This study examined the beliefs about English teaching and learning of six Chinese secondary school EFL teachers, whether any changes occurred in their beliefs during the first three years in the profession, and why beginning teachers changed or did not change their beliefs. Data were collected over a period of 10 months using semi-structured interviews, concept mapping, and journal entries. The findings showed how teachers’ learning in the workplace influenced change or no change in beliefs, how their schools supported learning, how teachers elected to engage in activities and how these affected the nature of their beliefs.

Directed Motivational Currents (DMCs) are a novel motivational construct which describe periods of highly motivated behaviour while working towards a well-defined and personally significant end goal (see e.g. Dörnyei, Henry & Muir, 2016). Such periods of motivation are found in diverse contexts and directed towards varied outcomes, yet are uniquely recognisable by the highly positive emotionality exhibited by individuals, who during this time often surpass even their wildest expectations. To date, DMC research has focused on qualitative accounts of the personal experiences of DMCs, and while this has offered a wealth of comprehensive data, key research strands remain unexplored. In response to this, this thesis comprises two complementary studies, each looking at a novel aspect of DMC theory and application. Study 1 takes a quantitative approach to research by addressing questions related to the recognisability of DMCs across continents and contexts, and considers basic questions such as how many people report having experienced periods of DMC-like motivation, what inspired them, and the durations they lasted. It additionally looks at the demographic factors of respondents to understand whether there are links between DMCs and either gender, age or nationality. The study uses a newly developed online questionnaire tool and involves a total of 1563 participants of 71 different nationalities. The results support the notion that DMCs are a well-recognisable and widely experienced motivational phenomenon in society, and indicate no significant links between DMCs and any demographic factors. In terms of language learning, the findings support the assertion that DMCs are found across a wide range of language levels and contexts. Study 2 addresses the practical applicability of DMC theory to language learning and teaching. This classroom intervention study – conducted in collaboration with Jessica Florent and David Leach – aimed to purposefully facilitate a group DMC experience in a class of 16 business English language learners. The basis of this study stems from the observation that within a classroom context, group DMCs can be thought of as intensive group projects. The study was structured around an ‘All Eyes on the Final Product’ project framework (Dörnyei et al., 2016), the end goal being the organisation of a large charity fundraising event. Data was collected throughout the five weeks from personal diary entries and Skype interviews with both students and teachers. Findings suggest the intervention was highly successful in creating a group DMC experience, and significantly, it was also found that students reported notable positive developments throughout the course, both in terms of their language learning and in other key skills. The cumulative conclusions presented in this thesis are therefore highly encouraging, offering strong empirical support to the claim that DMCs are a well-recognised and widely experienced motivational phenomenon which transcends borders and contexts. Results equally suggest that the purposeful facilitation of DMC experiences with varied groups of language learners in diverse contexts – to achieve dual motivational and educational aims – might be a very real possibility. Although positive results are reported, both studies venture into previously unchartered research territory and, in light of this, the conclusions put forward require validation and confirmation through further empirical work. Suggestions for future research are made.

The purpose of this study is to enrich understandings of the major issues encountered when tutoring writing with beginner-intermediate level Japanese EFL students in a Japanese university. Specifically, the thesis examines how students and tutors perceive the challenges experienced in EFL tutoring and the various roles tutors adopt during EFL writing tutoring sessions with Japanese beginner-intermediate students. A mixed method approach is employed utilizing different methods that combine qualitative and quantitative data. Four data collection methods were utilized: pre and post-semester interviews with writing tutors: student questionnaires from a sample size of 24: 30 tutorial observations: and two tutor training workshops (quasi-focus group). Symbolic interactionism (SI) provided a framework for analyzing tutors‟ roles and their practices during EFL writing tutorials. This view assumes that roles emerge from, and are significantly shaped by, interactions in specific social settings. It was found that writing tutors adopt the following roles: proofreader, translator, coach, teacher, mediator, and timekeeper based on their interaction with the individual student. Each role was adopted as a reaction to a challenge but also created new problems. Many of the roles the tutors adopted in this study parallel the research on roles tutors adopt in the ESL writing center, however in EFL tutoring these roles are magnified. For example, in this study tutors play both the role of teacher and mediator to a much larger degree. The translator role however is unique to EFL tutoring. The roles put forth encompass a different way for tutors to think about effective tutoring in an EFL setting with beginner-intermediate students. This study contributes a deeper understanding as to how administrators and writing tutors can better conduct writing center tutorials with EFL students.

