English speaking is arguably the most problematic aspect for adult learners in Taiwanese EFL environments. The gap between the curricular objectives and the results of the General English Proficiency Test (GEPT) indicates that younger generations outrun college students in learning to speak English. Moreover, the exchangeable use of terms such as English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) reveals the conceptualization of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) which assumes that learners learn to speak the target language in a naturally occurring language environment. This is manifested in Language Learning Strategy (LLS) theories focusing on communication/compensation strategies. However, the initial pursuit of ‘universally effective’ LLS has been called into question and there is a need for the contextualization of LLS research. To begin with, this study differentiates the concept of ESL and EFL in order to unravel the hidden assumption of SLA/LLS. Next, in adopting a sociocultural-ecological perspective, strategies for learning to speak English are considered as niches rather than fixed entities presented in mainstream LLS survey research. Specifically, because this study aims at depicting five non-English majors’ qualitatively different ways of perceiving and experiencing in their local environment (i.e., their constructed reality), phenomenography is used to examine the person-environment relationships. Lastly, qualitatively different SLSEs will be discussed in hopes of facilitating a more reflective way of learning to speak in EFL environments.

The main purpose of this case study research was to find an appropriate way to enhance listening comprehension ability through self-access materials for a group of less-skilled university language learners in Thailand. The study was conducted in three phases: the exploratory, the material development and the main study. The participants of the exploratory study were ten good EFL listeners completing a set of three standardized listening comprehension test tasks. Stimulated recall protocol was undertaken in order to manifest strategy use in a listening comprehension process. The participants of the main study were fourteen less-skilled first-year university students who learned listening skills and strategies in a self-access learning way through self-access materials especially adapted to support their learning for a period of 12-14 weeks before taking a posttest. The findings from qualitative data analysis revealed that good EFL learners effectively orchestrated various metacognitive and cognitive strategies in three stages of pre, while and post listening in a listening comprehension process manifesting their underlying language proficiency. Contrary to the good EFL listeners, the results indicated that less-skilled learners used less listening strategies and were unable to use them as successfully as good EFL listeners did. Based on the findings from the third phase, the quantitative result of Wilcoxon signed-ranks test unveiled that there was a significant difference between the pre and posttests mean scores at the 0.001 level. The result was further supported by the recall qualitative analysis indicating that the less-skilled participants employed a greater amount of metacognitive and cognitive strategy use after the self-access learning process. In their learning diaries, the less-skilled participants further reported an increase of posttest scores, giving reasons for the improvement that listening skills, strategies and practice through self-access materials helped them become better listeners. The findings from questionnaire and learning diary in terms of attitudes towards self-access learning and materials showed that there was a positive attitude towards the self-access materials and learning in a self-instruction way. Almost all of them reported that they had more confidence to learn independently and liked self-access learning more than the past. The research findings shed a light on how to support EFL learners not only to become better listeners but also to become autonomous language learners.

This research was conducted for the purpose of assessing the practicality of introducing the Discourse Intonation theory in the Language Institute of Al-Baath University, Syria. Using a case study tradition, the various features of the theory were presented over a number of sessions, thus providing the participants of the study, being advanced teacher-learners, with a thorough treatment of these features for the purpose of examining their cognitive and affective reception of each of these features. The final purpose was to see if these participants would be able to pedagogically deal with these features and find them relevant to their own self-development, as well as to see if the Discourse Intonation theory is seen, from a teaching point of view, to have a place at the Language Centre. The results were encouraging. When the participants sat the course, they found it difficult sometimes to grasp some of the rules, and they also encountered some occasional difficulty in doing listening and speaking tasks, although this difficulty was not consistent, and often differed from one feature to the other. Although the participants managed to demonstrate at least a basic understanding of the rules stated in the course, they were less consistent in their ability to explicitly describe how the new rules would relate to the English language in general terms. However, the findings were promising because they contained evidence to the effect that the participants‘ thinking of intonation was stimulated, and their critical reception of DI meant that they had already taken the first step towards actively benefiting from the course, thus redefining the meaning of ‗benefit‘ when it comes to instruction on intonation. This optimism is further supported by the fact that three participants thought that the theory would deserve a place for an explicit treatment at Language Institute. This is implied by the various recommendations that the participants suggested for successfully approaching the teaching of Discourse Intonation. The suggested approach, characterized by anticipating learning difficulties and thinking of solutions, indicates an actively critical perspective and a wellinformed position which, with its positive evaluation of the place of this theory in pedagogy, shows advances on the many negative teacher attitudes expressed in the literature. The research, departing from these findings, offered some suggestions for both further teaching and further research on the teachability of Discourse Intonation, in the hope of having gone a step further in our understanding of the relationship of Discourse Intonation to pedagogy.

