This thesis argues that spatial representation in literary narrative is governed by the order of the visual perceptual system. This study reviews three categories of space - landscapes, indoors and the body - within a data set of novels and argues that each reveals a systematic pattern of description. Using Chen's (2005) global invariant model of the visual primitive, it is argued that the patterns found here are 'holes in backgrounds' from the gestalt concept of 'suroundedness'. In consideration of the representative nature of these spatial categories this thesis also seeks to understand how these patterns, as a direct perceptual record, survive translation through the neural processes that support narrative production. Reviewing these neurological processes, specifically, episodic future thinking and language production - it is further argued here that the patterns are not interfered with by memory and language - they are maintained by them. Using the insights gained from these neural relationships this study applies these findings and performs a reading of a selection of modernist and postmodernist writers as a means of re-interrogating the relationship between visual perception and the text.

Over the last few years, there has been an increased interest in how social network sites (SNS) particularly Facebook, could be used for educational purposes. Facebook has been used in the teaching and learning of various subjects but to date there is a dearth of studies on the use of Facebook as an informal platform to support the learning of English asa second language (ESL). This study investigates how Facebook could be used as an alternative platform to support students in learning English in a Malaysian higher educational institution. It is based on the premise that learning is a social process which involves interaction between learners and their 'more knowledgeable others', mediated by tools and artefacts in a community of learning. As such, this study is informed by the Sociocultural Theory (Vygotsky, 1978), the Community of Practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991), and the Community of Inquiry (Garrison et al., 2000). This study seeks answers to the following questions: 1) How did the teachers use Facebook group to support students in learning English?, 2) How did the students use Facebook group as an informal platform to learn English?, 3) How has the use of Facebook group influenced teachers' and students' English language teaching and learning practices? An action research project was conducted for 16 weeks at a Malaysian polytechnic, and it involved a class of first-year Civil Engineering Diploma students, their English language lecturer, as well as the practitioner-researcher. A Facebook group was created to support students in learning the AE 101 Communicative English subject in particular, and English in general. In line with the constructivist paradigm, the perspectives of participants involved were obtained through the analysis of Facebook wall posts, teacher and practitioner-researcher conversations, face-to-face and online interviews, researcher's diary, students' logbooks and ad-hoc questionnaires. Data was processed using Nvivo10, and then coded and analyzed using thematic analysis. Key findings revealed that the Facebook group was used as: a depository for learning materials, a forum for discussing academic as well as leisure matters, a social space to build and mediate relationships between members, and a psychological space to mediate their identities. In view of students engagement in social networking, this research proposes 'Social Netlearning' (SNL) as a way to embed learning into social networking platforms appropriated for educational purposes, and 'Discourse of Errors' (DoE) as the factor that should be capitalized by English teachers when using social networking platforms for ESL learning.

This qualitative study explores what reading strategies are most and least commonly used in Chinese (first language) and English (foreign language) by bilingual or multilingual EFL university students in Taiwan when they read an academic Chinese and English text. Do the students use Chinese reading strategies and transfer the strategies to English when they read an academic English text? Do they use the same or different reading strategies when they read an academic Chinese or English text? This study examined the experiences, perspectives, and beliefs of 130 bilingual or multilingual Taiwanese university students who study in the English department of TW University in Tainan, Taiwan. Questionnaire and interview data were gathered and analysed by employing Change (2010) model of qualitative data analysis, which contains five steps: (1) transcribing; (2) conceptualising; (3) propositionalising; (4) graphing; and (5) theorising. Participants explained that they had used some certain strategies for reading comprehension in order to understand texts better when they read academic Chinese and English texts. On the other hand, the participants addressed that they seldom use the other particular strategies while reading texts in both languages. The findings also demonstrated that the Taiwanese EFL university students mainly employ the same strategies when reading the Chinese and English texts, and they have transferred the Chinese reading strategies to English strategies use, The aim of this study is to fill the gaps identified in existing studies into reasons why university students use reading strategies, that is, to explore the reasons why bilingual or multilingual Taiwanese EFL university students use certain reading strategies as most and least commonly used strategies in Chinese and English reading respectively with explanations as to the reasons

With the widespread use of networked computers and the advent of technology, there has been an increasing emphasis on the integration of technology into English as a foreign language(EFL)writing instruction. The study aims to investigate Taiwanese senior high school students' perceptions of different types of feedback received from the face-to-face peer discussion and in the blog-based communications. Furthermore, the purpose of the study is to seek to a) explore the impact and effect of peer feedback in face-to-face discussion and blog-based environment, b)investigate students' perceptions of different modes of peer feedback, c) examine the way students give comments and types of comments that were made in different peer-feedback modes, d) provide insightful suggestions for implications and future research. One of the most important findings to emerge from this study is that students have the tendency to provide more comments on the local level of writing in both face-to-face peer discussion and blog-based peer communications. However, the peer feedback types emerged from the face-to-face discussion were more evenly distributed across various areas in the writing. The study has also shown that the participants incorporate a higher number of comments made in both peer feedback modes. However, the participants are more interactively engaged in the face-to-face peer feedback activity. Factors influencing the process of peer feedback activity are identified: a) intrinsic factors, b) extrinsic factors, c) environmental factors. The limitations of the study and recommendations for future research are also addressed.