Libya is a country which is trying to find its place in the international community. It has a mainly youthful population of about 5.6 million with a median age of 24.8 years and large numbers of young people are accessing university courses. This creates a demand for university places which is increasingly difficult to meet. The recent political changes in Libya have compounded these difficulties. This study investigates the challenges of teaching English in Libyan Higher Education as the country prepares its young people for living and working in a global environment where the English language is predominant. The investigation finds that there is recognition of the importance of English, but the level of language skills of students entering university is well below an acceptable standard, and both teachers and students advocate an early start for learning English in schools. Within the universities the curriculum is not consistent and leads to graduates in English having a limited command of the language. Some evidence suggests that students are not motivated to study English and often choose the programme simply as a means of guaranteeing them a job in the future, or because it is at the most convenient location for them. There is a lack of resources and facilities, with large classes and few rooms for teaching, limited internet and communication technology, and little access to libraries. Teachers are not prepared well for their teaching roles nor supported with development activities, and there are few opportunities for teachers or students to practise their English. The thesis makes a number of recommendations including running summer schools in English speaking countries, online courses with native English speakers, and exchange programmes where teachers can benefit from updating their methodology as well as their language skills. Further recommendations are for the Ministry of Education to have overall control of the curriculum, and for the Libyan government to continue its building programme and prioritise access to technology. One year exchange programmes with English speaking countries would enable native English speakers to be available in all university English departments. It is also recommended that students are motivated by providing courses relevant to them, and that more workshops and activities such as competitions and monthly magazines written by students and teachers are used to encourage involvement.

Although there have been a large number of studies on the use of L1 and L2, there seem to be few on L1 use in Chinese university EFL classrooms, especially investigating the language use of those who teach English to students at different proficiency levels or teach different types of English courses. This thesis aims to analyze four Chinese EFL teachers’ actual use of L1 and L2, to understand their attitudes and beliefs regarding this issue, and their own perceptions of and reasons for their language use, and to explore possible influencing factors. The reading-and-writing lessons and the listening-and-speaking lessons of these four teachers, who were teaching non-English major students at four different levels, were observed and recorded. All the observed lessons were subjected to quantitative analysis with the aim of providing a clear picture of the distribution of their L1 and L2 use. Some episodes selected from these lessons were subjected to further detailed analysis, in order to provide an account of the circumstances, functions, and grammatical patterns of their language use, as well as their language use across different frames of classroom discourse. The teachers were interviewed subsequently about their general beliefs on the use of L1 in L2 teaching and learning. Separately, in a stimulated recall interview, they were invited to provide comments specifically on their language use in the selected episodes that were replayed to them. The quantitative findings show that the amount of the teachers’ L1 use was not necessarily closely related to their students’ English proficiency levels, although the teacher of the students at the lowest level used the highest amount of Chinese in her lessons. However, a noteworthy finding was that all four teachers used more Chinese in the reading-and-writing lessons than in the listening-and-speaking lessons, although with substantial individual variation. The qualitative analysis of classroom data indicates that these teachers switched often at unit boundaries, but rarely at clause boundaries. They also switched frequently within units, especially within noun phrases, and the ‘Chinese determiner + English noun’ pattern is the main one they had in common. Furthermore, the teachers used Chinese as the matrix language in their mixed utterances in most cases, and these mixed utterances nearly always fitted Myers-Scotton’s Morpheme Order principle and System Morpheme principle. The teachers were also found to use Chinese in a variety of circumstances, such as talking about lesson plans or examinations, dealing with exercises, analyzing text, teaching vocabulary, checking the students’ comprehension or retention, giving the students advice on learning, telling anecdotes and assigning homework. The functions for which they used Chinese could be divided into four main categories: facilitating developing lesson content; supporting students and carrying out classroom management; delivering information related to teaching agenda or examinations; and facilitating communication beyond language learning and teaching. The most frequent function common to all four teachers was translation. Furthermore, the study used four different ‘frames’ to analyze classroom discourse, and found that the teachers used the L1 with varying frequency across these frames. Moreover, although all four teachers believed that using the L1 was beneficial to L2 learning, their attitudes towards the medium of instruction were different. While two advocated using the L1, the other two expressed a preference for speaking English-only and perceived their L1 use as a compromise or an expedient. The teachers reported many reasons for their L1 use. The factors that affected their language use consisted of both immediate classroom factors, such as functions of utterances, students’ language use, students’ perceived mood, students’ background knowledge, the difficulty of lesson content, time limitations, teachers’ awareness of their own L1 use, and teachers’ state of mind at a particular moment in a lesson, and relatively static factors, such as the university policy, students’ L2 abilities, teaching objectives, teachers’ beliefs regarding L1 use, and teachers’ L2 abilities. Through its detailed analysis of the teachers’ language use, as well as their relevant beliefs and decision-making, this thesis hopes to make a contribution to L2 teachers’ professional development and L2 teaching, especially in helping to establish a pedagogically principled approach to L1 and L2 use.

