This critical exploratory study investigates the perceptions and practices of Norwegian lecturers on the implementation of a policy of English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) at their Higher Education Institution (HEI). It focuses on their attitudes towards English usage, how they have been prepared and cope in the classroom, and looks at their language and pedagogic competences. The socio-cultural context of using English inside and outside the auditorium is explored and leads to questions of Anglo/American influence and Norwegian domain loss. The study is informed by critical Applied Linguistics (CALx), linguistic imperialism and Bourdieu’s theories on social capital and power. It examines teaching through critical pedagogy and Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory of learning to aid understanding of classroom engagement and communication, and successful learning. This study has been informed by the critical approach to challenge normative assumptions of the use of EMI. Qualitative methods were used to collect data; twenty Norwegian teaching academics were interviewed, of whom five were observed whilst teaching. Careful coding and analysis of the data revealed surprising attitudes and perceptions varying from enthusiasm to anxiety for EMI. The participants generally accepted the top-down decision making by the administration on the increase of EMI and English usage. The influences of globalisation and commodification at HEIs combined with the rapid increase in English usage seem to have led to increased power of the management and bureaucratization. Some participants, mostly from the humanities, felt they lacked voice and agency in the implementation and their preparation for EMI, whilst some from the sciences actively embraced English and some wanted English as the working language in HEIs. There was a general feeling that more time and language resources were needed for professional development to cope with the change to EMI. All the participants worked hard to succeed in EMI; they were aiming at NS language competencies and wanted to be better at grammar, pronunciation and terminology, but seemed unaware of the pragmatic level of communication required for teaching and did not recognise the necessity of pedagogic training for EMI. There was a lack of dialogic teaching making co-constructed learning challenging and transformative pedagogy more difficult to achieve. They adapted to the multi-cultural/lingual classroom in a pragmatic manner, but were not given spaces for counter-pedagogies, critical pedagogy and the ideals of the transformative intellectual. The research reveals five areas of concern: a) inadequate English language at the pragmatic level for the demands of EMI, b) inadequate pedagogic skills for the multi-lingual and cultural classroom, c) concern over local and international students’ level of English, d) standardized, Anglo/American teaching materials leading to a lack of diversity and critical approaches, and e) the threat to academic Norwegian from international academics not learning Norwegian, the publishing reward system at Norwegian HEIs and the perceived status of English, and the resultant decline in dissemination to the general public. However juxtaposed to the above points, most participants experienced the international classroom positively and were well-received by and pleased to be in their academic Community of Practice resulting generally in an ambivalent attitude to EMI.

Motivated primarily by a cognitive approach, with consideration of interactional processes from a sociocultural perspective, the present study examined the use of linguistic assistance and peer interaction to facilitate second language (L2) writing of young ESL learners. A total of 257 Year 5 children (age 10) from twelve intact classes (from six different schools) took part in this eight-week intervention-based study. Using a quasi-experimental design, the classes were randomly assigned to one of three treatment groups or the control group. Pretests, interim tests, immediate posttests and delayed posttests were administered. As the study concerned both the processes and products of L2 development, peer interaction and children's written production were taken as the two primary sources of data for this study. For the written production, four criteria were used to rate learners’ writings: Quality of ideas, Story shape and structure, Vocabulary and spelling and Implicit grammar. Partial correlation was employed to examine if there were any statistical relationships between treatment and learners’ written performance while controlling for prior attainment. Results show that the provision of enhanced and basic linguistic assistance may have a positive influence on only certain aspects of L2 writing, while opportunities for peer interaction does not appear to have an impact on learners’ L2 performance. For peer interaction, a subset of 60 learners were selected from the two treatment groups which received basic and enhanced linguistic assistance, to compare their dialogic performance. Based on quantitative analyses of their recorded interactions, the findings suggest that the provision of varying degrees of linguistic assistance may affect, not the content of peer discussions, but how peer assistance is given during task. The results also show that through the provision of linguistic assistance, peer interaction mediates the participants’ performance on Quality of ideas, Story shape and structure and Implicit grammar in their subsequent individual writing.

