There is an increasing interest in the complex issues of how we describe and chart the development of the child's skills in text-making and narrative. Observation of deaf children's language has tended to concentrate on their phonology. Various ways of measuring the syntactic structures at the phrase, clause and sentence level have been developed. From this 'bottom up' approach we have some knowledge of the deaf child's linguistic competence. We also have some knowledge about their communicative competence with familiar people in highly constructed situations. However, we do not know enough about what happens when a child is involved in a communicative episode such as storytelling, where they are trying to make sense in ways that are relatively autonomous without the scaffolding of adult clarification. This thesis looks, for the first time, descriptively, at finding ways of describing and characterising deaf children's ability to organise text, using a combination of analytical and hermeneutic methodology, and to see how that implicates defective, inadequate or poorly developed narrative skills. The narrative production and recall of 34 deaf children and 12 hearing children were recorded using a video recorder and camera and analysed for the presence of elements of Labov's model of narrative structure and for their coherence as indexed by their use of effective referent-introducing forms and recall protocols elicited in child-child interaction. The influence of medium and situation on narrative production was also studied. Significant qualitative and quantitative differences were found in narratives across hearing loss and context. Children with more useful hearing being better able to organise the semantic content of their narratives linguistically. It is suggested that children whose preferred mode of communication is sign process narrative kinesically and visually and that caution is required in making assumptions about deaf children's narratives on the basis of spoken language only. This has important implications for future research.

This thesis focuses on groups of adolescent learners in two comprehensive schools. It explores the interplay between linguistic and strategic competence in classrooms where a foreign language is used i e. in French or Spanish lessons and in geography classes where the foreign language is also used as a medium for instruction. In Part 1, the research is positioned within a contextual, conceptual and theoretical framework, underpinned by Vygotskian socio-cognitive principles. Part 2 consists of an ethnographic-oriented.case study at two sites. The study uses methodological triangulation to co-construct the learning environments from different perspectives, based on document analysis, questionnaires, interviews, lesson observations and the microgenetic analysis of student interaction during linguistic tasks analysed at both an inter- and intramental level. The thesis is built on the metaphor of language games and identifies strategic and linguistic moves which could potentially bring about changing the rules in order to enable an alternative game to played. The thesis leads the writer to argue for a re-conceptualisation of learner strategies based on the notion of ‘strategic classrooms’ and recommends the integration of ‘alternative’ linguistic and strategic ‘moves' into everyday classroom practice if learners are to find a ‘voice’.

Within the framework of task-based language learning, there has been much research on planning, under the premise that learners' language would be enhanced in planned conditions. However, the underlying mechanisms ofthis rationale have not been fully explored. To develop the present understanding, this study aims to explore the nature of planning and the psycholinguistic mechanisms of its effects on L2 performance. Earlier planning research has tended to focus on 'strategic planning' (i.e., a period of time given prior to a task), suggesting that it may improve learners' language in terms of fluency and complexity but not always in accuracy (e.g., Crookes, 1989, Foster & Skehan, 1996). In response to this, Yuan and Ellis (2003) propose 'on-line planning' (i.e., on-line processing pressure is lessened to allow active formulation and monitoring) and show its positive effect on accuracy as well as complexity. Building on these previous studies, the purpose of this research is to investigate the different form-focused effects between strategic and on-line planning. The study takes a process-product approach to planning by using a quantitative analysis of oral performance and a qualitative analysis of post-task verbal reports, prompted by stimulated recall, under non-planning, strategic planning and on-line planning conditions. The analysis of the performance of twenty-seven Japanese learners of English (grouped as high vs. low proficiency levels) demonstrates the positive effects of strategic planning on complexity and those of on-line planning on complexity and accuracy. Most importantly, different planning effects on specific accuracy measures were observed between different proficiency groups - verb forms in the low-proficiency and articles in the high-proficiency group. To complement the results of the performance analysis, the examination of verbal reports presents participants' planning processes. To support the improvement in accuracy in on-line planning, the analysis reveals that pressured conditions (i.e., non-planning and strategic planning) made participants prioritize meaning over form; on the other hand, on-line planning tended to push them into more complex structures while maintaining certain attention to accuracy. Drawing on pedagogical considerations offocus-on-form instruction, this thesis argues that strategic planning and on-line planning have different degrees of form-focused effects. In particular, on-line planning, beyond a simple improvement of accuracy, would increase consciousness of form and bring L2 learners to deeper, syntactic processing. It is suggested that some kind of on-line planning would be useful for developing learners' abilities of syntactic formulation.

