The purpose of this study was to test the application of two linguistic models of narration and one linguistic model of speech and thought presentation on comic texts: Fowler's (1986) internal and external narration types, Simpson's (1993) narrative categories from his 'modal grammar of point of view' and Leech and Short's (1981) speech and thought presentation scales. These three linguistic models of narration and speech and thought presentation, originally designed and used for the analysis of prose texts, were applied to comics, a multimodal medium that tells stories through a combination of both words and images. Through examples from comics, I demonstrate in this thesis that Fowler's (1986) basic distinction between internal and external narration types and Simpson's (1993) narrative categories (categories A, B(N) and B(R) narration) can be identified in both visual and textual forms in the pictures and the words of comics. I also demonstrate the potential application of Leech and Short's (1981) speech and thought presentation scales on comics by identifying instances of the scales' categories (NPV/NPT, NPSA/NPTA, DS/DT and FDS/FDT) from comics, but not all of the speech and thought presentation categories existed in my comic data (there was no evidence of IS/IT and the ategorisation of FIS/FIT was debatable). In addition, I identified other types of discourse that occurred in comics which were not accounted for by Leech and Short's (1981) speech and thought presentation categories: internally and externally-located DS and DT (DS and DT that are presented within (internally) or outside of (externally) the scenes that they originate from), narratorinfluenced forms of DS and DT (where narrator interference seems to occur in DS and DT), visual presentations of speech and thought (where speech and thought are represented by pictorial or symbolic content in balloons) and non-verbal balloons (where no speech or thought is being presented, but states of mind and emphasized pauses or silence are represented by punctuation marks and other symbols in speech balloons).

This thesis reports an enquiry into Chinese primary and junior high school English teachers’ perceptions of, and responses to The Revised Curriculum (2011) for Full-time Compulsory Education. This document claims to hold a very different view of English teaching from pervious curricula, but this claim is largely unexplored. The research first aims to understand the challenges The Revised Curriculum (2011) poses for primary and junior high school teachers of English in the PRC. On the basis of this, the research also aims to understand teachers’ beliefs about The Revised Curriculum (2011) and what challenges they identify. Research into effective teaching gives a prominent role to teacher beliefs and knowledge not only about teaching, but also about changing any existing practices. Fullan (1993) argues that any educational reform ultimately relies on teachers, so their views and perceptions are pivotal to the success of The Revised Curriculum (2011). The study was conducted in two phases. Phase one involved a document content analysis of the 2001 and 2011 curricula to identify the changes aimed for in the 2011 curriculum and evaluates how these changes might affect teachers. In this phase of the research, a novel approach was taken to examine teachers' views of the Revised Curriculum (2011) through their activities on web forums in China. Their comments were sampled and analysed using NVivo to generate a map of their views and the relationships between them. The Phase one research showed that The Revised Curriculum (2011) is different from the 2001 version in some important ways. It foregrounds the humanistic value of student-centred teaching and learning, while giving teachers free choice of teaching method and a new role by contributing to curriculum development for the classes they teach from reflecting on the effectiveness of their methods and practices. Phase two of the research, based on the findings of Phase one, used written teacher questionnaire responses and semi-structured individual interviews in order to collect the views of a wider sample of teachers. This thesis reports the results and analysis of the teachers’ views and perceptions. The findings amplified the findings from the Phase one research and suggest that teachers have a range of concerns. The teachers in this study were uncertain about their new role; they were not clear about what a shift to student-centred teaching and learning implied. The teachers were also uncertain about the nature of reflection on their own practice and the possible accountability this reflection might entail. This study suggests these teachers were finding it challenging to understand the notion of the teacher as a professional who does not simply know and deliver the curriculum according to the new definition, but is seen as responsible for designing and creating the curriculum for their own particular students. This study also identifies an important tension between the published curriculum and the assessment system for English in China which, if left unresolved, is likely to leave teachers unable to meet the demands of both.

This mixed-methods study concerns the teaching of CLIL to students in mainstream secondary schools in Catalonia. English proficiency levels among school students remain persistently low throughout Spain compared to other European countries, despite policies to lower the age at which pupils start to learn English and increase the time they spend in lessons. Given the limited space in the curriculum in Catalonia, which already has the challenge of teaching two official languages, CLIL has increasingly been viewed as a solution to bolster English competence. This study therefore sets out to explore interaction and discourse in CLIL and L1 secondary science classrooms to find out how teachers were able to achieve their CLIL learning aims, while comparing teaching strategies and pupil participation in CLIL and L1 learning environments. Qualitative methods (questionnaires and interviews) were used to measure student and teacher perceptions of CLIL, while a combination of qualitative and quantitative measures were employed to analyse transcripts from 20 hours of recorded lessons. The results show that teachers used a greater range of tasks in the CLIL lessons to scaffold learning, engage students and encourage participation. Learning was more visual and hands on in the CLIL classrooms, whereas in the L1 lessons it could feature long stretches of teacher talk with few student-centred activities. However, student participation was low in the CLIL lessons. Students struggled to ask and answer questions in English, and teachers were unable, and often reluctant, to employ strategies to get students speaking, for example, through the use of ELT-style speaking activities. The research also revealed high rates of L1 use, both to communicate within the CLIL lessons and to teach entire lessons on the course. This reflects the teachers’ view that the science took precedence over language learning and that their aim was to teach the same amount and depth of science content in the CLIL lessons as they would expect to teach when using students’ L1.

