This thesis presents an exploration of the path of writing as a cross-curricular feature of learning in the decades following the Bullock Report A Language for Life (1975). It presents the initial impact that the Bullock Report made on the educational community and the subsequent policies that came after it. It shows that though hopes were high for the establishment of a Language for Life, as described in Bullock, there is little in today’s literacy practice that can be tracked back to Bullock. This research has been conducted as part of a project that combines Action Research and Case Study to develop a better understanding of the issues raised above in order to take literacy policy and practice within the school forward. The research took place in two city high schools. The students involved in the interviews were aged 11-15 and were of varied academic ability. The teachers interviewed teach a variety of subjects across the curriculum. Some have additional roles within the school. The key themes that emerged from the research were:  The National Literacy Strategy has had little effect on the development of students’ writing experiences across the curriculum;  Teachers are significantly affected by exam requirements when planning writing experiences for their students;  There is evidence that teachers lack autonomy to make independent decisions in the delivery of their curriculum. The thesis presents the findings in light of the quest to find what should be done to promote writing across the curriculum. The findings are analysed and new directions sought to take the teaching and learning of writing forward.

Exploratory Practice (EP) is a relative newcomer to the field of practitioner research in language education. Distinctive in attempting to integrate research and pedagogy via a process of puzzlement, it advocates the inclusion of learners alongside teachers as researchers into their own classroom practices. A1though EP appears to be thriving in different places around the world (notably Brazil), it is rarely to be found in the context of teaching English for Academic Purposes (EAP) in the UK. Studies which explicitly include learner perspectives are also unusual. This thesis examines the principles underpinning the EP framework as it was implemented on two pre-sessional courses at a university in the north of England. Two case studies investigating the practical challenges and theoretical implications of the innovation are presented. Taking a qualitative approach, participants (both teachers and learners) were interviewed at regular intervals during their courses and artefacts such as student posters and course timetables were collected. Template analysis was used to draw out and correct themes from the data, and the cases were presented as a series of interconnected narratives. Although the open-ended, flexible nature of EP had seemed inimical to the goal-oriented, highly pressured circumstances of EAP, it became clear that EP was enthusiastically adopted by participants. The findings suggest that EP can be successfully incorporated in an EAP context, but that doing so throws belief structures about research and pedagogy into sharp relief. These beliefs are subject to cognitive dissonance, and are often ideologically loaded, consequently attempts to reconcile them require more thought. Issues of relevance, ownership, and puzzling rather than problem-solving suffused the study. Two options are therefore presented: first, a more politic approach is to reframe EP as a form of pedagogy rather than research; second, more radically, the notion of what 'counts' as research needs to be redefined to allow for more innovative, locally relevant, co-constructions of knowledge

The nature of English as a subject in the school curriculum has long been a site for fierce debate. Given the potential contribution English has to make to the development of the child and ultimately to society, individuals, interest groups and policy makers have for many decades contested what philosophy ought to underpin the subject, and what should be taught and learned within its domain. Particularly in the years following the Second World War, against the backdrop of changes to schooling and society more generally, distinctive models ofthe subject can be seen to have developed. Critical to the emergence of a model of English teaching often called London English, English as language or personal growth - a model that still has much currency in England and further a field to this day - were a group of teachers and academics working together within the voluntary subject association, the London Association for the Teaching of English (LATE). Through an analysis of hitherto unexplored archive document material, supported by data from interviews with some of those involved in LATE's first decades, this thesis aims to recount the history of the Association's first twenty years in existence, to evaluate critically the contributions it made to development of a new model of English, and to explore the potential contemporary significance, both of LATE's work and its ways of working.

Tutors of English academies between 1660 and 1800 are arranged in three groups: Chapter 2: Tutors trained at Oxford and Cambridge; Chapter 3: Tutors without Oxford or Cambridge experience, but apparently endeavouring to reproduce, with some modification, the traditional curriculum; Chapter 4: Tutors constructing their own curricula - classified thus: I. Doddridge and his successors; II. Unitarians; III. Orthodox; IV. Baptists; V. Methodist Revival.(Appendices contain lists of tutors not included in the body of the Thesis, and an original theory concerning the Short family).Details are given of curricula in a number of academies, and some longer original accounts, with some textbook lists, are reproduced in an appendix. Determining factors for the curriculum are shown principally by investigating (i) statements by tutors (and other influential men), (ii) textbooks written by tutors, (iii) educational and other antecedents of tutors. Evidence is given of the educational effect on the academies of various influences, including that of the Cambridge Platonists and those of foreign (particularly Dutch . and - although not so significantly in some matters concerning the curriculum as sometimes claimed - Scots) universities. In more than one case the inspiration of an innovation is traced back to a less-known predecessor of the tutor (eg. Rowe, Doddridge, Oldfield) who introduced it. The part played by the academies in shaping the curriculum of modern English higher education is indicated, particularly in relation to the introduction of new subjects (English Language and Elocution, English Literature, Modern Languages, Modern History and Political Theory), to the reorientation of approach to traditional subjects, and to other matters (including specialization and integration of the curriculum, lecture-method, freedom of discussion, and the instructional use of the vernacular).

