Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) of any country could be a source of providing professionals to the country in many fields. By doing so, HEIs could play a pivotal role in the economic growth of the country. In Pakistan, it seems that, in the wake of this realization, steps have been taken to reform Higher Education. Drawing on the Triple I model of educational change covering Initiation, Implementation and Institutionalization (Fullan, 2007) this study focuses on the planning and implementation of reforms in the Education system of Pakistan at higher education level that have been introduced by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) since its inception in 2002. Kennedy’s model of hierarchical subsystems affecting innovation and Chin and Benne’s (1985) description of strategies for implementing change also provided guidelines for analyzing the changes in education in the country to highlight the role that the authorities expect the language teacher to play in the process of implementing these changes. A qualitative method is followed in this study to gather data from English language teachers at three universities of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. A questionnaire was developed to look into the perceptions of English language teachers regarding the impact of these reforms. This was followed up by interviews. Responses from 28 teachers were received through questionnaire out of which 9 teachers were interviewed for detailed analysis of their perceptions. Thematic Content analysis was used to analyze and interpret the data. Some of the most significant changes that the respondents reported knowledge of included the introduction of Semester System, extending the Bachelors degree to four years from two years, promotion of research culture, and increased teachers’ autonomy in classroom practices. Implications of these reforms for English teachers’ professional development were also explored. The data indicate that the teachers generally have a positive attitude towards the changes. However, the data also show concerns that teachers have about the practical effectiveness of these changes in improving English language teaching and learning in Pakistani Universities. Some of the areas of concern are worries regarding resources, the assessment system, the number of qualified teachers, and instability in the educational policy. They are concerned about the training facilities and quality of the professional training available to them. Moreover, they report that training opportunities for their professional development are not available to all the teachers equally. Despite the HEC claims of providing regular training opportunities, the majority of the teachers did not receive any formal training in the last three years, while some teachers were able to access these opportunities multiple times. Through the recent reforms HEC has empowered the teachers in conducting the learning/teacher processes but this extra power has reduced their accountability and they can exercise these powers without any check on them. This empowerment is limited to the classroom and there appears to be no or minimal involvement in decision making at the top level of policy making. Such lack of involvement in the policy decisions seems to be generating a lack of sense of ownership among the teachers (Fullan 2003a:6). Although Quality Enhancement Cells have been developed in the universities to assure the desired quality of education, they might need a more active role to contribute in achieving the level of enhancement in education expected from them. Based on the perceptions of the respondents of this study and the review of the relevant literature, it is argued that it is unlikely for the reforms to be institutionalized if teachers are not given the right kind of awareness at the initiation stage and are not prepared at the implementation stage to cope with the challenge of a complex process. The teachers participating in this study, in general, have positive and enthusiastic attitudes towards most of the changes, in spite of some reservations. It could also be interesting to see if the power centers of the Pakistani Higher Education appreciate this enthusiasm and channel it for a strong Higher Education system in the country.

The study is about the experience of Arab University students whose main subjects are taught in English. It investigates and discusses many English language problems in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in teaching, learning and studying medicine, pure science and technical English. In general, Arab learners of the English language encounter problems in the four skills of the English language, in speaking, writing, reading and listening. They also show weaknesses in many aspects of the English language such as vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, spelling, morphology and syntax. The question is how these language difficulties affect their studies in medicine. The initial hypothesis was that all depended on the students’ facility in English, but this turned out not to be the case. The research started with the analysis of students’ written replies to questions. This was followed by the development of a questionnaire distributed to 736 medical students. This explored various factors in relation to their success in exams to find out which factors might be significant. There were few correlations between success in medical exams and previous encounters with the English language. The one correlation between the test results and the questionnaire findings was not the uses of and familiarity with English but the parents’ background. The research therefore went on to explore, through interviews, and analysis of written statements, the students’ attitudes towards the teaching of medicine in relation to the use of the English language. It was found that the hypothesis of the importance of English as a prerequisite for success was not borne out. What was discovered was the students’ pragmatic attitude towards their study and that what they thought they needed as medical practitioners depended on a kind of secondary technical vocabulary. The research discusses some of the effects of learning and teaching theories and their relationship to the process of the education system. Whilst social constructivism is held to be the ideal one to apply to the learning process, this research demonstrated that behaviorism and rote learning still dominated the experience of the students in their learning of medicine. Despite their continued commitment to the ideals of learning English, the students took a pragmatic approach to their studies, which consisted of a mixture of Arabic and English medical vocabulary.