This thesis investigates the effectiveness of English language assessment in the Foundation Programme (FP) and its predictive validity for academic achievement in the First Year (FY) at two Colleges of Applied Sciences (CAS) in Oman. The objectives of this study are threefold: (1) Identify how well the FP assessment has met its stated and unstated objectives and evaluate its intended and unintended outcomes using impact evaluation approaches. (2) Study the predictive validity of FP assessment and analyse the linguistic needs of FY academic courses and assessment. (3) Investigate how FP assessment and its impact are perceived by students and teachers. The research design was influenced by Messick‟s (1989; 1994; 1996) unitary concept of validity, by Norris (2006; 2008; 2009) views on validity evaluation and by Owen‟s (2007) ideas on impact evaluation. The study was conducted in two phases using five different methods: questionnaires, focus groups, interviews, document analysis and a correlational study. In the first phase, 184 students completed a questionnaire and 106 of these participated in 12 focus groups, whilst 27 teachers completed a different questionnaire and 19 of these were interviewed. The aim of this phase was to explore the perceptions of the students and teachers on the FP assessment instruments in terms of their validity and reliability, structure, and political and social impact. The findings indicated a general positive perception of the instruments, though more so for the Academic English Skills course (AES) than the General English Skills course (GES). There were also calls for increasing the quantity and quality of the assessment instruments. The political impact of the English language FP assessment was strongly felt by the participants. In the second phase, 176 students completed a questionnaire and 83 of them participated in 15 focus groups; 29 teachers completed a different questionnaire and of these 23 teachers were interviewed. The main focus was on students and teachers‟ perceptions of FP assessment, and how language accuracy should be considered in marking academic written courses. One finding was that most students in FY tended to face difficulties not only in English but also in what could be called „study skills‟; some of these were attributed to the leniency of FP assessment exit criteria. Throughout the two phases, 118 documents on FP assessment at CAS were thematically analysed. The objective was to understand the official procedures prescribed for writing and using assessment instruments in FP and compare them against actual test papers and classroom practices. The findings revealed the use of norm-referenced assessment instead of criterion referenced, incompatibility between what was assessed and what was taught, inconsistency in using assessment criteria and in the unhelpful verbatim replication of national assessment standards. The predictive validity studies generally found a low overall correlation between students‟ scores in English language assessment instruments and their scores in academic courses. The findings of this study are in line with most but not all previous studies. The strength of predictive validity was dependent on a number of variables especially the students‟ specializations, and their self-evaluations of their own English language levels. Some recommendations are offered for the reform of entry requirements of the Omani higher education.

