The objectives of this study are to assist Thai university students to develop their writing by using a teaching approach that focuses on the introduction of discourse within a genre approach based on the teaching and learning cycle of Feez (1998). This approach is considered suitable for an approach to teaching writing focused on discourse, because its design requires English language teachers to consider the importance of the whole text. It allows students to view texts as a whole, not in separated sentences, especially when they organise and connect ideas during writing. The study draws on both qualitative and quantitative approaches. The quantitative approach concentrates on the development of the students‟ writing by comparing the mean scores from the initial and final writings of students. Forty students were requested to complete four writing assignment during the course. The data were analysed by employing a pair sample t-test to compare initial and final scores. The iii qualitative approach deals with how peer feedback helps promote reader awareness and the attitudes of students and teachers. The qualitative data were gathered by various instruments, such as questionnaires, interviews, students‟ reflective writing, peer feedback, and so on. The results of the study revealed that: 1) students can perform better in writing ability, demonstrated from the overall scores. There is significant difference (p<.05) between the overall mean score in the final assignment and the initial assignment; 2) students are concerned about how to provide sufficient information for the readers. They understand the role of the writer, which is to provide more information for the readers, and are aware of the role of the reader; 3) the use of peer feedback is beneficial for students, and it also promotes student awareness of the sense of audience; 4) The attitudes of the students and teachers were positive towards teaching that focused on discourse structure. The students found that it was useful for them, because they realised how to connect and organise cohesive text; 5) most of the teachers noted that it was beneficial to be introduced to the way of teaching writing through approach focusing on discourse structure. 6. The modified version of Feez‟ cycle of teaching and learning is beneficial and support students to improve their writing through the course. 7. Portfolio assessment is an effective measure that helps students gauge their progress and allows them to see their writing improves in later drafts. 8. Students‟ reflective writing helps them promote their awareness of readers during the course.

This PhD thesis consists of two major sections. The critical commentary, Authenticity and alterity: evoking the fourteenth century in fiction, reflects upon issues of authenticity and alterity in historical fiction. The historical novel, The Nature of Things, through its structure, themes, style and language, aims to deliver an authentic and naturalistic portrait of life in the fourteenth century. The commentary and novel are supplemented by a bibliography, and three appendices: a synopsis of the novel, a list of the characters, and a summary of a review of historical novels undertaken alongside the writing, which sought to discover how other novelists addressed the issues of authenticity and alterity. The critical commentary considers what makes good historical fiction, specifically how to bring a sense of authenticity and the role of ‘alterity’. It first addresses the alleged ‘problems’ of historical fiction claimed by nineteenth-century author Henry James and others: the impossibility of authenticity, its innate falsehood, and its failure to portray the past’s strangeness. It then explains the process of writing The Nature of Things: its concept and themes, structure and characters, narrative metaphors, language and style, its quest for authenticity and ‘naturalism’. Then it looks at authenticity in historical fiction and how it can be achieved: through narrative form, recorded history, social context, physical details, and the historical thought-world, including religion and superstition. It goes on to consider the need for, and use of, ‘alterity’ (strangeness) as a means of achieving authenticity, looking at such concepts as magic, spells, the supernatural and monsters. Finally, it looks at the authenticity of language in historical fiction, the relationship between thoughts and words, and the problems of both anachronisms and archaic language. Throughout the commentary, examples are drawn from both The Nature of Things and ther historical novels. Concluding remarks are given at the end. The novel, The Nature of Things, spans the fourteenth century. It is structured in seven parts, each of which is narrated by one of seven different voices. The titles of the parts allude to the four biblical apocalyptic horsemen plus three invented ‘horsemen’ – Poverty, Famine, War, Plague, Death, Dissent, Despair. The titles allude to the disasters that befell the fourteenth century, which form the backdrop for the narrators' stories, but are also metaphors for the narrators’ emotional sensibilities. People's response to disaster is one of the novel’s themes, but so is hope and continuity, expressed in a garden metaphor that is given physical shape in a fictional thirteenth-century gardening book, The Nature of Growing Things.

This is the first critical study in the history of Nelson Algren criticism and scholarship to focus on Algren’s representation(s) of women. The critical consensus is that his women are ‘sympathetically imagined’ yet Algren has a reputation for being ‘no feminist.’ In this thesis I unpack this dichotomy by performing radical re-readings of his four novels, Somebody in Boots (1935), Never Come Morning (1942), The Man with the Golden Arm (1949), and A Walk on the Wild Side (1956). In each case I demonstrate that these novels perform feminist and masculinity studies work in their documentation and problematisation of rape and prostitution. I also unpack the mythologisation of love in Algren’s work which is based on out-dated readings of his protagonists’ intimate relationships and on a too-close association of his life with his literature. As such, this thesis also foregrounds the role critical readings play in the construction of a writer’s reputation. The ‘second sex’ of the title signals a) the thesis’s focus on women and b) the personal connection between Algren and Simone de Beauvoir who met on the cusp of writing The Man with the Golden Arm and The Second Sex. Re-reading archival evidence, I argue that Algren’s reputation as ‘no feminist’ owes much to being cast as Beauvoir’s ‘macho’ lover in the mythology of their relationship. Putting Algren’s women at the centre of readings demonstrates that he brought an incisive awareness of gender issues to the table when he and Beauvoir met in 1947. Foregrounding the women in Algren’s work, the richness and sophistication of Algren’s writing comes more fully to light. This thesis aims to provide a clearer sense of Algren’s place in American literature and an assessment of his relevance to the international canon of work on human sexuality, prostitution, and rape.