1. The Hon. Robert Curzon junior is a figure of significance for three reasons that have long been a matter of record. Firstly, be was the only person ever to investigate the contents of the monastic libraries of the Middle East and Meteora, others both before and after his time being either content or forced to confine themselves to one area or another. Secondly, he saved from almost certain destruction among the remains of some of these libraries a number of important manuscripts which are now, as a result of his efforts, in the British Museum. Thirdly, he described this enterprise in Visits to Monasteries in the Levant. Raskin described this work as the most delightful book of travels he ever opened. It went through three editions in its first year (1849), three further editions appeared in 1851,1865 and 1881, a seventh edition appeared in 1916, and the last edition appeared in 1955. The notice in The Dictionary of National Bioeranhy by Stanley Lane Poole has remained unaltered since it was written in 1886. It is very short and has virtually nothing to say about Curzon. He deserves to be better known. 2. In 1966 I began an investigation to ascertain the whereabouts or fate of manuscript material that would throw light on Curzon. Therewere over five hundred of his letters to the Rev. Walter Sneyd among the Sneyd Papers in the University Library at Keele, but the whereabouts of the Parham Papers was unknown. They were last seen in 1927 and it took five years to trace the largest surviving portion of them, during which time a second, smaller but quite unknown, portion came to light, followed by a third. From this material and from the letters to Sneyd it has been possible to make the first detailed biographical study of Curzon, and this forms the major part of the introduction. 3. The letters to Sneyd have an importance of their own. Firstly, apart from the light they throw on Curzon's career they are often more valuable for what they tell us about his personality than for what he actually says. Secondly, it is very rarely that one is made party to confidences of the sort Curzon shared with Sneyd. Curzon's letters illuminate over a period of nearly forty years the struggle taking place behind the scenes in an ancient, land-owning, Victorian family, from almost devastatingly close range. Thirdly, the unique character of the letters gives Curzon a claim to be considered as a letter writer. In so far as any undertaking which has had the advantage of freely given expert and local knowledge, constant encouragement and constructive criticism can be called original, this work represents the results of original research.

This thesis is a modern spelling edition of unedited poems and song lyrics from British Library, Additional Manuscript 15233, and a cultural and sociological study of the collection. The manuscript contains music, poetry and fragments of drama attributed to John Redford, Organist, Almoner and Master of the Choristers at St. Paul's Cathedral c.1534–1547, as well as work by at least six other mid Tudor poets. The manuscript has systematically been cited as a ‘St. Paul’s miscellany’(because the main body of work within it is attributed to Redford), and despite its varied content, has been considered almost solely from the perspective of Early Modern drama. This thesis considers the manuscript anew: as a whole, rather than in parts divided along disciplinary lines, as an example of material culture, and separately from the well-researched centres of St. Paul’s and John Redford. Chapters one and two comprise a study of the physical makeup of the manuscript, demonstrating new evidence for its date, and suggesting that it is the product of an artistic network centred on the London parish church of St. Mary-at-Hill. Chapters three and four comprise new studies of the content of the manuscript. Chapter three examines The Play of Wit and Science, with particular attention to its bibliographical status, and its engagement with contemporary artistic debate in performance. It also demonstrates its importance as a source for two later sixteenth-century plays. Chapter four is a case study of a single poem from the manuscript. This demonstrates the overall significance of MS 15233 as a source for verse and song, uncovers a network of printers involved in the transmission of its contents, and calls into question the long-standing theory that the Elizabethan poet George Gascoigne was a contributor to the manuscript. The final chapter of the thesis comprises a modern spelling edition of the poems and song lyrics from MS 15233 with individual commentaries and textual apparatus. This thesis demonstrates that to examine MS 15233 purely in relation to St. Paul’s Cathedral and John Redford, and from any one perspective, is reductive, and that these approaches have caused evidence to be skewed, and scholars to miss more complex possibilities regarding its compilation and provenance.