This thesis investigates whether there are differences in language comprehension and language production between highly advanced/near-native adult learners of a second language (late L2ers) and native speakers (L1ers), and if so, how they should be characterised. In previous literature (Sorace & Filiaci 2006, Sorace 2011 inter alia), nonconvergence of the near-native grammar with the native grammar has been identified as most likely to occur at the interface between syntax and another cognitive domain. This thesis focuses on grammatical and ungrammatical representations at the syntax-lexicon interface between very advanced/near-native Dutch learners of English and native speakers of English. We tested differences in syntactic knowledge representations and real-time processing through eight experiments. By syntactic knowledge representations we mean the explicit knowledge of grammar (specifically word order dependence on lexical-semantics) that a language user exhibits in their language comprehension and production, and by realtime processing we mean the language user’s ability to access implicit and explicit knowledge of grammar under time and/or memory constraints in their language comprehension and production. To test for systematic differences at the syntax-lexicon interface we examined linguistic structures in English that differ minimally in word order from Dutch depending on the presence or absence of certain lexical items and their characteristics; these were possessive structures with animate and inanimate possessors and possessums in either a prenominal or postnominal construction, preposed adverbials of location (locative inversions) followed by either unergative or unaccusative verbs, and preposed adverbials of manner containing a negative polarity item (negative inversions) or positive polarity item followed by either V2 or V3 word order. We used Magnitude Estimation Tasks and Speeded Grammaticality Judgement Tasks to test comprehension, and Syntactic Priming (with/without extra memory load) and Speeded Sentence Completion Tasks to test production. We found evidence for differences in comprehension and production between very advanced, near-native Dutch L2ers and native speakers of English, and that these differences appear to be associated with processing rather than with competence. Dutch L2ers differed from English L1ers with respect to preferences in word order of possessive structures and after preposed adverbials of manner. However, these groups did not differ in production and comprehension with respect to transitivity in locative inversions. We conclude that even among highly advanced to near-native late learners of a second language there may be non-convergence of the L2 grammar. Such non-convergence need not coincide with the L1 grammar but may rather be a result of over-applying linguistic L2 knowledge. Thus, very advanced to near-native L2ers still have access to limited (meta)linguistic resources that under time and memory constraints may result in ungrammatical language comprehension and/or production at the syntax-lexicon interface. In sum, in explaining interface phenomena, the results of this study provide evidence for a processing account over a representational account, i.e. Dutch L2ers showed they possess grammatical knowledge of the specific L2 linguistic structures in comprehension and production, but over-applied this knowledge in exceptional cases under time and/or memory pressure. We suggest that current bilingual production models focus more on working memory by including a separate memory component to such models and conducting empirical research to test its influence on L2 production and comprehension.

Previous research has shown that the English article system poses a great challenge to second language learners of English. Thus, this current study aims at understanding the difficulties first year Libyan students have in acquiring the English article system by using the following three steps. First, the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) was adopted to compare the article system in both English and Arabic. This procedure was employed in order to predict the difficulties that Libyan learners might be confronted by. Therefore, based on CAH, several difficulties were predicted. Moreover, because there are different opinions between researchers from the Arabic world and those from the west regarding the effect of L1 in the acquisition of grammatical items, this study tests what role L1 may play when L2 Libyan learners of English acquire the English article system. The second part aims to investigate the effectiveness of two kinds of article instruction: an implicit teaching strategy (i.e. textual enhanced input) and an explicit teaching strategy (deductive teaching) with an evaluation of the long-term effects. These teaching strategies were compared in order to: 1. Measure the effectiveness in using the English article system appropriately, 2. Measure grammatical development using t-unit, 3. Measure lexical diversity using TTR. The experiment was administrated to three groups of ESL first year students at Garyounis University in Libya. One group (TEI) received instructions based on an input enhancement strategy. In order to direct the learners’ attention to the target features, the researcher manipulated the learners’ input with the aim of provoking development by deliberately engaging awareness and trying to increase the learners’ attention. The second group (DT) was instructed based on the deductive teaching strategy. It was instructed in accordance with two popular grammar books, specifically ‘Essential Grammar in Use’ by Murphy (1998) and ‘Oxford Practice Grammar’ by Eastwood (1999). The third group, the (CG) served as the control group and received exposure to language through reading passages. The procedure of this group was similar to that of the (TEI) group, with the only difference being that the articles in the texts for this group were not enhanced. All three groups were given a similar article test three times as the pre- test, post- test 1 and post-test 2. The pre-test was given prior to the treatment so that the results of the test served to ascertain a baseline for all groups. Then, eight weeks later, after the treatment was finished, post-test 1 was immediately given, in order to measure proficiency gains; post-test 2 was given to the students six months later to distinguish the long term effects on the learning process. With regards to the effectiveness of using the English article appropriately, the results showed that group DT improved from pre-test to post-tests 1& 2. The scores that were above chance in post-test1 & 2 were better than those in the pre-test. In the TEI group, the scores which were above chance, slightly improved from pre-test to post-tests 1 & 2. For the CG group, the scores in post-test 1 which were above chance, improved slightly from pre-test and that the scores in post-test 2 reduced from those of the pre-test. The measurement of lexical diversity was undertaken using TTR. The results showed that both groups TEI and CG presented better results (i.e. development in students’ writing) than the DT group in post-test 1. In post-test 2, only the TEI group improved significantly. This result suggests that the TEI group remained unchanged after 6 months of instruction. The third part of this study analyzed and classified learners’ errors. It confirmed the types of errors predicted previously in chapter 3: omission of a/an/the, unnecessary insertion of a/an / the and confusion between a and an. The results revealed that the percentage of omission of a/an was higher than the omission of ‘the’, and that the percentage of unnecessary insertion of a/an/the was less than the omission of a/an/the.

