This thesis investigates the impact of an intensive programme of English for academic purposes upon the second language writing development of postgraduate students at the University of Birmingham. The study uses a 300,000 word corpus (EAPCORP) of essays from the beginning and end of the programme covering two separate years, in order to identify and measure written linguistic feature development. A multidimensional investigative approach underpins both of the two main analytical tools applied to the EAPCORP, with the basic premise that it is possible to identify register differences between different types of language by the assemblage and analysis of a large number of textual features. Firstly, Coh-Metrix is a programme employing a range of algorithms applied to a series of data bases to analyse the linguistic structure of texts. Secondly, MAT (Multidimensional Analysis Tagger) employs algorithms developed by Douglas Biber and uses an automated text tagger. The analyses suggest strongly that there has been progression from the initial production of a high frequency of features characteristic of speech to that more typical of academic writing. The results emphasise the importance of well-designed EAP programmes especially in uncertain economic contexts.

This thesis studies the place of English in middle school students' educational experiences in China by describing students' encounters with English and their experiences of English learning in both the formal and the informal situations. Observations, semi-structured oral and written interviews are conducted to investigate students' perceptions of English and their reflections on English learning. Open-ended surveys are used to explore the interactions between students' learning experiences and their life aspirations. The study seeks to identify important themes in English learning in China, and in particular, how students' reflections influence their learning and how their experiences shape their perceptions. It attempts to interpret the meaning of English learning at the public and private levels and to examine the convergence and conflict of learning needs and teaching agenda. To encourage the learner perspective in students' own voice in the discourse of English language teaching, the study heavily draws on students' personal statements. The study identified the quantification of education through examination and the mediation of English in changing ideas and shaping identity as two important themes in the learning of English language in China. While students' perception of English as a tool appears highly instrumental in nature, their motivation of learning for self-improvement reflects the dominant belief in science and technology in China. Such contradictions contribute to the situation in which formal learning organised according to the public agenda for national modernisation does not always meet students' individual needs for personal improvement. In addition, learner autonomy emerged as a crucial factor in making English learning a personally engaging and enriching experience. The study confirmed the importance of self-reflection on English learning by learners and all those concerned with English learning.

This study investigates expatriate English teachers’ cross-cultural adjustment in Taiwan. Cross-cultural adjustment theories and the differences between Chinese and Western culture are reviewed. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected in order to develop the framework for the study. The process was examined across three facets of adjustment: general, working and interaction with host nation. The study was based on the framework of Black, Mendenhall and Oddou (1991) and develops an empirical cross-cultural adjustment model for native English- speaking expatriates who work in Taiwan as English teachers. The framework was successfully implemented by means of questionnaire and interview data and a literature review. The key findings of this study are: 1. Expatriate English teachers’ job satisfaction, age, previous crosscultural experience and their motivation for or purpose in coming to Taiwan are the key factors which affect their intention to stay in Taiwan. 2. Expatriate English teachers’ Mandarin or Taiwanese language ability has significant effects on their daily activities and social life outside work in terms of general adjustment. 3. Cross-cultural training for expatriate teachers could improve their living conditions in Taiwan in terms of general adjustment. 4. Expatriate teachers who possessed an undergraduate degree had more difficulties in their relationship with school management. 5. The total time expatriate teachers had spent living in Taiwan had some effect on their job satisfaction and adjustment in relation to interacting with the Taiwanese. Based on the empirical findings of this study, some recommendations for language education institutions and Westerners who are working or planning to work as English teachers in Taiwan are as follows: 1. Those who are planning to go to Taiwan to work as English teachers should receive some cross-cultural training and gain basic Mandarin or Taiwanese language skills before departure. An undergraduate degree is the basic qualification but an English teaching certificate or higher degree is strongly recommended. 2. English language education institutions should offer expatriate teachers cross-cultural training which includes basic local language skills, general information about living and working in Taiwan and the differences in the education system, teaching methodology and management style between Taiwanese and Western cultures. 3. When recruiting expatriate teachers, it is recommended that English language education institutions should avoid those who are including a trip to Taiwan as part of wider Asian travel and who are likely to stay in Taiwan for a relatively short time.

