Recently, issues relating to Non-Native English Speaker Teachers (NNESTs) have been gaining considerable attention in English Language Teaching (ELT), in particular those of their employability and the hiring practices of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) programme administrators. The employability of NNESTs and the challenges they face in the US and the UK have been explored in the literature. It has been found that Native English Speaker Teachers (NESTs) are preferred over NNESTs, since they are perceived as model speakers and ideal English teachers. NNESTs are often perceived as having a lower status in the profession, and researchers have found that as a result of this they often face discriminatory attitudes when applying for teaching positions. It has also been found that when more importance is given to ‘native speakership’ as a hiring criterion, NNESTs have a smaller chance of being employed. The hiring of EFL/ESL teachers in EFL contexts has not yet received any attention in the applied linguistics literature, however. The aim of this study is therefore to fill this gap by exploring the issue of NNESTs’ employability in Saudi Arabia, by (1) evaluating the criteria used in hiring processes, (2) investigating whether the status of applicants as NESTs/NNESTs affects their employment opportunities, and (3) investigating whether less qualified NESTs are preferred over more qualified NNESTs. The study surveyed 56 Saudi recruiters, using a mixed methods approach which included a listening task, a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. It was reported by the recruiters that, in descending order of importance, the academic qualifications, teaching experience, native English speaker status (NES), nationality and accents of the applicants were adopted as hiring criteria. However, the participants’ actual hiring practices revealed that being a native speaker superseded qualifications in importance. As in previous research, it was found in this study that the more importance recruiters assigned to the NES criterion, the smaller the chance of employment for NNESTs. Furthermore, applicants’ nationality and accent had similar effects. Finally, the study found that many programme administrators either directly or indirectly expressed a preference to employ NESTs even if they were less qualified than NNESTs. One of the main conclusions drawn from this study is that there is a need to promote the importance of the academic qualifications, teaching experience and training of both native and non-native speaker teachers.

Motivation has a significant role in the L2 learning process (e.g., Dörnyei, 1994; Gardner, 1985), leading many researchers to investigate the strategies which might generate and maintain students’ motivation in EFL classrooms. Previous studies of motivational strategies have examined the views of either EFL teachers or students (e.g., Deniz, 2010; Dörnyei & Csizér, 1998), and the relationship between teachers’ use of such strategies and students’ motivated behaviour (Papi & Abdollahzadeh, 2012). However, little research has investigated the perceptions of both EFL teachers and students in the same context. This study examines EFL teacher and student views about motivational strategies used in Saudi EFL classrooms in order to investigate potential mismatches. A mixed methods approach was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data in the context of three women’s universities in Saudi Arabia. The initial stage of research used exploratory interviews with six EFL teachers and five students to guide the construction of a questionnaire concerning perceptions about the use of motivational strategies. The questionnaire was then administered to 96 EFL teachers and 345 students. The final stage of the research involved individual in-depth interviews with three EFL teachers and three EFL students in order to further explore key issues from these participants’ viewpoints. The results indicate that the role of teachers in motivating students in EFL classrooms is appreciated by both teachers and students. However, there is a discrepancy in their beliefs about how the students should be motivated. Teachers believe strongly that students are mainly motivated by strategies which help achieve academic outcomes. Therefore, they tend to focus on the motivational strategies which meet these academic achievements. Students, on the other hand, seem to be more motivated by strategies which relate to the actual learning process and promote the social aspects of learning, such as participation and interaction. Students also appear to value the role of social L2 learning outcomes in the development of their L2 motivation, including communicating with L2 speakers and using English when travelling abroad. A key implication of this research is that teachers should be encouraged to develop a more balanced view about L2 motivation and motivational strategies within this context.

This research concerns itself with the exploration of methods used to support student-writers‘ learning opportunities, as employed by teachers and by their students in teacher-student writing conferences; particularly the cadences of role construction and negotiation of viewpoints between peers in student-student writing conferences, within the context of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programmes‘ pre-sessional writing courses in a UK university. The author poses two distinct questions: first, what methods are employed in the supporting of students‘ learning processes in terms of teacher-student writing conferences? Second, what tactics are taken in peers‘ role construction and viewpoint negotiation in student-student writing conferences? The study utilises a Conversation Analysis-informed methodology and interrogates its research data: namely audio/video recordings of 32 spoken teacher-feedback sessions and nine spoken peer-feedback sessions taken over a period of six months. Data analyses in this study reveal the massive importance that writing conferences play in jointly constructing the student‘s critical judgment and knowledge in preparation for academic literacy development. The study explores a number of interactional strategies used by teachers in support of student learning; giving special attention to the ―scaffolding technique‖, and how it assists students by maintaining their interest and enthusiasm for their studies, and by creating a shared frame through the teacher appearing to share responsibility for the learning, like an accomplice to the student. The study also considers the role of student-student interactions in promoting and developing learners‘ supporting arguments through engaging in the sheer complexity of these sessions. Overall, the study suggests and emphasises the importance of teachers and the requirement for them to create and to maintain opportunities for productive dialogue activities—as with writing conferences—by using an array of interactional strategies, all of which lead to students‘ joint and active participation for solving any problems that they may encounter during their journey to higher education, equipping them with all the knowledge and know-how that they need for their future studies.