Vocabulary is well acknowledged as playing a critical role in language and reading development for young children, particularly for children learning English as an Additional Language (EAL) in school (Scarborough, 2001; Stahl & Nagy, 2005). However, most previous research on vocabulary has focused on measuring individual words and failed to examine knowledge of multi-word phrases, despite corpus evidence that these items are common in the English lexicon (Erman & Warren, 2000). The nature of multi-word vocabulary knowledge and its possible contribution to literacy skills among children remains underexplored, possibly due to a lack of available suitable measures. The current thesis details the development and administration of an original multi-word phrase task containing transparent, semi-transparent and non-transparent verb + object phrases to 108 British monolingual English speakers and learners with EAL in school years 3, 4 and 5. Results showed a strong effect of item transparency, even greater than frequency. Year 4 monolingual English speakers had significantly higher scores than year 3 monolingual learners on non-transparent items, while among learners with EAL year 3 and 4 performances were similar and year 5 learners’ scores were significantly higher. The second phase of the study explored the contribution of multi-word phrase knowledge to reading among 40 year 4 monolingual English speaking children and Bengali speakers with EAL. Multiple regression analysis showed that multi-word task performance accounted for a significant amount of variance in reading scores, when controlling for non-verbal intelligence, receptive and expressive single word vocabulary and language background. These findings are of import for increasing our understanding of vocabulary development among young learners and provide insight into the particular needs of learners with EAL.

This study explores, from a test validity perspective, the extent to which the two variables of topic and background knowledge of topic have an effect on spoken performance in language proficiency interviews. It is argued that in assessment contexts where topics are randomly assigned to test takers, it is necessary to demonstrate that topics of tasks and the level of background knowledge that test takers brings to these topics do not exert an undue influence on test results. Otherwise, a validity threat may be introduced to the test. Data were collected from 82 Farsi speakers of English who performed on ten different topics, across three task types. Participants’ background knowledge of topics was elicited using self- report questionnaires while C-tests were used as a measure of general English language proficiency. Four raters assigned scores to spoken performances using rating scales. Semi- structured interviews were carried out with raters, upon completion of the rating process. A mixed- methods strategy of inquiry was adopted where findings from the quantitative analyses of score data (using Multi-Faceted Rasch Measurement, multiple regression and descriptive statistics) were synthesised with the results of the qualitative analyses of rater interviews and test takers’ content of speech in addressing the foci of the study. The study’s main findings showed that the topics used in the study exhibited difficulty measures which were statistically distinct i.e. topics, within a given task type, could not be considered parallel. However, the size of the differences in topic difficulties was too small to have a large practical effect on scores. Participants’ different levels of background knowledge were shown to have a consistent, systematic and statistically significant effect on performance with low levels of background knowledge posing the highest level of challenge for test takers and vice versa. Nevertheless, these statistically significant differences in background knowledge levels failed to translate into practically significant differences, as the size of the differences were too small to have a large impact on performance scores. Results indicated that, compared to general language proficiency which accounted for approximately 60% of the variance in spoken performance scores, background knowledge only explained about 1-3% of the variance. Qualitative analyses of data suggested lack of background knowledge to be associated with topic abandonment, disengagement from topic-related questions, and fewer opportunities for test takers to elaborate on topics. It was also associated with negative affective influence on test takers, particularly lower proficiency individuals. Taken together, the findings have theoretical, methodological and practical implications for second language speaking performance assessment.