Informed by an interpretive framework of research, this study explores the challenges encountered by six Arab students enrolled at an English-medium American university in the UAE, who are all non-native speakers of English and share the common desire to develop fluent control of the academic literacy practices that will ensure their success in their undergraduate careers. In addition to exploring the nature of challenges the students encounter, the study also aims to illuminate the impact of going through these challenges and the role played by social context dynamics in the development of each participant’s identity. I used frequent in-depth interviews conducted regularly with each student participant throughout an entire academic year, document analysis, and interviews with the professors as the main methods of data collection for this study. The findings highlighted the importance of three factors in forming the students’ perspectives on the academic literacy requirements: the perceived significance of grades, weakness in reading and writing skills, and doubts about the contribution of these requirements to their general academic and professional development. Starting their academic journey with this perspective, the students faced a number of challenges such as lack of time, transition to English medium of instruction (EMI) at undergraduate level, adapting to the changing requirements of academic reading and writing practices across the curriculum, using the library and doing research, and building socio-academic relationships. They tried to cope with these challenges first through studying for extended periods of time, using several corner-cutting strategies, and finally consulting with knowledgeable others and developing assignment-specific study strategies. While going through these experiences did not change the students’ initial perspective on the academic literacy requirements, eventually they got better at responding to these requirements, though they continued to question their purpose. The findings also highlight the impact of the above mentioned experiences on the students’ construction of identity. Their declining academic standing and the difficulties they faced in building socio-academic relationships led the students to develop an identity of deficiency and incompetence, standing in contrast to their former view of self. This emerging identity was partly constructed by the real difficulties they faced and also reinforced by others in their new discourse community, directly or indirectly. Nonetheless, certain literacy practices that they could relate to and that supported their understanding and performance through pair/group work, regardless of the grades they received, helped many of the participants overcome this negative sense of self to some extent. However, the identity of deficiency and incompetence manifested itself throughout the whole study in the cases of two participants who were required to take a non-credit remedial course in spring. Finally, the analysis of the interviews with the professors highlighted the discrepancy between their expectations and students’ knowledge of the required academic literacy demands. It was also revealed that many of the professors were not fully aware of the struggles students go through to meet the expectations. These findings emphasize the significance of understanding the complex nature of challenges undergraduates face and the problem with a remedial approach. Based on the findings and their implications, it is suggested that an inclusive curriculum-integrated model of academic literacy instruction could help English-medium higher education institutions in the UAE to address students’ academic literacy development needs more effectively, thereby saving them from most of the challenges described earlier as well as the identity adjustments brought about by those challenges. Other recommendations include an increased emphasis on academic reading instruction, more effective reading and writing assignments, helping students build effective socio-academic relations and positive identities, enhancing communication and collaboration between English language/writing experts and academic staff in the disciplines, and eliminating non-credit, remedial course requirements for students who are on academic probation.

This thesis develops a better understanding of the lived experiences of NNES teachers, coming from diverse racial, cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and the complex negotiations and constructions of their professional identities against the prevalent NS fallacy in the Arab Gulf states. This study employs a Postcolonial theoretical framework. In order to unravel NNESTs’ perspectives and understand how they make sense of their experiences, this study adopts a life history approach. The results suggest that participants view nativeness as a fixed identity, dependant on elements, such as being born into a language and learning it in early childhood. The participants had both confidence and concern about their linguistic abilities, which indicated that their non-native identity resulted in complex situations for them to deal with. The findings also revealed that the participants managed to find ways in which to inhabit these non-native identities confidently and to construct themselves as effective teachers who did not have to be NSs by nature. The participants narrated that the issue of pronunciation and accent had a significant impact on their professional identities. NS norms in accent was seen as eliciting stereotyped judgements of NNESTS as the inferior Other, and resulting in hiring policies that were greatly skewed against NNESTs. The participants also believed that stereotyped notions about the superiority of education acquired from the Center privileged NESTs in employment and led to the devaluation of indigenous knowledge. The participants also spoke about encountering direct and indirect challenges, which made it difficult for them to position themselves as legitimate teachers of English. They also believed that perceptions about the superiority of the NS would be impossible to overcome in the near future since the language policy of the Gulf states was strongly intertwined with its economic and political interests. The study, therefore, provides recommendations for theory, practice, and policy.