This study focuses on the conceptualisation of language anxiety in foreign language learning and on its relationship with other learner variables in Chinese learners of English in the U.K. It documents Chinese learners‟ English anxiety experience in the U.K., proposes a model of language anxiety, and examines the relationship between language anxiety and the following learner variables: English proficiency, exposure to English out of class, language preferences when learning and using English out of class, second language motivation, attitude towards learning English, self-confidence, and selected demographic variables (e.g. gender, age, educational level). Data were collected through the administration of a detailed questionnaire (including 120 questions), to most of which participants responded on a 1-5 Likert scale. A total of 177 Chinese students who enrolled on English programs at Newcastle University participated in this study. The data was analysed using a range of statistical methods (e.g. correlation and factor analysis). This study found that participants experienced low or moderate anxiety both in and out of class. Compared with Liu (2006), Chinese learners in the U.K. generally possess lower levels of anxiety than those in China in most aspects of classroom- based English learning. However, the learners in the U.K. feel more anxious when not understanding something in class than those in China. Factor analyses suggest six components for the construct of classroom-based anxiety: speaking-related anxiety; English-classes related anxiety; negative comparative self- evaluation; comprehension-related anxiety; fear of negative evaluation from the teacher; and fear of learning English grammars, and three components for anxiety out of class: anxiety experienced in handling difficult conversations; in routine conversations; and in the conversations with friends or foreigners. A positive relationship is also found between these two anxiety scales. The results show a negative relationship between language anxiety and exposure to English and language preferences, suggesting that the more English the learners choose to use or are exposed to, the less anxiety they feel in and out of class. Language anxiety is negatively linked with proficiency, intrinsic motivation, and self- confidence, but positively related to ought-to self. It is not correlated with demographic variables, integrative and instrumental motivation, and ideal self. Furthermore, ought-to self and IELTS scores were more strongly related to classroom-based anxiety than anxiety out of class; whereas self-confidence and perceived proficiency were more strongly related to anxiety out of class than classroom-based anxiety. This study extends the current language anxiety research in several ways. It explores the dual model of language anxiety by firstly identifying the components of classroom-based anxiety and anxiety out of class, secondly looking at their relationship with demographic, academic and psychological variables, and finally comparing the strength of these correlations in order to reveal whether they are affected by the same variables. These relationships, e.g. between language anxiety and exposure to English, language preference, exposure to ideal and ought-to self, and the different effects these variables have on classroom-based anxiety and anxiety out of class, have been under researched to-date. This study provides some new insights into language anxiety research. The findings suggest that the role of context outside the classroom may be responsible for some of the Chinese learners‟ anxiety experience in an English-dominated environment. Particularly, it can be used to explain some of the differences related to learners‟ English language anxiety experienced in China and in the U.K.

There is a growing consensus that learning to teach is a complex process. It is not only a simple matter of extending the pedagogical repertoire of content expertise. It is also about establishing oneself as a teacher within the institutional and instructional contexts of schools and classrooms and learning the norms of behaviour as well as how to respond to different sets of forces and dilemmas in the workplace. While the process of learning to teach has been well documented in general education, detailed studies on this phenomenon in the field of ELT have been rather limited in number. Further, the learning-to-teach literature has been focusing on teachers who have attended previous teacher education, but has rarely addressed the experiences of beginning teachers who start teaching without any previous preparation for the profession. This study narrates the story of learning to teach within the field of ELT as experienced by untrained beginning teachers in the first year of their teaching experience in Syria. Using multiple research methods such as autobiographical accounts, different kinds of interviews and classroom observation, the study aims to understand how these beginning teachers learn to teach English in private language centres. Findings suggest that the first-year experiences of learning to teach are shaped by pre-practice influences and in-practice influences. The pre-practice influences come in the form of personal beliefs formulated during teachers' prior school experiences. These beliefs are held either consciously or unconsciously and have clear impacts on beginning teachers' current conceptions and classroom practices. The in-practice influences, on the other hand, come from the workplace settings where beginning teachers work. In these settings, beginning teachers encounter a wide range of complications and challenges and show diverse responses to both macro- and micro-level sets of contextual factors within their educational institutions and classrooms. These findings could be used as a point of departure in order to introduce changes into the curricula of teacher education programmes in the Higher Institute of Languages at the University of Aleppo and other teacher education institutions in the region.