Poles comprise the largest group of migrants in Scotland. The Scottish Government’s plan has been to attract and retain them to counter the issues of Scotland’s aging population and insufficient labour force, as well as to promote cultural diversity and tolerance (Scottish Government, 2013). However, research on Polish migrants’ experiences suggests that there is a discrepancy between the rhetoric of retaining migrants in a tolerant and inclusive society and the reality, in which Poles tend not to integrate with the local communities and to work below their skill-set and education level (Kobialka, 2016). This is clearly detrimental to the aforementioned government goal of ensuring their emotional and financial well-being and sense of belonging. The existing, and predominantly sociolinguistic, research attributes these issues almost exclusively to the migrants’ “little knowledge of English” (Weishaar, 2008: 1252), whilst overlooking findings from social psychology that suggest that there is more to a person’s ‘relationship’ with the language than just proficiency. These findings suggest that one’s self-concept, or the sum of beliefs about him/herself, is strongly connected to language and may influence his/her everyday decisions and behaviour (Rubio, 2014). Thus, this current study investigated the experiences of Polish migrants in Scotland from this under-researched perspective, focusing on the relationship between the migrants’ self-concept and the English language, referred to as English Language Identity (ELI), as a concept potentially playing a central part in the migrants’ experiences. Gaining an understanding of the migrants’ ELI was believed to be crucial, in order to determine ways of preparing future learners of English to face their potential migration experience with confidence and high self-esteem. In this longitudinal mixed methods study, 20 Polish migrants were interviewed twice and they each submitted electronic journals, in which they reflected on their language-related experiences. Additionally, the findings were validated through a structured questionnaire completed by 378 respondents in the final stage of the study. The data analysis revealed that the participants’ ELI was a dynamic relationship manifested during social encounters in which they made evaluations of how successfully they managed to express their ‘desired self’, or self-concept, and based these evaluations on their perceptions of the ‘ascribed selves’. The perceived communication failure or success, resulting respectively from discrepancy or match between these selves, influenced the participants’ self-esteem, which, in turn, had an impact on their future behaviour and a range of decisions, including the decision of whether or not to remain in Scotland. This dynamic interplay between the desired and ascribed selves that essentially defined the participants’ ELI was influenced by their self-assessed English competence, beliefs about other people’s perceptions of migrants and their general beliefs about the language and its speakers. The latter, based on the assumption that Native English Speakers (NESs) are linguistic experts and ‘owners’ of the language, influenced the participants’ understanding of communication success/failure and of linguistic ‘correctness’, as well as their self-assessed English competence. These findings, coupled with findings from the fields of social psychology, sociolinguistics and English Language Teaching (ELT), were used to make suggestions for English language classrooms and for general pedagogy in Poland and Scotland to reconsider its content, in order to foster the learners’ self-growth, build their self-esteem and prepare them to recognise and address various forms of prejudice and stereotyping.

This thesis was conducted to examine the adequacy of the skills and preparation of the Nigeria Certificate in Education (NCE) English language teachers as the poor performance of Nigerian students in external English language examinations has become a source of concern to educational stakeholders (Patrick, Sui, Didam & Ojo, 2014). The NCE is the basic qualification for teaching in Nigeria. The concern for the quality of teachers in Nigeria is crucial as the Nigerian government recognized a problem with the training of teachers at the NCE level in 2010 and proposed to abolish the colleges and phase out the NCE (Idoko, 2010). The Context, Input, Process and Product (CIPP) Evaluation model is used as a theoretical framework in the study. The research questions were: What is the context of the English language programme of the Nigeria Certificate in Education? How does the implementation of the curriculum equip students to develop the four language skills? What are the lecturers and students’ perceptions of the implementation of the curriculum and how have the objectives of the curriculum been achieved? In examining these issues, a mixed methods approach was adopted within the framework of the CIPP model, while utilizing a case study. The study showed the ineffective implementation of the curriculum as a factor for the failure of Nigerian students in external English language examinations. The research established the deficiency of the students in the basic skills of the language. The process and product evaluations noted failures in the procedural design of the curriculum and demonstrated a lack of achievement of the objectives of the curriculum. The recommendations arising from the research emphasized an immediate review of the admission policy and an extensive involvement of the lecturers in the future reform of the curriculum. Future research is concerned with an investigation of the measures that will curb systemic failures in the colleges.