There is no doubt that feedback plays an indispensable role in both the teaching and the learning of writing skills, especially when it comes to a second or foreign language. However, despite substantial research showing the effectiveness of feedback, some teachers do not use the feedback technique to help their students improve on their writing. This study has grown out of interest during teaching practice at university level in Libya. It is common practice in Libya for teachers of English writing not to provide their students with either written or oral feedback on their written work. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of face to face feedback on second language writing in the Libyan higher education context. To fulfil the mentioned intention, a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methodologies was employed. The study assessed face-to-face feedback by assessing whether and the extent to which this feedback technique led to an improvement in writing skills as measured by students’ performance in writing before and after the course in which this technique was employed. In addition, an examination was conducted of both students’ and writing teachers’ attitudes towards face-to-face feedback. This was in order to investigate their attitudes towards the use of face-to-face feedback in learning writing as well as to explore the advantages and disadvantages of this method. The participants of the study consisted of 200 third year undergraduate students who were studying in the English Department in two Libyan universities in the academic year 2012-2013. The students were randomly allocated either to a control or to an experimental group. The experimental group was given the treatment, which is face-to-face feedback (also known as conferencing feedback) whereas; the control group received written feedback. The study found a statistically noteworthy difference in students’ performance between the control and experimental groups. In other words, students who engaged in face-to-face feedback improved their test scores more than those who received only written feedback. This difference in revised writing performance between the treatment group and the control group is attributed to the use of learning strategies for writing and engagement with the learning. These findings suggest that face-to-face feedback allows writing skills to develop faster and more smoothly than does written feedback. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten of the participant students (the treatment group) from only Tripoli University along with their writing teacher to look into their attitudes and perceptions about feedback in general, as well as their opinion on face-to-face feedback in particular. Observation was also carried out on the treatment group in the classroom, with several objectives in mind: to explore how students learn, to see if they engage in face-to-face feedback, and to confirm what they had said in the interviews. Analysis of the findings showed that students viewed face-to-face feedback as a worthwhile experience and expressed their preference for this form of feedback as compared to the written one. The improvement in students’ writing ability was noticed during the xvii observation and in the samples of students’ writing that was collected. In other words, the technique helped in improving the students’ assignments. The thesis offers some recommendations as well as some implications drawn from the findings. Despite the fact that the study has some limitations like any other research, this study is expected to be beneficial to teachers of writing and learners of English as well as researchers in related fields.

This thesis describes an exploratory study designed to investigate the beliefs and perceptions of eight English language lecturers about, and their classroom practices in implementing the curriculum change that was enacted in 2010 at the undergraduate level in the public sector colleges in Pakistan. Research indicates that curriculum change is a highly complex and a multifaceted process (Carl, 2009), and its success depends on a number of features. In this respect, it is acknowledged that teachers and their multiple roles contribute significantly to the success or failure of any educational reform or change. Therefore, this exploration focussed on investigating teachers’ implementation of the curriculum change through an analysis of their beliefs about teaching and learning, their perceptions about the curriculum change, and the issues involved in implementation. My approach is interpretive, and thus qualitative research methodology was employed to obtain an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon under investigation. Semi structured interviews and classroom observations were used as data collection instruments. The analysis of the data revealed that, in spite of the lecturers’ generally positive attitude towards the concept of change and their belief in the importance of English for both individual and national progress, there was a limited uptake of the new communicative curriculum. The study indicated that teachers’ beliefs combined with a number of external factors including the student level, educational culture, examination washback, lack of resources and support, and absence of teacher training could be an explanation for contradictions between the intended and the implemented curriculum change. The study concluded that the needs of the teachers must be acknowledged, and measures should be taken to create compatibility between the teachers’ beliefs, contextual factors and the reform policies. Although the study does not provide any explicit solutions to the problem of change and reform implementation, the insights revealed significant implications, clarified some critical issues, and offered some recommendations which might prove beneficial not only for curriculum planning and implementation in the future, but could also be useful in guiding those involved in the present curriculum change. Important areas were also suggested for further research in the field.