This thesis studied young, struggling readers, all of whom had participated in the Reading Recovery literacy intervention, and investigated whether differential progress was made by children learning English as an additional language when compared with their native, English-speaking peers. The children were assessed on a pre- and post-test basis on literacy measures associated with reading comprehension in a UK context. Following a Pilot Phase, 52 children who were learning English as an additional language, and 48 native, English-speaking children were recruited from twenty-three primary schools in 8 local authorities across the UK. The children were administered standardised literacy measures, including the British Abilities Scale (BAS) single word reading test, the British Picture Vocabulary Scales (BPVS) vocabulary knowledge test, the Phonological Assessment Battery (PHAB) pseudo-word reading test, and two reading comprehension measures: the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test (WIAT) and the York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension (YARC). Statistical analyses were conducted on the data and the results indicated that differential progress was made by the groups, after initial levels of decoding or vocabulary were covaried. The first research question investigated the differential progress made by the two groups, and over the course of the intervention, the EAL children made more progress after controlling for initial skills at entry. After controlling for initial vocabulary levels, the EAL group made more gains than their NS peers, as measured by the BAS single word reading assessment. The second research question examined differential predictors of reading comprehension, and multiple regression analyses showed that vocabulary was a stronger predictor for EAL learners, whereas decoding was found to be a stronger predictor for NS learners. The findings suggest that it is important to develop the vocabulary abilities of EAL learners, as the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension acquisition was found to be stronger for this group than for the NS group. The findings also suggest that NS children’s decoding abilities must be supported, as the relationship between single word reading and the acquisition of reading comprehension was found to be stronger for this group than for the EAL group.

Within the context of foreign language learning, very little research has examined how learners process second language (L2) words in terms of which variables best predict their processing speed and which mechanisms best characterize bilingual lexical processing. The present study set out to address this gap by using a range of learner and lexical variables (such as vocabulary size, word length, and age of acquisition) as points of reference against which to identify the best predictors of children’s and adults' L2 lexical processing, and by comparing response latencies across stimulus conditions so as to identify the processing pattern specific to each age group. Thirty-nine primary-aged and 94 university-level Chinese learners of English performed a picture-naming task in English and then in Chinese, and then completed a Chinese-to-English task. The researcher analyzed and estimated how those learner and lexical variables predicted the recorded response latencies by means of multiple regression and structural equation modeling, and made cross-stimulus-condition comparisons with the use of analysis of variance. The results suggested that different aspects of vocabulary knowledge contributed significantly to predicting children's and adults' processing speed, and that shorter processing time was significantly and directly predicted by the younger age at which an L2 word was learned and its higher degree of word typicality. Both lexical association and conceptual mediation were present in L2 lexical processing irrespective of learners' age but in general the later an L2 word is learned, the greater the likelihood that the word is lexically accessed and processed. These results illustrate the crucial role that language experiences and conceptual structures play in influencing the ease or difficulty with which L2 lexical items are retrieved, and reflect the complexities and dynamics involved in processing bilingual lexicons. These findings will be discussed within the context of the role of research and theory in developing evidence-based pedagogical practice with a specific reference to vocabulary acquisition in children and adults learning foreign languages within input-limited contexts.

This thesis is a literature review that reports on the use of social media for language learning and teaching. I argue that the use of one’s first language as well as their second language (L2) on social media is a useful technique while learning L2 because code-switching can play a vital role in communication among users. I also argue that social media-based participation in Communities of Practice (CoPs) can provide learning opportunities for language learners. In the course of my argument, I examine a wide range of studies relating to social media, second language acquisition, sociolinguistics and applied linguistics, and I discuss the benefits and risks of the use of social media in language learning. After amalgamating the key points from the literature, I propose a curricular framework for language classrooms which serves as a scaffolding activity for the use of social media for participating in L2 CoPs through objective analysis of linguistic resources. / Graduate / 0290 / 0279

Morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge are two (among many) components of multi-faceted word knowledge critical for language development and ultimately, academic performance, as they strongly correlate with other essential, literacy-related skills, such as spelling, writing and reading comprehension (Ramirez, Chen, Geva & Kiefer, 2010). Developing these types of knowledge is a non-linear process for school-age children: morphological awareness, in particular, involves long-term learning towards a full mastery beginning in mid-dle childhood and continuing through adolescence. Such learning processes can pose significant challenges especially for children attending a school entirely in a second language (L2) while speaking, as a first language (L1), a language which is ethno-linguistically minority in status in the larger (L2) society. Despite globally growing populations of L2 children in school settings, little is known about the nature of morphological/vocabulary knowledge in one language, relative to the other, especially when children are learning two typologically distant languages with different writing systems. The current study, situated within the theoretical framework of multicompetence (Cook, 2003), set out to investigate specific aspects of vocabulary knowledge and morphological awareness in different groups of English- and Japanese-speaking monolingual and bilingual children, whilst also examining the extent to which English morphological awareness influences/or is influenced by Japanese morphological awareness among the bilingual sample. The purpose of the study is largely three-fold. One was to examine the children’s ability to understand and express a connection between a word and its meaning. The former taps into receptive vocabulary knowledge, whereas the latter expressive vocabulary knowledge. Two vocabulary tests were administered to three groups of children per language: two bilingual groups (24 Japanese learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) and 21 learners of Japanese as a Heritage Language (JHL)) and a group of 25 English Language Monolinguals (ELMs) (English); and ESLs, JHLs and a group of 27 Japanese language Monolinguals (JLMs) (Japanese). The second purpose was to investigate the children’s ability to identify morphemes included in a word and also to produce inflectional and derivational forms of a word, using two morphological tasks per language – a Word Segmentation (WS) task and a Word Analogy (WA) task. Lastly, the current study examined, through statistical analyses, the nature of an association between morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge in each language, and also whether morphological awareness in one language could act as a significant predictor of morphological awareness in the other, i.e., cross-linguistic influence. Four key findings were obtained. First, the patterns in which each group demonstrated vocabulary knowledge through English tests contrasted with the pattern observed in the Japanese results. In English, the ESL group scored more highly on the receptive test than the expressive test, whereas the reverse pattern was the case for the ELM group. The JHL group yielded comparable scores across tests. In Japanese, in contrast, all three groups (ESL/JHL/JLM) scored more highly on the expressive test than on the receptive test. Second, all groups of children typically demonstrated higher degrees of an awareness of inflectional morphemes than of derivational morphemes in the English morphological tasks (both the WS and WA tasks) and the Japanese WA task. A slightly different pattern was observed in the Japanese WS task, where the performances of ESL and JLM children were not sensitive to morpheme type, whereas the JHL group yielded higher scores on the inflectional morphemes than the root morphemes. As regards the relationship between morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge in each language, in English, it was the ability to produce morphologically complex items, as opposed to recognising morphemes, that was positively related to vocabulary knowledge in all three groups (ESLs, JHLs & ELMs). In Japanese, in contrast, both morpheme recognition and production were positively related to vocabulary knowledge in all Japanese-speaking groups (ESLs, JHLs & JLMs). Lastly, the bilingual data identified a reciprocal nature of morphological transfer (Japanese -> English) only in the ESL group. More specifically, the ESL children’s ability to identify morphemes in Japanese words through segmentation may have a positive influence on the ability to produce English inflectional and derivational items. The latter ability is, in addition, likely to play a positive role in its Japanese equivalent, namely, the ability to produce Japanese inflectional and derivational items. No transfer effects were established in either direction for the JHL group. These within-language and cross-linguistic investigations of the nature of, and the relationship between morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge are discussed in terms of the existing evidence in the literature (e.g., Carlisle, 2000; Ramirez at al.,2010) and are graphically illustrated via the integration continuum based on the notion of multicompetence (Cook, 2003). Several limitations of the current study are reviewed and discussed, fol-lowed by the Conclusion chapter, where the unique contribution of the current study to the literature is revisited, together with a brief remark about its indirect links with the field of educational research in Japan and suggestions for future research.