Many learners of English as a second or foreign language at university, especially preparatory year students, in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere struggle to achieve a satisfactory level of English language writing. Writing in English with control of accurate mechanics of writing and vocabulary and syntax, logical flow of ideas and clear structure of organisation and coherence is a condition for students’ academic success and vital for effective written communication. Despite its importance, the majority of such learners fail to meet these requirements and they have difficulties in composing texts with a logical sequence of ideas and persuasive content (Roberts and Cimasko, 2008). Part of this problem is said to occur because many writing instructors still follow traditional teaching methodologies such as the grammar-translation method and use of repetitive exercises. Such practices may seem demotivating to many learners, particularly the young generation of learner writers. However, there are a number emerging technologies such as social networking tools (e.g. wikis), which if included in normal classes can help and are therefore relevant. Many such tools utilise writing and written messages. There is now a mismatch between what learners do in the traditional class and what they actually spend most of their time on outside class (web 2.0 technologies). A compromise between two environments: formal (in class) and informal (outside class) could offer solutions. The current study aimed to fill a gap in the research by addressing the specific problems related to learning writing. It will suggest that a process-oriented wiki-mediated collaborative writing (PWMCW) approach can assist learners in practising writing in second/foreign language. The research also aimed to provide a formal learning setting for writing outside the classroom, to train the ESL/EFL learner writers to target a new audience other than their instructor. In this way, they will learn to develop their abilities to share knowledge and to respond to peers and their own feedback. The study addressed three main questions (eight sub-questions): to explore how the students perceive the PWMCW, how the learner writers process it and how it impacts on their collaborative and individual texts. The study takes a quasi-experimental case study design (one single pre-and-post-experimental group) in order to contribute to the continuity of development of learner writers regardless of place-related restrictions (Green et al., 2011). It was carried out with a mixed-research design. The quantitative analysis provided robust statistical operations to identify the significance level for certain issues, e.g. e feedback, authentic tasks and peers interaction. The qualitative analysis showed how collaborative planning and revision are achieved during the PWMCW. The data were collected from pre-and-post questionnaires, initial-and-follow-up focus groups, delayed interviews, wiki-based contributions and samples for written texts. A purposive sampling was applied and a group of university level, preparatory year, language learners were chosen in one of the universities in Saudi Arabia. This procedure is held to ensure that writing can be socially processed in an online learning environment. The findings revealed significant and insignificant changes in the perceptions of the learners along with emerging specific themes which contributed to understanding the topic of the PWMCW. The findings also explored the nature of how the collaborative writers worked together to establish a good start for better written texts, by emphasising collaborative planning and collaborative revision. Finally, the findings showed the impact of the PWMCW on the texts produced collaboratively (that used collaborative planning and collaborative revision) and individually (those texts produced by the individual learners before and after the course).

As a global language, English has spread to the extent that non-native speakers now outnumber native speakers. In the last few decades, a body of research literature has emerged demonstrating the decreasing global relevance of native English speakers, and calling for a re-evaluation of English Language Teaching (ELT) practices, in order to better prepare students for using English as a global lingua franca. However, students’ needs and attitudes towards English and ELT must be fully investigated before curriculum changes can be suggested. Many attitude studies conclude that students favour native varieties of English. However, such research often uses single research methods and very few relate attitude studies to ELT. Further research is required regarding students’ attitudes towards English, the factors influencing these attitudes and how they relate to ELT. Moreover, few studies have investigated these proposals in any depth or explored the impact of course instruction in the global uses of English on students’ attitudes. This thesis is an investigation of Japanese university students’ attitudes towards English and English teachers in relation to the use of English as a lingua franca (ELF). In order to widen the scope of understanding, this research employed a mixture of quantitative and qualitative measures to obtain data about the participants and their attitudes. Thus, questionnaires, interviews and focus groups were used. Following the introduction, chapter two and three provide a literature review. Chapter four outlines the methodology, and the results are presented in chapters five, six and seven. Chapter eight presents a discussion of the results and the implications of this study for teaching English are discussed in chapter nine. The findings suggest that English is seen as a language belonging to native English speakers and those students want to learn native English. However, the results highlighted that a number of factors influence students’ attitudes. The findings also demonstrated that the study of Global Englishes influenced students in a number of ways, including their motivation for learning English, attitudes towards varieties of English and attitudes towards English teachers. It encouraged them to question notions of ‘standard English’, was helpful for future ELF communication and raised their confidence as English speakers. In sum, the findings of this study provide an empirical basis for a re-evaluation of ELT and suggest that Global Englishes Language Teaching is something that should be further investigated.