It has become reasonably common in applied linguistics and teacher training research, to investigate language teachers’ and learners’ understandings of teaching and/or learning through metaphor analysis, based on the idea that identifying and discussing metaphors can bring implicit assumptions to the surface, encourage personal reflection, and as a result provide some insight into individuals’ perspectives on given topics; however, very few studies to date have begun to examine participants’ specific language skills, such as academic writing. In the light of this, the present study adopted an exploratory stance, exploring seven Chinese MA students’ conceptualisations of academic writing, particularly the required writing assignments/essays that they had to complete in an academic year, by means of analysing metaphors they created in the ‘X is Y’ format (e.g., “writing is…because…”). By examining individual students’ metaphorical conceptualisations of writing over three academic terms during a year-long MA programme, the hope was that the results could not only shed light on how students developed their writing, focussing primarily on changes in their conceptualisations of writing, but also look to see whether such changes would lead to adjustments in their writing practices. In addition, given the fact that few metaphor researchers have argued for the investigation of metaphor-based interaction in class, the study was thus to explore the impact on sharing individual personal metaphors of writing on participants’ conceptualisations of their writing practices. Methodologically, the study also examined the validity of the ‘X is Y’ metaphor elicitation task, by investigating the linguistic contexts where various kinds of task difficulty/failure occurred and offering possible solutions. The present study adopted a phenomenological and qualitative approach and involved two phases: a methodological preliminary study and a main study. The purpose of the preliminary study was to investigate how participants responded to a range of writing-related prompts requesting explanations for task difficulty/failure, so that the task format which led to the most successful answers could be adopted in the main study. The main study was conducted in a context of nine academic writing workshops over three academic terms, where seven Chinese MA students were asked to (1) provide metaphors of their writing via a prompt in “academic writing is…because…” format and (2) share with their classmates metaphors in relation to personal writing experiences. To reduce the incidence of unsuccessful answers to the metaphor elicitation tasks, all participants in Term 1 were also asked to attend a ‘Learning to Use Metaphor’ training programme in the form of four ready-made graduate lectures. Six conclusions were drawn on the basis of the findings from both preliminary study and the main study: (1) metaphors were used to convey multiple aspects of students’ conceptualisations of writing; (2) sharing and discussing personal metaphors helped participants improve their writing; (3) participants demonstrated varying degrees of change in their conceptualisations of academic writing; (4) participants became more sensitised to metaphor, and to thinking critically about it; (5) the use of a metaphor elicitation technique to examine informants’ conceptualisations was not methodologically transparent and (6) training both about metaphor and in using it were important.

This thesis examines the deeper nature of sustainability, through the study of an English language curriculum development project for the creation of a self-access language learning resource centre at a Mexican public university. The research methodology follows broadly qualitative and ethnographic research principles and was influenced by post modern, heuristic and interpretative thought. The overall process has been heuristic, involving extended self-search, self-dialogue and self-discovery through on-going interaction with the context, the collaborators and other types of data. Some aspects of my own journey towards becoming a qualitative researcher arealso described, since this also formed an integral part of the research process. I aimed to create a thick description, through the collection and interrelation of a range of data types. During the interpretation process, numerous concepts and categories emerged as apparently having been closely interconnected during the evolution of the respective project processes, states, behaviours and artefacts. With frequent reference to the data, I will attempt to show that the deeper nature of project sustainability is perhaps more complex than existing descriptions may imply and that therefore existing definitions may be limited. I conclude by suggesting new ways of conceptualizing factors involved in the achievement of project sustainability and some approaches to implementing research in the area. I also suggest that the term “sustainability” may need to be redefined in the discourse of development project managers. Dynamic durability is suggested as a possible alternative, since it includes the attribute of being able to adapt to changing circumstances (Dynamic) yet can still embrace concepts and categories commonly associated with sustainability (Durability). The overall aims of this study are: to push forward the boundaries of existing knowledge and understanding of project sustainability, to stimulate further research and discussion among project managers and collaborators and to support more context-sensitive and Dynamically durable English language curriculum projects (and other development projects) in the future.

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.

