and drama from 1512 to 1607. They are read in light of Derrida’s engagement with speech act theory in ‘Signature Event Context’ and ‘Limited Inc a b c . . .’ , and also other related work of his on the performative foundations of literature and the law, including ‘Before the Law’, ‘The Law of Genre’, and ‘Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundations’ of Authority’. The final chapter also takes in Aporias. The magicians’ trajectories are followed in three chapters. The first is on the founding violences of their authoritative identities. Working with Derrida’s accounts of the law, it begins by describing how the foundation of authority is self-authorizing and therefore performative. It then explores how performative pacts, deals and contracts with the devil are used to establish and authorize the magicians and their supernatural worlds. This metatextual authority is reflected in the magician’s own ambitions for the certainty and stability of absolute power and knowledge. Using the early modern sense of ‘perform’ as to complete, carry out or make something, the second chapter focuses upon materiality and embodiment as attempts to stabilise or fix performative utterances. Fake suicide notes and contracts written in blood are analysed to demonstrate the slip and drift equally at work in the structures of writing and signatures. In addition, Friar Bacon’s enormous brass head with its promise of ‘sound aphorisms’ is discussed as an alternative example of the misinformed urge to embody certainty. The final chapter addresses why almost all the stories of magicians, good and bad, end with their deaths. Following Derrida’s Aporias, death is represented as the ultimate opening limit, which undermines all attempts at certainty and self-presence. This leads to discussion of the other’s role in identity and, it follows, death. The magicians’ ends are compared, with particular focus on the sense of a coming event in the final scene of Doctor Faustus. The use of Derrida’s work to engage with early modern texts responds to a significant gap in the field. It offers original, contemporary insight into traditional themes of power, language and identity that are usually approached from a historicist perspective. The critical-creative close reading describes and carries out by the thesis suggests an exciting way to performatively respond to literature of the past, bearing witness to it but also transforming it into something new.

This thesis investigates the way English L2 learners of Spanish communicate face-to-face with other learners (NNS), and native speakers (NS) by means of communication strategies (CSs). The final aim is to examine the learners’ strategic use of the target language as influenced by three variables: the proficiency level, the type of task and the type of dyad. Learners with different proficiency levels interacted face-to-face when carrying out two types of tasks. 36 interactions with different combinations of dyad and task were elicited by means of video and audio recording, observation of participants’ interactions and stimulated recall methodology. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted to investigate possible associations between CSs and tasks, dyads and proficiency levels in each setting. The major findings in this study indicate a higher use of CSs in beginner levels, which was reflected in the lower level learners’ concern for solving lexis-related problems, and their tendency to focus on less complex grammatical features of the language. The higher level learners, however, seemed to focus more on grammar-related problems, as well as on more complex aspects of the target language. A similar lexis-grammar distinction was observed for the task variable. The open task, a free-conversation activity, involved higher cognitive demands due to the lack of visual support and the linguistic freedom provided by the topics given. This pushed the learners to invest more in the conversation, by attempting to produce more L2 and more conceptually complex ideas, thus making it a more grammar-oriented activity. Conversely, the closed task, a jigsaw activity, resulted in a more linguistically demanding task due to its linguistic restrictions, through the visual context provided, posing more lexis-related problems. Finally, the NNS-NS’s non-shared status was the major influence on the learners’ CSs. The NS – through their linguistic expertise – did not only assist and guide the learners, when this help was elicited through the learners’ CSs, but also triggered comprehension problems because of their more complex speech. The NNSs’ similar status, on the other hand, although also triggered the learners’ appeal for help – albeit to a lesser extent – the interlocutor was less likely to provide the assistance required, and just acknowledged their peer’s message to avoid a communication breakdown and maintain the conversation. It seemed that the learners do not expect this assistance as much as when interacting with a NS, as they are aware of their mutual lack of L2 resources, and because their shared characteristics also promote a mutual, implicit understanding between them.

