This thesis is a study of an engage, study, activate (ESA) lesson of teaching modals of present deduction. The lesson has been taken from a published English language teaching course book and is typical of the way modal forms are presented to teach epistemic modality in many commercially produced English language teaching course books. I argue that for cognitive, social, linguistic and procedural reasons the linguistic forms and structures presented in the lesson are not straightforwardly transferred to the activate stage of the lesson. Using insights from spoken language corpora I carry out a comparative analysis with the modal forms presented in the course book. I then explore the notion of ‘context’ and drawing on systemic functional grammar discuss how modal forms function in discourse to realise interpersonal relations. Moving my research to the English language classroom I collect ethnographic classroom data and using social semiotic multimodality as an analytical framework I explore learner interaction to uncover the communicative resources learners use to express epistemic modality in a discussion activity from the same lesson. My analysis reveals that the modal structures in the course book differ to some extent from spoken language corpora. It shows that the course book offers no instruction on the interpersonal dimension of modality and thus how speakers use signals of modality to position themselves interpersonally vis-à-vis their interlocutors. The data collected from the English language class reveals that during the lesson learners communicate modality through modes of communication such as eye gaze, gesture and posture in addition to spoken language. Again drawing from systemic functional grammar I explain how these modes have the potential to express interpersonal meaning and thus highlight that meaning is communicated through modal ensembles. Based on these findings I propose a number of teaching strategies to raise awareness of the interpersonal function of modality in multimodal discourse, and for the use of language corpora to better inform teaching materials on selections of modality.

This qualitative case study explores the language learning experiences of a sample of Gujarati women in London and uses tools of qualitative inquiry including 20 semi-structured interviews, two focus groups, observation and document analysis. The process of learning English as a second language is explored through an intersectional lens that takes account of gender, race and class and the corresponding identity constructions of Gujarati women. An inability to speak English for these women is further complicated by inequities brought about by classed structures, private/public patriarchy and processes of ‘othering’ for migrant women. This study is situated during a period of both rising nationalistic ideas in the UK, and during a precise moment of cultural nationalism in South Asia which is framed by concerns with race, ethnicity, class and gender which informs the formation of British-Asian femininities. This research supports other work that conceptualises identity as being in a constant state of flux, which is made explicitly visible within language learning processes that highlight identity as socially constructed, contradictory, and fluid. The poststructuralist conception of social identity as multiple, as a site of struggle, and subject to change is forms the basis of the theoretical framework. The concept of ‘investment' is employed to describe immigrant women’s involvement in language learning processes. The findings suggest implications for immigrant language training policies and further research. While the women interviewed in this research experience ‘race’ and patriarchy along class lines, they also face a dilemma of balancing their personal lives and protecting themselves from the ‘corrupting Western’ culture through imposed cultural definitions which might result in them taking up an ‘oppressed’ South Asian femininity. However, with time and age, the women’s subjectivities are reworked through acts of resistance, and examples of subtle manipulation which manifest as expressions of opposition as they perform an appreciation of ‘their own culture’ while simultaneously appropriating white spaces. Here, through this appropriation, the respondents construct ‘resistant identities’ and define a new ‘third space’. The dichotomies between East and West and tradition and modernity dissipate as the women’s agency allows them the actual construction of their identities as they go on learning English and changing their lives. These women’s oral histories speak of the gendered and sexualized discourses of assimilation, racism, and ‘otherness’, as well as other multiple points in which they break down. The conceptual insights gained from studying these Gujarati women are plentiful.