This thesis explores the identity of translation as its power of reference through an analysis of transformations of biblical narrative from their written form to audio-visual versions made for television. The central problematic of translatability between word and image is examined through the "translation strategies" used by producers and translators. These strategies reveal the philosophical binarisms that underpin an assumption of source and target texts as autonomous entities. The polarities of binary thinking are implicit in a perception of translation as a representation of a prior text The language of representation that is central to theories of representational equivalence raises the question to what does representation refer. This question forms the focus for a critique of the epistemology and ontology of representation and its artificial separation of language and vision, or word and image in our perceptual experience of the world. The criticism is essential to an exploration of the referential power of translation understood in semiotic and narrative terms as its ground of interpretation. This exploration describes the symbolic or semiotic value of translations, or the contexts in which they acquire contemporary coherence and significance. The central descriptive part of the thesis employs three conceptions of context: the context of texts themselves as narratively and semantically coherent units; their cultural contexts, or the irreducible intertexuality on which they depend for the recognition and interpretation of their significant features; and the social and economic conditions which underpin the work of production and provide the social contexts within such works circulate. In rejecting the notion that translations are an image, however impure, of an antecedent text, my thesis excludes a notion of conventional limits to translation based on structuralist conceptions of semantic or narrative form as the principal carriers of meaning. It concludes that the limits of translation are defined by its possibilities.

The importance of early childhood education in children's social, emotional, cognitive, physical and spiritual development is only recently gaining coinage in the formal education system in the UK, despite the fact that extensive research has been conducted in the fields of child development and child psychology for many years. Such studies reveal the importance of a child centred, humanising education in the development of the young child, and pay particular attention to the role and value of language acquisition and meaningful language use in the holistic education of young children. Against the background of a newly introduced early years curriculum in the UK (2000), this study traces the historical origin of early childhood education and the socio-cultural, political and economic factors that impact upon its delivery and implementation in various curricula, both nationally and internationally. The recent Foundation Stage curriculum document (2000) identifies language, play and human interaction as tools not only for the development of personal, social and linguistic skills but also as key processes of learning and teaching in early childhood education. However, in the absence of a well developed methodology and with insufficient Early Years training for the Foundation Stage Curriculum (2000), language teaching and learning is generally regarded more as a preparation for the formal school curriculum rather than in the context of discourse and communication for the development of personal and social skills. This situation has led to a considerable degree of professional conflict and insecurity amongst Early Years practitioners about the aims of the new curriculum and its implementation. The thesis argues that young children develop holistically (cognitively, personally and socially) through the medium of 'speech' and 'discourse', and that language is a social construct and a product of human culture. Therefore in early years, language and literacy development cannot be separated from the child's social world and the focus, in terms of teaching and learning, should be on discourse-making: the making, negotiation and development of rules, terms and conditions of the child's social world. This can offer children the linguistic resources they need to be confident and secure in familiar and unfamiliar environments and to problem-solve, organise and maintain their social worlds. The thesis argues that play and well structured Drama in Education activities can provide opportunities for meaningful communication and discourse. Drawing from the research findings, a model to structure and develop children's play for personal, social and linguistic development through Drama in Education is proposed. It will be shown that drama contains interactive tools and meaningful forms of learning which can assist teachers to create living contexts and fictitious worlds with the children within which the different functions of language can be identified and developed.