Over the past few decades, Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) has come into existence as a further development of the communicative approach. There have been some theoretical arguments over the merits of TBLT, and TBLT has taken a variety of different forms. However, a number of empirical studies confirm the feasibility of TBLT under appropriate conditions, and demonstrate its pedagogic effectiveness in ESP settings. To date, there has been no application of TBLT in professional communication courses in English for health science students in Thailand. This thesis investigated the potential of TBLT in this setting, to address a number of known problems with the development of spoken English within ESP in Thai higher education. This study was designed as a teaching intervention, conducted with a group of health science students. An action research design was followed, and both qualitative and quantitative data were obtained in the current study concerning the instructional process, ongoing student learning, and final learning outcomes. Thirty-one second year nursing students from School of Nursing, University of Northern Thailand (a pseudonym), participated in this study. All students attended a 12-week TBLT in Professional English course designed and taught by the researcher, and the central feature of the course was the requirement for students to perform oral role-play tasks over twelve weeks. Data were collected via (1) pre-and post-listening comprehension tests, (2) pre-and post-role play tasks, (3) longitudinal student case studies (4) repeated in-sessional questionnaires, (5) a post-sessional questionnaire, (6) an in-sessional group interview, and (7) teacher journal. The results from the pre- and post-listening comprehension tests and pre-and post-role play tasks showed that the students significantly increased their listening comprehension scores and used more communication skills in the interaction between nurses and patient in the post-role play. The case study results also indicate that individual students increased their use of communication skills, grammatical structures and lexical variety over time, as well as being more confident and adventurous with spoken language use. The positive outcomes of professional TBLT were supported by the findings of the in-sessional questionnaire, post-sessional questionnaire, in-sessional group interviews and teacher journal, which demonstrated very positive opinions towards the implementation of professional TBLT. Implications are drawn and recommendations made for further research and development to promote the fuller application of TBLT in ESP settings.

Over the last two decades, research has exposed the need for new responses to English in various regions of the world, raising many critical issues. Recent English as a Lingua Franca (ELF)-oriented research deals with English in Asian contexts; however there seems to be insufficient research related to South Korea and, especially, Korean postgraduate-level students’ orientations to English. To help address this gap, this PhD thesis reports research into changes to South Korean postgraduate students’ use of and feelings about English during their study abroad in the UK. Explorations and discussions of the findings of this study shed light on the students’ orientations and attitudes to English before coming to the UK, how their attitudes and beliefs adjusted over the course of an academic year, and the factors that played a part in these changes. This research produces a comprehensive study of Korean postgraduate students using English in a multilingual but also native English language setting and reveals how the students oriented themselves to English in Korea, how useful their English preparation was before arrival in the UK, how they feel about their English, and what influenced the evolution of their perspectives over time. Importantly, the findings of the study suggest that the experience of living and studying in the UK had an impact on the participants’ attitudes and orientations towards English and their language use; among numerous other effects, a move away from norm-dependence in general, and in particular increasing awareness of the existence of different English varieties, were widely evidenced. The results give rise to new potential avenues for research into language attitudes and provide a deeper understanding of language(s) and language users in the field of English as a lingua franca in this previously unexplored context.

This study investigates refusals of requests and offers utilised by speakers of Iraqi Arabic and British English, as well as by Iraqi learners of English. It aims to identify the strategies of refusal employed by these three groups of speakers, as well as any differences between them. 60 subjects participated in this study. 20 Iraqi Arabic Speakers (IAs), 20 Iraqi Learners of English (ILEs), and 20 British English Speakers (BEs). The elicitation method adopted for the data collection consisted of a discourse completion test (DCT) and a series of open-ended role plays. In both cases, the scenarios employed varied systematically along the following parameters: social status, social distance, rank of imposition and gender. The data obtained by both methods were categorised into a number of strategies. An attempt was made to provide a comprehensive description of the nature of refusal strategies used by the subjects. The strategies identified were categorised following the Beebe et al (1990) scheme of refusals. In addition, they were classified according to the (im)politeness superstrategies posited by Brown and Levinson (1987) and Culpeper (1996). The results indicate that the choice of refusal strategies reflects characteristics of Iraqi versus British English culture. These results are as follows: 1. Although both groups of subjects displayed sensitivity to the social factors referred to above, the relative influence of each factor differed from one group to another. Thus, Iraqi Arabic Speakers (IAs) and Iraqi Learners of English (ILEs) varied their refusal strategies mainly according to status and distance, while British English Speakers (BEs) did so mainly according to status and gender. Besides, the responses of the three groups were influenced by the degree of imposition.2. The application of refusals employed by the three groups differed according to the eliciting method, namely, the DCT and the Role-Play. Consequently, various refusal strategies collected via the Role Play did not appear in the data collected by the DCT and vice versa. 3. Certain strategies employed by Iraqi speakers of Arabic were nonexistent in the data of British English speakers and vice versa. 4. The study of the interlanguage of Iraqi learners of English as a foreign language also confirmed the hypothesis that there is evidence for pragmatic transfer in the order, the frequency and the content of semantic formulae used.