Although the significant influence of lecturers’ beliefs on their practices in the classroom is well known, not much is known about teachers’ beliefs and the extent to which they influence reading instructional techniques (Woods, 2006). Furthermore, no comprehensive studies have been carried out in the context of Libyan universities, where lecturers in English are non-native speakers of the language and have only minimal resources and limited access to published research and scholarship regarding this topic. The present qualitative study aims to fill this gap in knowledge, considering contextual factors such as limited access to expert knowledge, a fixed curriculum, time restrictions and the isolation of lecturers, in an analysis of the beliefs that lecturers in English hold and the correspondence between these beliefs and their teaching practices. The study explores the factors that shape lecturers’ beliefs and examines the relationship between their beliefs and practices. Twenty-three unstructured observation sessions were conducted with male and female lecturers teaching English reading. Each class was observed 3 times, giving a total of 69 classes. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty male and female lecturers. The observation and interview data were analysed inspired by grounded theory. The findings revealed that lecturers held a variety of beliefs, and these did not always inform their practices in the classroom. This study provides a more in-depth understanding of the multifaceted relationship between what lecturers believe and what they practise regarding the teaching of English reading. The study acknowledges the themes of the differences and similarities between lecturers’ beliefs and practices, with observations such as ‘lecturers knew, but did not do’; ‘lecturers did, but were not aware that they did’; and ‘lecturers did, and they knew’. In addition, the study demonstrates that correspondence between beliefs and practices does not necessarily result in positive pedagogical consequences, while a lack of such correspondence may not have negative results. The research also reveals that, irrespective of the relationships between beliefs and practices, the underpinning rationales are linked to the complex relationship between lecturers’ beliefs and practices and a range of other factors. The findings of this study could be of benefit to both current and future EFL lecturers of reading and should also provide directions for further research in this field.

The object of the research reported in this thesis was to investigate the effects of word characteristics on children's reading performance. The experiments investigating word imagery and age of acquisition showed that imagery was a highly significant word characteristic for less skilled readers. There was an age of acquisition effect which was inversely correlated with reading ability. Probabilistic measures of orthographic regularity (such as Initial Bigram Frequency and Versatility and First Order approximation to English) were shown to be significant predictors of reading for good and poor readers and lexical decision performance for average readers. It also appeared that as reading ability improved, word properties such as the Orthographic Neighbour Ratio, which takes into account neighourhood size and frequency affected reading accuracy in the good and average reader in the lexical decision task. Other measures of orthographic regularity-orthographic neighbourhood size and body type were also shown to affect reading accuracy although effects appeared less marked for skilled readers. The regularity effect was seen to be dependent upon hostility and frequency of word neighbours, and the frequency of the target word itself, rather than due to a regularity-irregularity dichotomy.

This thesis explores the social construction of classed, ‘raced’ and gendered identities of Bengali female learners of ESOL (English for Speakers of other languages) from a post-structuralist feminist position. My research is conducted within the post-compulsory educational context, exploring how Bengali women construct identities in relation to educational experiences of learning English as a second language, and considering how Bengali women are positioned, in turn, by contemporary popular, academic and political discourses. This study is intended to contribute to creating ‘a third space’, within which shifts in cultural meanings that occur through colonialisation and diaspora, offer possibilities for reworking and resisting notions of passivity, inactivity and docility assigned to women within popular and some white academic discourses (Hall, 1992; Khan, 1998; Gilroy, 1992; Spivak, 1999). To open up spaces for non-hegemonic readings of Bengali femininities I identified discursive strategies actively employed by Bengali women to trouble/unsettle dominant discourses that reduce Bengali women to ‘docile bodies’ (Foucault, 1979). Applying a feminist post-structuralist framework has illuminated differences and similarities between, and within, Bengali women’s accounts of ESOL education, to substantiate the view that there is no one truth and no unitary subject. I also draw upon post-colonial, black feminist perspectives to argue that the voices from the margins that have traditionally been excluded from the knowledge making processes can bring into dispute the current discourses about ’race’, class, gender, culture, religion, patriarchy and femininity. The research was undertaken at two educational sites in East and central London over five years. In total, 20 Bengali female learners of ESOL participated in life history interviews over the period of 2 years. The sample was diverse in terms of age, class, education, employment, marital and maternal status. In addition, I also conducted one-to-one interviews with two members of teaching staff per institution. I do not present my interpretations of Bengali female accounts of employment and education as ‘truth’ since post-structuralist approaches challenge the notion of singular truth for all South Asian women. Rather I present these accounts as alternative truths which expand and challenge deep-seated inequalities that position South Asian women as passive victims within existing, dominant oppressive discourses.