This thesis focuses on the history of the inflexional subjunctive and its functional substitutes in Late Middle English. To explore why and how the inflexional subjunctive declined in the history of English language, I analysed 2653 examples of three adverbial clauses introduced by if (1882 examples), though (305 examples) and lest (466 examples). Using a corpus-based approach, this thesis argues that linguistic change in subjunctive constructions did not happen suddenly but rather gradually, and the way it changed was varied , and that different constructions changed at different speeds in different environments. It is well known that the inflexional subjunctive declined in the history of English, mainly because of inflexional loss. Strangely however this topic has been comparatively neglected in the scholarly literature, especially with regard to the Middle English period, probably due to the limitations of data and also because study of this development requires very cumbersome textual research. This thesis has derived and analysed the data from three large corpora in the public domain: the Middle English Grammar Corpus (MEG-C for short), the Innsbruck Computer Archive of Machine-Readable English Texts (ICAMET for short), and some selected texts from The Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse, part of the Middle English Compendium that also includes the Middle English Dictionary. The data were analysed from three perspectives: 1) clausal type, 2) dialect, and 3) textual genre. The basic methodology for the research was to analyse the examples one by one, with special attention being paid to the peculiarities of each text. In addition, this thesis draw on some complementary – indeed overlapping -- linguistic theories for further discussion: 1) Biber’s multi-dimensional theory, 2) Ogura and Wang’s (1994) S-curve or ‘diffusion’ theory, 3) Kretzchmar’s (2009) linguistics of speech, and 4) Halliday’s (1987) notion of language as a dynamic open system. To summarise the outcomes of this thesis: 1) On variation between clausal types, it was shown that the distributional tendencies of verb types (sub, ind, mod) are different between the three adverbial clauses under consideration. 2) On variation between dialects, it has been shown that the northern area, i.e. the so-called Great Scandinavian Belt, displays an especially high comparative ratio of the inflexional subjunctive construction compared to the other areas. This thesis suggests that this result was caused by the influence of Norse, relating the finding to the argument of Samuels (1989) that the present tense -es ending in the northern dialect was introduced by the influence of the Scandinavians. 3) On variation between genres, those labelled Science, Documents and Religion display relatively high ratio of the inflexional subjunctive, while Letter, Romance and History show relatively low ratio of the inflexional subjunctive. This results are explained by Biber’s multi-dimensional theory, which shows that the inflexional subjunctive can be related to the factors ‘informational’, ‘non-narrative’, ‘persuasive’ and ‘abstract’. 4) Lastly, on the inflexional subjunctive in Late Middle English, this thesis concludes that 1) the change did not happen suddenly but gradually, and 2) the way language changes varies. Thus the inflexional subjunctive did not disappear suddenly from England, and there was a time lag among the clausal types, dialects and genres, which can be related to Ogura and Wang’s S-curve (“diffusion”) theory and Kretzchmars’s view of “linguistic continuum”. This thesis has shown that the issues with regard to the inflexional subjunctive are quite complex, so that research in this area requires not only textual analysis but also theoretical analysis, considering both intra- and extra- linguistic factors.