The study developed from realisation that there is no information available about strategies or processes in the iBT speaking scoring rubrics, although ETS (Educational Testing Service) claims that the iBT speaking test is designed to measure strategic processes, which is one constructs of academic proficiency. Therefore, the study investigates which strategic processes are used to complete given speaking tasks. This would provide evidence to help in the evaluation of the validity claims proposed by the test designers. Six Korean participants, studying at English-medium universities, completed 2 independent tasks and 2 integrated tasks both in a test and in their class. Participants’ speech samples were collected during the performances and stimulated recall verbalisation was conducted after they had completed the tasks. Speech samples were coded into five categories: approach, compensation, cognitive, metacognitive strategies and feelings. Consequently, the study examined how strategies reported through stimulated recalls were present in actual speech. The findings showed that metacognitive strategies were used most frequently under both conditions. Fair-level speakers employed more strategies in the test, while good-level speakers used more strategies in the class. Moreover, integrated task types elicited more strategy use for both conditions. Speakers reported that they felt significantly more negative under test conditions than in the class. More importantly, two conditions shared 67.74% of the strategy types, and 84% of the strategy types used in the test were also used in the classroom, which may strengthen the validity of the iBT speaking test in terms of strategy use. Finally, evidences of strategy use were identified in actual speech, which can open the way to operationalised strategy use assessment in speaking test. However, the figure of evidenced strategy use was very low: 5.28% and 2.66% respectively in the test and in the class. It is recommended that future research be carried out with a large number of participants in order to generalise strategy use in speaking performance. Moreover, further studies might be conducted to examine the significance of observable strategic evidence in speech, to inform decisions to include strategies in the scoring rubrics.

This study is an investigation of Libyan English language novice teachers' experiences during their first three years after qualifying. Its aim is to inform the development of an induction framework for supporting newcomers to the profession in secondary schools. In this mixed methods study I employed a two-pronged approach: quantitative methods for mapping the territory and to see the wider picture, and qualitative methods to gain an in-depth understanding of the teachers' experiences and thoughts during their first three years of teaching. Quantitative data were generated by a survey questionnaire, while qualitative data were derived from open-ended questionnaire items and interviews. The vast majority of novice teachers in this study reported serious shortcomings in the quality of their induction. Two hundred and twenty-seven teachers from Alzawia and Al-Niqat Al-Khams districts were surveyed, including 21 teachers who participated in interviews. One hundred and ten had graduated from Faculties of Arts in universities where the main focus of study was to develop research. One hundred and seventeen had completed a degree at a teacher training institution. Findings from this research indicate that they encountered diverse challenges in relation to curriculum delivery, integration into the school community and communication with students’ parents, as well as financial difficulties. The key issues that emerged from this research were:• Support for novice teachers is limited, inconsistent and inadequate.• Teacher professionalism requires further development.• The concept of mentoring warrants further consideration to be of benefit to novice teachers and their pupils. This study provided evidence that support at school and district level is essential in order to assist novice teachers of English as a foreign language in their transition from student teacher to professional practitioner. With the aim of enhancing the quality of teacher induction in Libyan secondary schools, the findings of this study have been used to inform the development of a set of recommendations for novice teachers, school principals, mentors and senior staff in district education departments.

L’objectif principal de ce travail est d’explorer la frontière entre les erreurs grammaticales d'une part et les erreurs textuelles d'autre part, dans les productions écrites des étudiants francophones rédigeant en anglais langue étrangère (L2) à l’université. Pour ce faire, un corpus de textes d’apprenants en anglais L2 a été recueilli et annoté par le biais de plusieurs schémas d’annotation. Le premier schéma d’annotation est issu de l’UAM CorpusTool, un logiciel qui fournit une taxonomie d’erreurs intégrée. Les premières annotations ont été croisées avec d’autres annotations issues des métafonctions sémantiques que nous avons établies, en nous appuyant sur la linguistique systémique fonctionnelle.En plus de fournir des statistiques en termes de fréquence d’occurrence des erreurs spécifiques chez les apprenants francophones, le croisement des schémas a permis d’identifier certaines valeurs proprement phraséologique, sémantique et textuelle qui semblent poser des problèmes particulièrement épineux. A ce titre, une classification de ce que nous avons appelé des erreurs d’acceptabilité textuelle a été établie, dans le but notamment d’avoir une vue globale sur les erreurs identifiables à ce niveau d’analyse. En bref, le présent travail retrace donc le cheminement de l’ensemble de notre thèse de ses débuts conceptuels jusqu’à la proposition d’un modèle explicatif permettant d’établir la description de toute occurrence erronée identifiée en langue étrangère – qu’elle soit notamment grammaticale (c’est-à-dire, imputable au système linguistique) ou textuelle(c’est-à-dire, imputable au texte). / The main objective of this study is to try and pinpoint the frontier between grammatical (or sentence-level) errors on the one hand and textual errors on the other in university student essays. Accordingly, a corpus of English L2 learner texts, written by French learners, was collected and annotated using several annotation schemes. The first annotation scheme used is based on a model from the UAM CorpusTool software package, which provided us with an integrated error taxonomy. The annotations obtained were then cross-analyzed using the semantic metafunctions identified in systemic functional linguistics.In addition to providing statistics in terms of specific error frequency, our cross analysis has identified some areas that appear to pose particularly difficult problems, i.e. phraseology, and certain semantic and textual constructions. A classification of what we have called textual acceptability errors has thus been established. In short, the thesis begins with an examination of conceptual issues and ends with the proposal for an explanatory model that can describe erroneous occurrences identified in a foreign language – whether they are grammatical (i.e., linked to the language system itself) or textual (i.e. linked to the text) in nature.