The investigation explores the potential effects of the new constitutional arrangements and electoral system on the campaign discourse of Scottish political parties. The four weeks of election campaigning are studied, from the 1st April to the 1st May 2003. Analysis focuses on many of the main texts produced during the election campaign, including manifestos, party election broadcasts and newspaper articles. Conducted in the Critical Discourse Analysis tradition, this investigation combines insights from Fairclough’s social focus and three dimensional analysis of discourse and van Dijk and Chilton’s cognitive approaches. This synthesis of approaches is an attempt to produce an analysis that can explicate both social and cognitive aspects of ideological discourse production. The thesis explores the dynamics of party political competition and ideological negotiation in devolved Scottish politics, with particular attention paid to the discourse of coalition and nationalist politics. The thesis begins by outlining background information on the events leading up to Scottish devolution. Discussion then focuses on the ideological character of Scottish politics, both in terms of public opinion and the positions of political parties, as represented by the content of their manifestos. Continuing the analysis of party manifestos, chapter 3 explores discursive strategies used by political parties to construct identities and negotiate relationships in light of actual or potential coalition government. The following chapter moves the analysis onto party election broadcasts, taking particular interest in the rhetorical methods employed in the positive and negative presentation of policies. Chapter 5 analyses the press reception of party election broadcasts. Having established the importance of a nationalist agenda in Scottish politics during previous sections, Chapter 6 investigates representations of Scottish national identity in election discourse.

The rationale of this thesis stems from the argument that intercultural skills and knowledge are indispensable to the process of internationalizing Higher Education in Taiwan, which is a primary goal set by the Taiwanese government. This thesis seeks to investigate how the integration of cultural studies with English as a Foreign Language syllabus can provide Taiwanese university students with opportunities to enter an ‘inter’ space where they cross linguistic and cultural boundaries, and where they are able to engage in cross cultural dialogue. It presents both theoretical and practical components of a potential culturally based university English course. The theoretical concept of the “third space”, as described by Bhabha and Kramsch and others, is a crucial dimension in the intercultural classroom in which students can reinterpret Otherness and their own culture. This thesis also explores how a cultural syllabus that includes essential elements of cultural studies and that utilizes generally available materials and topics, with appropriate instructional approaches, can be interwoven into the English language classroom and provide students with opportunities to critically voice their own opinions. Data were collected during a five-month study among first year university students in a medical university in Taiwan. Quantitative and qualitative data together provide evidence to determine a necessity for intercultural competence in the language classroom, and possible ways it can be developed or enhanced. The evidence indicates that given appropriate opportunities, students are willing to deepen their sociocultural knowledge of Self and Other and at the same time improve their language skills. This thesis offers a perspective that differs from the traditional four skills English education that presently dominates education in Taiwan. It concludes by recommending including an intercultural syllabus in EFL classrooms at the tertiary level and with implications for university and national educational policies and practices, and includes recommendations for future research.

This thesis examines the use of supra-textual devices in the Trotula, a set of Middle English gynecological and obstetrical medical treatises. Through close examination of the thirteen manuscript versions dating between the early or mid-fifteenth century and the late sixteenth century, this thesis studies the way in which punctuation, layout, colour, marginalia and other visual devices are used to structure and present the texts. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, this thesis examines the ways in which supra-textual devices are used to organise the texts into units of various type and length (major and minor sections, paragraphs,recipes, sense-units, sentences, clauses, phrases), and how the presentation of these units contributes to the reading of the text, showing that,despite the lack of standardised punctuation practices, each manuscript text uses a consistent system of supra-textual devices. Their use is not haphazard, as has previously been asserted; supra-textual devices are used purposefully to structure the texts and to communicate with the reader. The definitions of ‘sentence’ and ‘sense-unit’ in the Middle English context are also discussed, as well as the terminology used to describe medieval punctuation practices. In particular, the often-made binary division between ‘grammatical’ and ‘rhetorical’ punctuation is examined, showing that this division is neither very informative nor useful in practice for describing the systems of supra-textual devices present in medieval English writing. While the majority of the units can be described in terms of ‘sense-units’, the development towards the modern ‘sentence’ can be evinced in the data. This thesis also examines the role that scribes played in adapting and modifying the textual presentation in their exemplars, arguing that scribes played a key role in modifying the appearance of the manuscript texts to suit the needs of their audiences. Emphasising the importance of contextualisation, the final chapter focuses on the pragmatics of supra-textual devices, and how they can contribute to our understanding of the ways in which these texts were read and used by private individuals, professional medical practitioners or textual communities. This thesis argues that the Trotula had a number of different audiences, with varied literacy skills, and the supra-textual devices in the manuscripts suggest a range of reading practices, from private to communal, silent to oral, intensive to extensive. This thesis demonstrates that a close examination of supra-textual devices can bring new insights into Middle English grammar as well as scribal and reading practices.