Autism is considered to be a chronic developmental disability that affects communication, relationships, emotional development and imagination (NAS, 2010). Prevalence rates for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) suggest that the rates have increased over time and recent research shows that 1 in 68 children are diagnosed with the disorder (Baio, 2014). These children’s difficulties in the areas of communication, social skills and restricted/repetitive behaviours and interests lead to the need of therapeutic support (APA, 2013) and often it falls to parents to find an appropriate treatment for their child (Marcus et al, 2005). Among recommended services to these children are speech and language therapy, occupational therapy (Johnson and Myer, 2007) and psychotherapy (Alvarez et al, 1999). There are a number of intervention approaches for children with autism that have been developed, however none have been universally accepted as being the most effective (Farrell et al, 2005). As a result, parents often find it difficult to know which is the most appropriate approach for their child. This study aims to explore the development of children with autism over time in the areas of social skill and communication, regardless of the kind of treatment (speech and language therapy, psychoanalytic/psychodynamic psychotherapy and occupational therapy) they are receiving and to investigate the association between therapy context and the patterns of developmental change. This thesis is designed as a cross-national study in order to examine the aspects of the disorder that differ in the UK and Greece along with the differences (if any) in the developmental patterns across countries. The significance of doing a cross-national study is to explore autism from a wider international perspective and to identify any differences and similarities across the two countries. Twenty children with autism who had completed one of two differing types of treatment in the UK (psychotherapy, n=10 and speech and language therapy, n=10) were recruited to be monitored post-therapy twice over a two-year period. Twenty children with autism who had received one of two types of treatment in Greece (occupational therapy, n=10 and speech and language therapy, n=10) were also recruited to be monitored post-therapy twice over a two-year period. The research found that all children changed significantly over time on all aspects of measurement. Furthermore, no significant differences were found in the children from the two different countries at the start of the study and they developed in a very similar way as well. The results suggested though that based on the ADOS-Social (p=0.008) and ADOS-Imagination (p=0.008) children in the UK improve faster in the areas of social skill, imagination and the CDI-no of words understood and produced (p=0.015) showed an increase in their ability to understand and say words compared to the children in Greece. However, the CDI-no of words understood (p=0.027) showed that the children in Greece improved faster in the area of comprehension. The children who received SLT are also mainly developing in a very similar way across the two countries. Most measures showed change over time, except for the SCQ (p=0.081), ADOS-Ster (p=0.050) and CDI-U (p=0.141|). Also, only the ADOS-Social (p=0.021) and the Social Communication Questionnaire (p=0.021) showed a significant interaction effect. Thus, the SLT group from the UK seems to improve faster in the area of social skills compared to the SLT group from Greece. Additionally, in regards to the effect of the therapy context on the developmental pattern of children with autism, there were no differences across intervention contexts at the beginning and there were mainly non-significant interactions in the rate of change across the differing types of intervention. The findings suggested that all measures showed change over time. Only the SCQ (p=0.041) and the ADOS-imagination (p=0.033) showed a significant interaction effect before adjusting for age. Therefore, the SLT group in the UK seems to improve faster in the social communication area and the Psychotherapy group in the UK improved faster in the area of imagination. Conclusively, the SLT groups showed more change on language and communication measures, whilst the psychotherapy and occupational therapy groups saw changes in other areas of autistic symptomatology not achieved in the SLT groups, such as imagination and stereotypical behaviour. In summary, the current study helps parents gain better insight in different therapy choices and raises awareness of other types of therapy that are available in terms of intervention. The findings of this study can help professionals who work with children with autism further their understanding of the disorder and how it manifests through time in order to provide appropriate services based on each child’s needs. Additionally, the cross-national approach was intended to give some suggestions about the manifestation of autism across countries and about the way childhood autism is treated in each country. In regards to the more specific changes that the analysis revealed, they seem to fit well with the intervention targets of each type of therapy. Thus, the analysis suggested that certain characteristics tend to be associated with specific treatment types, which leads us to believe that sometimes the most effective course of treatment is a combination of therapies depending on the individual needs of each family. Finally, the results of this study offer original findings with respect to the outcomes of psychodynamic/psychoanalytic psychotherapy for children with autism since there is a lack of rigorous research in this field.