This thesis argues that British and French novelists and illustrators in the late nineteenth century frequently represent pathological narcissism as a defining feature of masculinity in the period. It states that depictions of men’s illness in decadent and middle-brow novels and illustrations of the fin de siècle do not chiefly reflect models of self-obsessive sickness in nineteenth-century psychology. Instead, they anticipate the early and mid-twentieth-century narcissism and schizoid pathology outlined by Sigmund Freud and the object relations theorists Harry Guntrip, Ronald Fairbairn, and Donald Winnicott. Rather than diagnosing authors and illustrators, or suggesting that the artworks reflect a ‘real-life’ sickness in the period, the thesis constructs a fictional male self-obsession. It asserts that novelists and illustrators portray this illness as the almost inevitable result of male characters’ fin-de-siècle socio-economic and intellectual context. Further, it suggests that the novelists and illustrators represent the whole of society as exhibiting pathological self-absorption, but depict the narcissism of fictional men as distinct from that of their female counterparts, and as varying with the male characters’ class. Artists convey the sickness, the thesis argues, through both characterization and style. The Introduction provides an overview of key developments in the theme of pathological self-obsession in psychology, psychoanalysis, cultural commentary, and literary criticism from the nineteenth century to the present day. It presents the Freudian and object relations theories which provide a theoretical framework in subsequent chapters, and the socio-economic and intellectual factors which fin-de-siècle writers and illustrators portray as causes of male narcissistic illness. Chapter one constructs a pathology of male self-absorption in two novels often labeled quintessentially decadent: Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890, 1891) and J.-K. Huysmans’s A Rebours (1884).The fictional male aristocrats mistakenly believe that their choice to be ill distinguishes them from women and the masses, and qualifies them for membership of an elite. This portrayal of upper-class men’s sickness is contrasted with that of the Duke’s illness in Jean Lorrain’s Monsieur de Phocas (1901) in order to demonstrate how decadent representations of pathological masculinity changed during the late nineteenth century. Chapter two discusses two middle-brow novels: George and Weedon Grossmith’s illustrated The Diary of a Nobody (1888-89, 1892) and Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat (1889). The lower middle-class male characters exhibit the same schizoid illness as the aristocratic men in Dorian Gray and A Rebours. The way that the sickness manifests itself, however, is lower middle-class: unwittingly or otherwise, the men emulate the upper-class male’s illness whilst consciously celebrating health. Chapter three considers Max Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson (1911) and the illustrations and additions the author made to his copy of the novel in the two months after its first publication. It argues that Beerbohm looks back at the late nineteenth century and parodies its satire of pathological masculinity. The thesis emphasizes the fact that men in decadent and middle-brow novels and illustrations share the same illness, even though in the former the sickness is explicitly stated, and in the latter the pathology, for fear of destroying the novels’ light-hearted tone, is only intimated and is overlooked by critics. By considering these supposedly disparate genres alongside one another, I argue, the features of characterization and style which convey male narcissistic illness become evident in middle-brow novels and illustrations. The thesis, that is, interrogates the labels ‘decadent’ and ‘middle-brow’ and thereby provides fresh insights into both late nineteenth-century depictions of masculinity and fin-de-siècle aesthetics.

This thesis is a study of the literary practice of shared reading as practised by The Reader Organisation (TRO) in its Get into Reading (GIR) project. The first and shorter half of the thesis offers an introductory location of the key elements of GIR practice within TRO’s sense of the English literary tradition. The first two chapters thus examine the foundations for the reading of poetry (in chapter one with regard to the Elizabethan lyric) and prose (in chapter two in relation to Victorian realism) within GIR. Part two investigates the actual praxis of shared reading aloud in groups. Chapters three to five provide an account of the methodology and findings of research into the practice of GIR. ‘Bibliotherapy’ is problematised here as a term which, whilst it appeals to the idea of the relevance and use of books, and points to the existence of a place for reading within a specifically prescribed area, also risks narrowing down the idea of the shared reading model. Chapters three and four, forming the central part of the thesis, set out the terms of a literary-critical analysis of transcripts collected from GIR sessions, and outline the discovery within these transcripts of evidence of a varied model of literary thinking prompted by the reading-group leaders trained by TRO. Chapter three concentrates on the group-session transcripts; chapter four on individual case-studies across sessions. These chapters provide the focus for the thesis as a study of the non-specialist responses of real readers to what literature is. A toolkit is offered to identify certain tools and values that are implicit within the experience. It is to be hoped that future studies might refine, correct, or build upon the analyses set out in these chapters in particular through the use of established formal techniques such as conversation and discourse analysis. But the initial aim here was to investigate the phenomena in literary terms ahead of any such alignment with the categories of linguistics. In chapter five the findings of the present study are consolidated through a series of individual interviews with a number of the participants, offering their experience at another level and in reflective aftermath. Increasingly GIR is being introduced as a form of intervention within modern mental health care, and the thesis closes with a consideration of the place of shared group reading within the context of health and the languages of cure or therapy.