The present thesis is an in-depth examination of the potential of facilitating reflective practice in the educational world of Teaching English as a Foreign Language in Higher Education. More specifically, the current thesis investigates the impact of Guided Reflective Practice on the practice of five university teachers of English as a Foreign Language in Cyprus. Although language research increasingly acknowledges the importance of reflection in excavating the personal, individual and emotional nature of teachers’ work, educational policies and professional teaching standards tend to overlook the humanistic and emotional dimensions of the teacher’s role. Teachers are passionate human beings and their identity, behaviour and emotions are intimately connected with their personal beliefs and values, thus their reflective selves. At the same time, emotions are also socially constructed and a teacher’s behaviour emerges as a result of interactions with others. Successful teacher interactions, however, presuppose an environment of trust, openness and willingness. In such a context, the individual can feel free to both engage in a journey of self-awareness and co-construct knowledge in a reflective dialogue with others who can facilitate the reframing of pre-existing beliefs and practices. Few empirical studies exist which illustrate the incorporation of reflective practice as a facilitative and developmental tool offered to Higher Education English as a Foreign Language in-service teachers in a co-educational and appreciative environment. The main purpose of this investigation is the increased understanding of ‘self’ and EFL practice through learning to apply reflective practice as a vehicle for mindful and caring interactions with others. The study incorporates insights from humanistic learning theory, relational cultural theory and critical constructivism. It also examines the ways in which the research process has influenced and reshaped my practice and identity as English as a Foreign Language educator and reflective facilitator. I link my research commitment to my belief in the uniqueness of the individual and the importance of learning as a result of building human relationships through reflective and dialogical interactions with others. Using an action inquiry methodology and qualitative data collection and analysis, the study endeavoured to address three research questions by investigating the teachers’ perceptions of the impact of guided reflective practice and assessing their response to the process. Data collection methods included reflective journals, reflective inquiry group meetings, dialogue observation sessions based on video-recordings, online chats, and holistic interviews. From the present study emerged the Collaborative, Appreciative, Reflective Enquiry (CARE) model for teacher development, revealing new understandings and insights for TEFL through practices in which emotions are a primary catalyst for transformational teacher learning. The proposed CARE model of guided reflective practice constitutes an alternative framework which identifies ways of facilitating and operationalising reflection in an ‘acritical’ and appreciative context, highlighting its emancipatory potential as a tool for growth and development and not as an institutional requirement. I am claiming that the significance of my research lies in the fact that it offers new conceptualisations vis-à-vis the capacity of teachers of Higher Education English as a Foreign Language to learn and maximise their potential through reflection when they feel appreciated as individuals and educators. More specifically, findings about participants’ and my own learning reveal an increased self-awareness and awareness of practice, an ability to critically reflect on context without being judgmental of others, and a willingness to reframe practice. More importantly, however, findings show a felt appreciation for the therapeutic effects of reflection and a positive approach to practice as a result of being guided and supported in the reflective practice process by understanding others. Implications include the significance of appreciative reflective practice in teacher interactions and collaboration, of teacher agency in the knowledge production in Teaching English as a Foreign Language, and the importance of positive emotionality in empowering teachers to live out their identities and values in practice. It is my hope that this small pocket of teacher reform in the study can pave the way forward to similar reform initiatives in the Teaching English as a Foreign Language domain that would entail human connectedness and caring in teacher learning through reflection.

This research focuses on the contrastive analysis of authentic persuasive business correspondence written in English by Thai speakers and native English speakers in the Thai business context. Three types of persuasive correspondence - sales promotion, request, and invitation - were analysed from contrastive text linguistic and pragmatic perspectives. The purpose was to examine, compare and contrast their rhetorical structures, functions and linguistic realisations as well as persuasive and politeness strategies, and to compare these features to those found in textbook samples of persuasive letters in order to investigate the extent to which those samples represent the authentic, real-life correspondence. The findings report on cross-cultural variations which differentiate the persuasive writing patterns and strategies of Thais and native English speakers. Despite some shared writing conventions, the findings reveal diversity in some rhetorical moves, linguistic realisations, rhetorical appeals and politeness strategies. The diversity includes some cultural-bound discourse patterns and cultural-specific textual features, many of which can be traced to interference from the Thai language and culture. An exploration of the nature of sales promotion, request, and invitation letters presented in one American and two Thai textbooks on Business English writing reveals that their letter samples reflect the characteristics of the authentic corpus in the business contexts to which they belong. The implications of this research are twofold. First, it has implications for the teaching of English business letter writing especially in the Thai context and the innovation of more advanced materials and methods for this pedagogical purpose. Second, it raises an awareness of differences in persuasive writing across languages and cultures, worth noting for developing cross-cultural understanding and communication strategies for effective intercultural business interactions in the dynamic business environment of the 21st century.