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 study uses in-depth, qualitative analyses of narrative fragments elicited during nine months of ethnographic research in Delhi and elsewhere. I develop the notion of 'transcultural voices' to understand narrative practices of young, male, hip hop-affiliated ethnographic interlocutors. As participants tell stories about their lives, their plans, their fears, their urban experience and their views of the world, many voices seem to appear. These voices support and challenge each other in manifold ways, constructing complex polyphonic depth. I show that narrators other (Chapter 4), synchronise (Chapter 5) and embody (Chapter 6) this polyphony to construct narrative moments in which their ‘own’ transcultural voices can be recognised. In conversation with me or other audiences, these young men, most of who have migratory histories, narrativise their experiences of being hip hop practitioners in one of India’s complex megacities to discursively imagine themselves as part of a globally unfolding hip hop culture. I also analyse narratives told by North American and European hip hop practitioners, most of them diasporic Indians, who travel to India to practise, promote and research hip hop. From their accounts we begin to understand how hip hop in Delhi is narrated through hybrid subject positions from outside. My own ethnographic practices and the writing of this thesis surely have to be counted as such an account from outside, which leads me to assume my own authorship here with heightened reflexivity. The thesis shows that an analytical focus on voice in narrative, one which considers both the physical and the social voice and is informed by ethnography, can complexify research on urban subcultures in the contemporary globalised moment.

The starting point for this dissertation was the fact that the Old English poem The Descent into Hell had received so little critical attention and was generally omitted from anthologies of Old English poetry. From close examination of the poem it became evident that the central focus was not the apocryphal story of Christ’s Descent, but on John the Baptist and Baptism. This thesis offers a reinterpretation of the poem’s central theme and emphasizes its poetic and stylistic qualities. In order to do that, a new edition of the poem was required. Also addressed in this thesis is an examination of the vexing question concerning the various lacunae that were the result of damage to the manuscript. This thesis focuses on re-interpretation, and the established text and translation included is the base for the subsequent literary analysis. The core of this thesis is a critical edition of the poem; the editorial methods used are described in detail on pages 11-20. Central to the main argument is that the poem’s current title, assigned by ASPR in 1936, misrepresents the theme of the poem, causing the reader to expect a work on the Descent, and thus being confused as a result. I argue rather that the poem illuminates the central Christian sacrament of Baptism. This study addresses the questions: What is the main theme? What is the poem’s didactic function? What literary approaches help convey the central message? What evidence suggests that a name change is justified? and What benefits can result from a name change? The first chapter highlights various linguistic features relevant for the editing of the poem and provides a summary of the main codicological characteristics of the manuscript in which the poem is preserved. Chapter II provides an examination of the theme of the descensus, and assesses its historiographical prominence in religious thought leading up to and including the Anglo-Saxon period. My argument disproves the current interpretation of the poem as a descensus narrative, although the image of the Descent still plays a symbolic role. Chapter III provides a literary analysis of the poem. The purpose of this chapter is to enrich modern scholarly perceptions of the Exeter Book poem, offer a more suitable title and contribute to continued scholarly discussion and analysis of the Exeter Book and its compilation. Chapter IV assesses the poem within a relevant comparative context, whilst further reinforcing its central theme and function. With respect to editing the text, effort has been made to retain the manuscript reading except where there are obvious errors, lacunae or strong evidence necessitating change. As this is a critical edition, the Anglo-Saxon poem has been presented here using modern conventions of capitalization, punctuation, caesuras and line divisions. However, since the manuscript that contains the poem is damaged, I have not included conjectures in instances where little or no evidence would justify emendations. In instances where there are identifiable alterations to the original text then such emendations have been noted in the Apparatus and Commentary. The translation offers a clear and idiomatic rendition of the poem which endeavours to convey the meaning of the text rather than sacrifice meaning for stylistic reasons. This dissertation also provides a diplomatic transcription and presents digital reconstructions of the manuscript, offering a variety of interpretations of the poem. The guiding principles for this dissertation have been to create an edition that reveals the poem’s main theme of Baptism and to demonstrate that the liturgical structure, aided by allusions and dramatic effects functions didactically. Undoubtedly because of the lacunae and contextual problems, The Descent into Hell has become a somewhat marginalized poem in the study of Anglo-Saxon verse; however, the textual analysis in this dissertation provides a guide towards understanding the poem’s main theme and offers fresh insight into its place and significance within the corpus of Old English poetry.