The International English Language Testing System (IELTS) is the world’s leading high stakes test that assesses the English Language Proficiency of candidates who speak languages other than English and wish to gain entry into universities where English is the language of instruction. Recently, over 3000 institutions in the United States accepted the IELTS test to be an indicator of language proficiency (IELTS, 2012a). Because of this preference for the IELTS test, and its worldwide recognition, there has been an increase in the number of students who are taking the test every year. According to the IELTS website, more than 7000 institutions around the world trust the test results and, not surprisingly, more than 1.7 million candidates take the test every year in one of the 800 recognised test centres across 135 countries (IELTS, 2012a). These candidates include people who seek not only to obtain admission to universities, but also for immigration authorities, employers of certain companies and government agencies. Acknowledging this popularity and importance to learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL), this qualitative study has investigated the construct validity of the academic writing module in the IELTS test from the perspectives of the stakeholders (i.e. candidates, lecturers and markers). The aim was to understand why some Saudi students fail to cope with demands of the university despite the fact that they have achieved the minimum requirements in IELTS. In this study, data was collected in two phases in two different settings through open-ended questionnaires, semi-structured observations and semi-structured interviews. Phase I was carried out in the Department of English Language (DEL) at King Faisal University in Saudi Arabia, while Phase II was conducted in one university in the UK. The sample of the study included: 8 students, 6 university lecturers and one marker. In this study, data were analysed and coded into themes by using NVivo 9. The results of this case study have shown that the stakeholders were doubtful about the issue of readiness of students, which is claimed by IELTS, and they wanted the test to be clearer about how the students were going to cope with university demands upon gaining entry. In addition, with respect to the content validity of the test, this study found that the tasks in the academic writing test to a large extent do not reflect the kind of tasks candidates are likely to encounter at university. Furthermore, this study pointed out that response validity, on the part of students who may not have understood the rubric of the tasks, is another important factor affecting the students’ performance. Also, the findings of this study suggested that scoring validity could have a significant effect on the students’ scores because of the inconsistency of markers during the scoring process as they may have sometimes failed to assign the students to their corresponding level of proficiency. Consequently, the study provided a set of implications as well as recommendations for future research.

The current study investigates the construct representation of the reading component of a B2 level general English test: First Certificate in English (FCE). Construct representation is the relationship between cognitive processes elicited by the test and item difficulty. To facilitate this research, a model of the cognitive process involved in responding to reading test items was defined, drawing together aspects of different models (Embretson & Wetzel, 1987; Khalifa & Weir, 2009; Rouet, 2012). The resulting composite contained four components: the formation of an understanding of item requirements (OP), the location of relevant text in the reading passage (SEARCH), the retrieval of meaning from the relevant text (READ) and the selection of an option for the response (RD). Following this, contextual features predicted by theory to influence the cognitive processes, and hence the difficulty of items, were determined. Over 50 such variables were identified and mapped to each of the cognitive processes in the model. Examples are word frequency in the item stem and options for OP; word frequency in the reading passage for READ; semantic match between stem/option and relevant text in the passage for SEARCH; and dispersal of relevant information in the reading passage for RD. Response data from approximately 10,000 live test candidates were modelled using the Linear Logistic Test Model (LLTM) within a Generalised Linear Mixed Model framework (De Boeck & Wilson, 2004b). The LLTM is based on the Rasch model, for which the probability of success on an item is a function of item difficulty and candidate ability. The holds for LLTM except that item difficulty is decomposed so that the contribution of each source of difficulty (the contextual features mentioned above) is estimated. The main findings of the study included the identification of 26 contextual features which either increased or decreased item difficulty. Of these features, 20 were retained in a final model which explained 75.79% of the variance accounted for by a Rasch model. Among the components specified by the composite model, OP and READ were found to have the most influence, with RD exhibiting a moderate influence and SEARCH a low influence. Implications for developers of FCE include the need to consider and balance test method effects, and for other developers the additional need to determine whether their tests test features found to be criterial to the target level (such as non-standard word order at B2 level). Researchers wishing to use Khalifa and Weir’s (2009) model of reading should modify the stage termed named inferencing and consider adding further stages which define the way in which the goal setter and monitor work and the way in which item responses are selected. Finally, for those researchers interested in adopting a similar approach to that of the current study, careful consideration should be given to the way in which attributes are selected. The aims and scope of the study are of prime importance here.