This dissertation examines interaction in a hybrid educational and clinical medical context, specifically how students and tutors negotiate and display expertise and uncertainty in problem-based learning (PBL) tutorials in the final years of an undergraduate medical curriculum. I take a broad view of expertise and uncertainty, one which includes scientific knowledge, evidence-based explanations, warrants for uncertainty, personal experience and communicative performance. Taking a discourse analytic approach, I analyse what constitutes expertise in this tutorial setting and how it is negotiated and displayed through the participating students’ and tutors’ interactional dynamics. I examine the nature of the various tutorial activities, the educational and clinical context, and how factors associated with the ethos and approaches of both PBL and traditional clinical curricula influence the display and negotiation of expertise and uncertainty. The data were collected during 2008 in two teaching hospitals in Hong Kong. Participants were selected by convenience sampling. Eight tutorials were video or audio recorded, and the interactions were transcribed. The discourse analytical approach (activity analysis, Sarangi 2010a) is based on the notions of activity types (Levinson, 1992[1979]) and discourse types (Sarangi, 2000) as well as notions of participant structure, roles, frames, and alignment. The analysis is conducted in three stages. First, the structural mapping indicates that the tutorials were composed of three main elements – presenting a patient history, presenting clinical reasoning, and presentation of the findings of the physical examination and that these were recursive. Second, the interactional mapping shows that the dominant participants were the presenter of the patient history and the tutor, and that the main discursive device is questioning. Third, the thematic mapping shows that implicit throughout the interaction is the display of expertise through role performance, and the hybrid clinical and educational frames associated with these roles. Role, frame and activity characteristics interact to contribute to a complex setting within which participants could display degrees of expertise and uncertainty.

This mixed-methods research aims to explore two aspects of student motivation in the Taiwanese senior-high-school context. Firstly, it investigates students’ motivational orientations for studying English after the education reform policies were launched in 2002. Secondly, it examines the fluctuating nature of student motivation and the perceived motivational factors which might cause changes in motivation. As well as this, the present study attempts to compare and contrast student motivation in different school grades (year one versus year three). This study employed a three-phase sequential exploratory mixed-methods design, with a combination of prioritized qualitative and supplementary quantitative research approaches to studying L2 motivation. The semi-structured interview guide and the item pool of the questionnaire were developed through four preliminary interviews in Phase One. Qualitative data were gathered through the interview study in Phase Two by conducting 33 individual interviews with 26 students and seven English teachers in one local senior high school in southern Taiwan. The preliminary analysis of the interview data was then used to modify and finalize the questionnaire distributed in the survey in Phase Three. A total of 428 senior-high-school students in grade one/three responded to the questionnaire which was designed to describe motivational features and motivational changes of a bigger student sample under investigation. The research results reveal that the majority of students study English because of instrumental orientation. There is no major difference between first- and third-grade students in light of seven classifications of L2 motivation. Gardner’s modified concept of integrativeness can be applicable to Taiwanese senior-high-school students today. Also, the recently-proposed L2 Motivational Self System by Dörnyei can explain student motivation through a self perspective to a great extent. Based on the questionnaire reports, the ideal L2 self shows the least significant difference between male and female students involved in the study. In addition, the ought-to L2 self found in this study presents some local features which are different from its original theoretical concept. As for changes in motivation, the research findings indicate a variety of motivational factors with diverse influences on the students’motivation when they learn English in senior high school, such as teachers, parents, peers, exams, test scores, social encounters with foreigners, learning experience, and the development of future goals. Another major finding shows that exams exert a rather complex influence on student motivation in the Taiwanese senior-high-school context.