This study proposes that there is potential to better understand the educational experiences of pupils learning English as an Additional Language (EAL) in the mainstream classroom through exploration of the perspectives of their class teachers. Training in English as an additional language is infrequent among mainstream primary class teachers but they represent a central contributor to a child's second (or additional) language development.

This thesis is a large-scale investigation of ditransitive constructions and their alternants in English. Typically both constructions involve three participants: participant A transfers an element B to participant C. A speaker can linguistically encode this type of situation in one of two ways: by using either a double object construction or a prepositional paraphrase. This study examines this syntactic choice in the British component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB), a fully tagged and parsed corpus incorporating both spoken and written English. After a general introduction, chapter 2 reviews the different grammatical treatments of the constructions. Chapter 3 discusses whether indirect objects have to be considered necessary complements or optional adjuncts of the verb. I then examine the tension between rigid classification and authentic (corpus) data in order to demonstrate that the distinction between complements and adjuncts evidences gradient categorisation effects. This study has both a linguistic and a methodological angle. The overall design and methodology employed in this study are discussed in chapter 4. The thesis considers a number of variables that help predict the occurrence of each pattern. The evaluation of the variables, the determination of their significance, and the measurement of their contribution to the model involve reliance on statistical methods (but not statistical software packages). Chapters 5, 6, and 7 review pragmatic factors claimed to influence a speaker’s choice of construction, among them the information status and the syntactic ‘heaviness’ of the constituents involved. The explanatory power and coverage of these factors are experimentally tested independently against the corpus data, in order to highlight several features which only emerge after examining authentic sources. Chapter 8 posits a novel method of bringing these factors together; the resulting model predicts the dative alternation with almost 80% accuracy in ICE-GB. Conclusions are offered in chapter 9.

This is a study in the recent historical development of the English progressive construction. My primary aim is to determine how far usage of the progressive in written British English - specifically, printed (published) written prose texts of British English - has evolved in the last few decades of the twentieth century. In addressing this question I employ a corpus-based approach, focussing on two matching corpora of British English spanning the years 1961 to 1991/92. The progressive will be examined in respect of quantitative and qualitative changes over the period, with a focus on parts of the verb paradigm where change has been statistically significant In order to establish the pattern of diachronic development, the use of the progressive in each sampled period will be analysed in respect of a range of formal and functional characteristics and across a number of text types. I investigate some possible explanations for the evolution of the progressive in the late twentieth century. A number of functional and social factors are assessed, and particular attention is given to establishing the extent to which the theories of colloquialization, grammaticalization and language contact account for the development of the construction

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Language repeats. And repeats. And repeats. Language exhales a repetitive reality that we, as its speakers and writers, are bound to and captured by. The repetition of language is a metronome that chimes a spatial and temporal conditioning, the territorialising performance of an aesthetic experience that is unlimited yet limiting, which invades our very being. A contagious praxis that arranges a material structuring, not concerned with meaning but only its own propagation, language organises an institutionalising ideology of repetition and reproduction which denies ontological potential in deference to the finitude of possibility. A homeostatic regime that we occupy and are occupied by, the material topology of language’s repetition appears inescapable. Caught in a loop, we are captivated by language, a conditioning that pulses and reverberates, structured by reference and deference. But if speaking is mere repeating, the stammer and the echo are a repeated repeating; procedures not of stale reproduction but of vibrant production through repetition. Using iteration against itself, the stammer and the echo present modes of transformative mediality that motivate alternative material and ontological practices in abeyance of language and its regime of reproduction. Stammers & Echoes: A manifesto is an arts research thesis that unfolds the philosophy of repetition in language. A synthesis of Gilles Deleuze’s transcendental materialism and Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction, this text will establish ontological and material procedures for alternative patterns of repetitive speech. In developing what will be termed linguistic materialism and the determination of language as a hyperobject (Timothy Morton), the stammer and echo are proposed as itinerant (anti)methodologies that not only expose the materialism of language but are agencies that provide access to an ontological potential in excess of the possible. This research thesis is also a manifesto; a performative document and an art object. The speculative condition of this research is embedded in the very reading and writing of this text. Repetition is deployed in the making of a rhythmic reading of research, in which circularity and reiteration manifest the material performance of a distinct spatial and temporal experience that reconfigures the difference of repetition itself. This text proposes not only an exemplar for doctoral artistic research, but a manifesto for practices and procedures to be deployed against language and other regimes or ideologies of repetition and reproduction.