The thesis furthers understanding of sociocultural perspectives on teaching and learning by investigating the process of scaffolding in whole class interactions among pre-service teachers of English in the Kenyan secondary school context. While the linguistic features of scaffolding have been previously investigated, the research, most commonly undertaken in Western contexts such as Europe or North America, often assumes the availability of physical tools and artefacts, technological equipment and class sizes more commonly found in such contexts. This study provides insight into the linguistic features of scaffolding in a non-Western context where such resources are uncommonly available to teachers working with much larger classes. Further, this thesis provides insight into some of the factors limiting the practice of scaffolding as a social process of teaching English and proposes some ways of improving the use of scaffolding in terms of the pedagogy of teaching English in the Kenyan context. A qualitative embedded case study design was employed using the case of Maseno University student teachers of English, during their teaching practicum in schools. Research data comprised of: 17 video-recorded English lessons; a selection of Maseno University teacher education documents relevant to the student teachers’ education; and an interview with a Maseno University English teaching lecturer. A microanalysis of teacher discourse moves in 11 interactive episodes, labelled as learner-centred were compared with examples of the far more commonly found teacher-led episodes to reveal and understand the scaffolding strategies used by student teachers to assist learner’s learning of English. A sociocultural analysis of Kenyan secondary school classroom environments, together with a content analysis of the course documents and key themes identified in the interview provided information on the background factors affecting the manner in which scaffolding is practiced in Kenyan classrooms. The findings show that scaffolded assistance in the Kenyan context is characteristically achieved by teacher-learner interactions in whole-class activity. The learner-centred episodes revealed that in response to learner needs, student teachers guide interactions and create dialogic spaces for learner participation in joint and productive problem solving by contingently using discourse strategies. The discoursal strategies found fall under five key mechanisms of assistance namely: collaboration, modelling, questioning, feedback and instructing. Challenges such as: the culture of teaching and learning in Kenya; an incoherence iii between the teacher education syllabi and the prescribed syllabus for learning English in secondary schools; large class sizes and the scarcity of teaching resources were found to have a genuine impact on the use of pedagogical approaches encouraging learner-centred scaffolding. Moreover, student teachers’ understanding of the practice of scaffolding as a process of teaching was also hindered by the lack of theoretical or pedagogical foundation work in relation to a sociocultural approach to learning in the language teacher education curriculum. The findings imply a relationship between the education culture and language as mediational tools in different contexts and therefore the need for a context driven approach to the adoption and application of sociocultural theory in different teaching and learning contexts. Furthermore, it suggests that employing a sociocultural perspective to guide the policy and practice of teacher education could support improved quality in the teaching of English in Kenya. This thesis also presents ways forward for this complex task in educational contexts with large classes, limited physical resources, and a prescribed curriculum, such as Kenya.

Using a conversation analytic methodology, this PhD thesis describes and analyses an interactional practice called “word search” in adult Taiwanese EFL classrooms. Word searches are launched when speakers have problems in producing a linguistic item to continue their talk, which may be completed by speakers themselves or another participant. This study focuses on the instances where a word search is interactionally resolved by the participants. More specifically, it examines how EFL learners resolve their word finding troubles with the assistance of other participants (their teacher or fellow learners) in the classroom. The research draws upon transcriptions of 15 hours of video and/or audio recordings of teacher-fronted EFL classrooms in Taiwan. The corpus yielded 62 word search instances where a learner’s word search is interactionally resolved. The findings show that the accomplishment of a word search is through the participants’ coordination with each other’s action, demonstrating that a word search is a social activity and is collaborative in nature. The findings also suggest that despite their possible limited linguistic competence, the EFL learners are social and interactional competent individuals who are able to make use of various interactional strategies and resources to co-resolve the communication breakdown with their teacher or fellow learners. The findings also reveal that participants in the EFL classrooms use word search mainly as an interactional resource to facilitate talk. But at times, it is observed that word searches develop into explicit pedagogical discourse where the teachers and learners are engaged in teaching and learning the searched-for-word. The explicit orientation to learning is also observed when the learners continue eliciting teachers’ confirmation on the correctness of their own candidate items to the search. Finally, the data show that the teacher can play a key role in assisting the learner’s word search by closely monitoring its progress and actively eliciting more clues about the target lexical item.