The English language has spread across the globe to become an international language. With the growing number of speakers of English, it has been claimed that English is no longer the sole property of its native speakers but is a global lingua franca (ELF). Under these circumstances, it is natural that various language ideologies have formed, pervaded with ideological debates. In the last two decades, scholarly research has urged reform and re-evaluation in the field of English language teaching (ELT). However, in practice, most ELT approaches remain stigmatised to the standard or ‘authentic’ native speaker English paradigm. This overlooks the fact that English is more often used by non-native speakers than native speakers. In addition, the functional role of the language is routinely ignored when it comes to the classroom practice of language teaching. As people’s attitudes towards the English language and ELT display substantial intransigence, despite the rapidly-changing linguistic realities, it is necessary to investigate how university teachers and students perceive this international language in relation to language pedagogy. Until now, research based on the ELF paradigm has been relatively rare, particularly in the Chinese context. This thesis draws upon Chinese university students’ and teachers’ attitudes towards their own and other English accents in the ELF framework. The research adopted a mixed-methods approach in order to obtain the desired level of detail. First, a questionnaire was sent to students to generate quantitative data to help understand students’ attitudes about accents more broadly. With the aim of providing rich data description, interviews and focus groups were also employed, with both student and teacher participants. From the analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data, the findings suggest that both student and teacher participants display complex and uncertain attitudes. In general, students did not feel satisfied with their own English accents and would like to refine them to match native speakers of English more closely, but they did not expect other people to sound native-like; this result may reflect the notion of ‘being strict with oneself while relaxed with others’ that has been identified as prevalent in Chinese culture. Teachers display two primary outlooks: on the one hand, they recognised the global spread of English and noted the importance of their own identities when using the language. On the other hand, a number of them still believed they should improve their English accents because they serve as professional pronunciation role models to students. A key finding of the research is that, despite the rooted native-oriented ideology, both students and teachers expressed the necessity of exposure to different accents. In sum, the research findings demonstrate various and complex accent attitudes in relation to the participants’ identity construction. Based on the implications of the research, the thesis concludes with a proposal for teaching pronunciation based on the ELF framework – Teaching of Pronunciation for Intercultural Communication (ToPIC) – as a pronunciation praxis to respond better to the current linguistic landscape of English. Research limitations and possibilities for further research are discussed at the end of the thesis.

The aim of this sociolinguistically-oriented study is to determine the elements of a suitable English Language syllabus for university students in Libya. The syllabuses currently being used to teach English Language in the Libyan Higher Education sector were originally designed back in the 1980s. In view of the sweeping changes which have taken place both in the role of English in the world and also in Libya itself since that decade, and in view of concurrent developments in language teaching practice, this thesis starts from the presumption that these syllabuses and the materials used to implement them are unlikely to be adequate. It attempts to achieve its aim by three means. Firstly, using observational accounts and fieldwork, it seeks to provide a sociolinguistic profile of this major world language in Libya in order to ascertain the domains in which it is used and the role which it currently plays in Libyan society (and therefore what it is that Libyan university students might need to be able to do with it). Secondly, using an attitudinal questionnaire, it investigates the attitude of Libyan students in higher education towards learning English, the English language, and towards those who speak it as their mother tongue since research suggests that attitude can be of crucial importance in the language learning process. Thirdly, it conducts a critical evaluation of the English language syllabus and teaching materials presently in use at one university in order to identify the extent to which they follow current recommended practice in EFL course design and match the needs of learners. Findings suggest that although English does not enjoy any official status in Libya and its use in some domains remains restricted, it is currently expanding at an unprecedented rate and has already acquired the status of a second language in some domains. Questionnaire results indicate that Libyan university students hold favourable attitudes towards English, native speakers of this language and learning EFL. Crucially, many view a good level of English as a prerequisite for success in their chosen career. The evaluation of current EFL teaching materials and course syllabus reveals that these materials no longer reflect the current role of English in Libya or the needs of university learners. In addition, in methodological terms, they are out-dated, following the traditional grammar-based syllabus rather than the contemporary emphasis on the communicative approach. The thesis concludes by recommending that an integrated syllabus approach could be used to address the problems with the existing syllabus and proposes a multi- or integrated syllabus which aims to integrate grammatical components and linguistic skills to meet the needs of the learners and to address the language needs of Libyan society.