This study concentrates on the relationship between the students’ thinking styles (Stenberg, 1999) and the strategies (Kirby, 1988) the students employ when dealing with exam-type questions in mathematics. Thinking styles are the “preferred way[s] of using the ability one has” (Sternberg, 1999, p. 8) and are conceptualised to be relatively stable over time and context. A strategy is the “combination of tactics, or a choice of tactics, that forms a coherent plan to solve a problem” (Kirby, 1988, p. 230-231). The students’ attainment, the nature of task and the students’ views are also considered in this study. A three-phase study including both quantitative and qualitative techniques was designed with the aim of delineating this relationship. The study was conducted with 2nd year students (N=99) following a BSc in Mathematics in the Department of Mathematics of the University of Athens, although, for methodological reasons, additional data were collected from a broader group of undergraduates (NUG=224). The students’ thinking styles were identified through a version of the Sternberg-Wagner Thinking Styles Inventory (Sternberg, 1999), translated into Greek. Two main Style Cores were identified: Core I (creative, original, critical and non-prioritised thinking) and Core II (procedural, already tested and prioritised thinking). Based on these cores, the students were assigned to two clusters: Cluster 1C2C (High Core I/Low Core II) and Cluster 3C4C (High Core II/Low Core I). In order to identify the students’ strategies, the A-B-Δ strategy classification was introduced, expanding on Weber’s (2005) semantic, syntactic and procedural strategies. The AB-Δ strategies were grouped in three Strategy Types depending on their links with truth,memory and flexibility, respectively identified as: α-type, β-type and δ-type. Students assigned to Cluster 1C2C appeared to prefer more α-type and less β-type Initial Strategies than those assigned to Cluster 3C4C. The nature of the task appeared to affect this link. On the other hand, in the context of Back-Up Strategies, stylistic preferences and ‘high’ attainment appeared to regulate a link between the nature of the task and a Back-Up Strategy, rather than forming a style-strategy link (as in the case of Initial Strategy). Drawing from Skemp’s (1979) views about reality (inner and social) and survival (respectively, internal consistency and social survival), it is argued that the students choose different strategies, because they essentially perceive the given task in qualitatively different ways. The students’ different stylistic preferences indicate differences in their inner reality, thus affecting their choice of an ascertaining argument, which in turn determines their selection of Initial Strategy. The failure of the students’ Initial Strategy leads them to re-evaluate the task itself, thus resulting in a change of the reality in which the students have to survive and this, in turn, determines the students’ Back-Up Strategies.

The value of using literature in the language classroom has attracted a renewed interest and attention in the ELT community in the last few decades. Major justifications for using literature with language learners include valuable authentic and motivating material, language and cultural enrichment, as well as personal growth and involvement. However, in Taiwanese higher education, literature is often kept off the majority of university English courses and reserved only for advanced literary courses for English majors. Non-English majors are seldom provided with opportunities to learn the target language through literary texts because literature is often considered too difficult or impractical for them. To help these EFL students tap the power and potential of literature in English language learning, this study brings together literature and cooperative pedagogy to design a literature-focused cooperative learning (LFCL) project, in which students work in cooperative groups, inside or outside the classroom, to complete a variety of cooperative language learning tasks appropriate to each stage of the reading of a literary work of fiction. This project was applied to my ten-month, two-semester actual teaching of three groups of non-English majors to explore the effects of such integration holistically in terms of student experiences and perceptions, motivation, learning processes and outcomes.

Tronco Comun Universitario Inglés (TCUI) of the Benemerita Universidad Autonoma de Puebla (BUAP) in central Mexico is the context where this research originally developed. TCUI is the academic body responsible for the teaching of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to all undergraduate students of the BUAP. BUAP consists of seven Unidades Regionales (Regional Branches) which are spread across the state of Puebla, making it one of the largest and most highly populated universities in the country. Administratively, BUAP consists of seven Divisiones de Estudios Superiores (DES) ― groups of departments sharing common academic roots. Each DES of the BUAP is made of Faculties, Schools and Institutes, each with their own interests and objectives. TCUI exists in every single Faculty, School or Institute of the BUAP, making English a common subject for every student.

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This thesis describes an investigation into university students' manipulation of symbols in solving calculus problems, and relates this to other aspects such as drawing and interpretation of graphs. It is concerned with identifying differences between students who are successful with symbol manipUlation and those who are less successful. It was initially expected that the more successful would have flexible and efficient symbolic methods whilst the less successful would tend to have single procedures which would be more likely to break down. Krutetskii (1976) noted that more successful problem-solvers curtail their solutions whilst the less able are less likely to acquire that ability even after a long practice. This suggested a possible correlation between success and curtailment. An initial pilot study with mathematics education students at a British University showed that in carrying out the algorithms of the calculus, successful students would often work steadily in great detail, however, they were more likely to have a variety of approaches available and were more likely to use conceptual ideas to simplify their task. However, the efficiency in handling symbolic manipulation may not be an indication that the students are able to relate their computational outcome to graphical ideas. A modified pilot test was trialed at the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia before a main study at the same university in which 36 second year students were investigated in three groups of twelve, having grades A, B, C respectively in their first year examination. The findings of this research indicate that there is no significant correlation between ability and curtailment, but ability correlates with conceptual preparation of procedures where there is an appropriate simplification to make the application of the algorithm simpler. The more able students may have several flexible strategies and meaningful symbolic mathematical representations but these may not always relate to visual and graphical ideas. On the other hand the less able students are less likely to break away from the security of a single procedure and liable to breakdown in getting the solutions for the calculus problems.