There are a number of debates about the role a learner's mother tongue plays regarding the CS functions of teachers and learners in the English language classroom. Among both teachers and learners, there seems to be uncertainty about the use of the mother tongue, which is reflected in the absence of a clear policy about mother tongue use in Saudi universities. This study investigates the functions of teachers’ and learners’ CS in university English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classroom contexts, at a university in the city of Alahsa. It further investigates teachers’ and learners’ attitudes towards CS in the classroom. Data for the study was collected by video of university English classrooms and interviews. Transcribed video data was shown to interviewees to elicit their responses about the functions of their CS, and most participants were also interviewed about this. Teachers’ and learners' CS were analysed thematically. It was found that both teachers and learners switched codes in class. However, the functions of teachers’ CS differ to that of learners. While learners appeared to switch codes for reasons of linguistic insecurity, socialising and repetition, teachers, on the other hand, were found to switch codes for a wider variety of reasons including, reiteration or translation, clarifying vocabulary, giving instructions, attracting learners' attention, classroom management, praise, reprimanding disruptive behaviour, and for humour. The study also found that teachers and learners do not necessarily share similar attitudes towards CS. For teachers, it seems there is uncertainty about the policy of using Arabic, yet with the classroom, the data shows that all teachers have used CS.

In spoken conversation, the frequency of discourse markers (henceforth, DMs) is significant compared to other word forms (Fung and Carter, 2007). Essentially, DMs perform a range of functions in order to ensure that social interaction works smoothly and that mutual understanding is accomplished. In educational settings, DMs perform an important function in providing pedagogical clarification and in promoting effective interaction (Dalle and Inglis, 1990). The present study attempts to reveal that in language classrooms, there is a reflexive relationship between teachers’ use of DMs, classroom interaction, and pedagogical purpose. It examines the ways in which DMs are used and the functions they perform in academic spoken discourse. The data come from nine-hour video recordings of Chinese college EFL classes, recorded as part of a three-year research project “EFL Classroom Discourse Research and Teacher Development” and supported by China National Social Sciences Grants from 2007 to 2009. The spoken corpus is subjected to a multi-layered analytical approach which looks at both macro (text) and micro (word) levels, and which uses the principles of conversation analysis (CL) and corpus linguistics (CA), together with second language (L2) classroom modes analysis. The appropriateness of adopting a combined CL and CA approach is based on a number of factors including the linguistic properties of DMs as lexical bundles (Biber and Conrad, 2002), a recognition of their multi-word nature (McCarthy, 2006), and their high frequency of occurrence in conversational practices (Schiffrin, 2003). Using a multi-layered analysis has resulted in a number of findings which might not have emerged by using a single mode of analysis. The study presents the linguistic and contextual patterns of DMs across various classroom micro-contexts, and highlights differentiated interactional features in relation to classroom pedagogy. This study has important implications for future research regarding curriculum design, EFL teacher training and education, specifically in its potential to help teachers achieve their pedagogical goals.

This research focuses on Native Language Identification (NLID), and in particular, on the linguistic identifiers of L1 Persian speakers writing in English. This project comprises three sub-studies; the first study devises a coding system to account for interlingual features present in a corpus of L1 Persian speakers blogging in English, and a corpus of L1 English blogs. Study One then demonstrates that it is possible to use interlingual identifiers to distinguish authorship by L1 Persian speakers. Study Two examines the coding system in relation to the L1 Persian corpus and a corpus of L1 Azeri and L1 Pashto speakers. The findings of this section indicate that the NLID method and features designed are able to discriminate between L1 influences from different languages. Study Three focuses on elicited data, in which participants were tasked with disguising their language to appear as L1 Persian speakers writing in English. This study indicated that there was a significant difference between the features in the L1 Persian corpus, and the corpus of disguise texts. The findings of this research indicate that NLID and the coding system devised have a very strong potential to aid forensic authorship analysis in investigative situations. Unlike existing research, this project focuses predominantly on blogs, as opposed to student data, making the findings more appropriate to forensic casework data.