This thesis investigates materiality, meanings and the use of three crucial elements, World, Dust, and Daemon in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy. Together, the three novels Northern Lights (1995), The Subtle Knife (1997) and The Amber Spyglass (2000) juxtapose and represent not only Philip Pullman’s counter-interpretation of Biblical representation, Genesis in particular, but also his worries about religious absolutism and story-telling based in Christian belief. As a New Atheist fantasy fiction written to young adult and adult readers, Pullman’s enthusiasm for playing with and materializing obscure religious concepts and relating them to our real life through story-telling is remarkable. This research is aimed to analyse the methodologies and further to understand how Pullman can fulfill his unique cosmology, as well as the problems and paradoxes these elements could have brought together with. The first chapter, World, composes etymological, philosophical and constitutive studies of Pullman’s World system in His Dark Materials. That system takes an organic tuber-like form in its arrangement of worlds in time and space. The thesis attempts to suggest that Pullman’s atheistic cosmology is, paradoxically, constructed in terms of a heavily theological materiality. The research in the second chapter, Dust, focuses on the transformation of Dust. It attempts to argue that Pullmanic Dust is a process of becoming rather than a status of being. The whole process is divided into three stages, and my critique observes how Dust is materially changed in meaning in each stage. The research also provides detailed studies of how Dust can be metaphorically related to the doctrine of original sin and, in consequence, the work’s close relation to the very Christianity that it seeks to eschew. Daemon, as the most materialized entity made of Dust, is at the crux of Pullman’s understanding of the human soul. It is also a starting point for high fantasy in His Dark Materials. By studying the materiality and meaning of Daemon, my research into what is termed the laws of “settlement” finds that they violate the ontological foundation of Pullman’s realism and of his psychological (and philosophical) understanding of the soul. This chapter suggests that Pullman’s animalization of the human soul and, conversely, his anthropomorphism of daemons together make for a significant contradiction in his cosmology.

This mixed methods study explores the relationship of an academic English language proficiency test - the Pearson Test of English Academic (PTEA) - to the academic performance of its test takers at university. The particular focus is on the English language proficiency and academic performance of students from the “outer circle” (Kachru, 1985), many of whom have an accompanying ownership of English (Norton, 1997, Widdowson, 1994; Higgins, 2003). The implications of this proficiency and ownership of English for admissions, test performance and academic performance, are explored in the two strands of the study. The first strand uses mixed methods including statistical analysis of a large data set of PTEA test scores; analysis of university admissions policy documents; and thematic analysis of interview and survey data. The second strand of the research uses interviews (tutorials) to investigate the interpretability of the test for four individuals from the outer circle (Anglophone West Africa), in particular, looking at what can be inferred from the PTEA score profiles about their English language proficiency at university. The strand investigates whether the test served any purpose for the evaluation of these four individuals’ English language proficiency. The study indicates that there are some statistically significant differences in the proficiency of test takers from the outer circle as compared to the expanding circle (as expressed through mean test scores) according to nationality sub-groups and L1s. Ownership of English is a theme manifested in the educational and social background of the survey and case study participants emerging from thematic analysis of the data. Regarding inferences from test scores, the PTEA score profiles for the four cases do, to some extent, match their actual experiences at university regarding linguistic difficulties encountered on their courses. The case study also reveals other important factors in academic performance which are related to language proficiency but are also part of the adjustment to university experienced by all students including acquisition of academic skills and academic literacy. The study makes a contribution to the study of World Englishes and language testing, in particular the legitimacy of the English of test takers from the outer circle and how they are viewed and processed in the admissions system to UK universities.

My study aims to offer a Schopenhauerian reading of Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady and D. H. Lawrence's The White Peacock. Throughout the dissertation, I am driven by two goals. First, I aim to examine the selected novels by considering Schopenhauer's philosophy. Secondly, I shall investigate why characters, especially the heroines, having recognised that their marriage was basically a mistake, still remained in their tormented relationships. Why it is important to answer this question and what makes this a unique concern, especially in James's novel, is the possibility that previous studies and many other critiques have questioned the destiny of these heroines in regard to the novelists' anti-feminist tendencies or their social and personal concerns, while I believe that by using Schopenhauer's philosophy I can provide a deeper conceptualisation of the novels' ending. In so doing, in the second chapter I will describe the reception of Schopenhauer's philosophy in England, and the direct and indirect presence of his philosophy in Lawrence's and James's Works. In the third chapter, I concentrate on Schopenhauer's concept of freedom, morality and the will in James's novel. My fourth chapter considers Lawrence's philosophy of love and reveals how his philosophy differs from Schopenhauer's. Furthermore, it draws his readers' attention to the Schopenhauerian notion of the will-to-live, acknowledged in Lawrence's novel.

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This study investigated the main challenges that faced Libyan students in reading comprehension within the English language programme at Zawia University, Libya, through the perceptions of lecturers and students at the Department of English. This study also evaluated the current teaching practices of reading comprehension at the Department of English at Zawia University. It also identified the key causal factors that contributed to the students' inadequate reading comprehension performance. Reading comprehension as a research topic has been extensively researched and it is still of current interest. The key literature in this study is polarised around two streams. The first stream presents different aspects of reading: definitions, importance, complexity, purposes of reading, types of reading and approaches to reading. The second stream is related to various issues about the three main components of the reading comprehension module: learners, teachers and reading material. The philosophical paradigm underpinning this study is predominantly positivist; thus, eight hundred questionnaires were distributed to reach as many students as possible in order to find out the answer to an inquiry through numerical evidence. After distributing the questionnaires, semi-structured interviews were conducted to gauge the lecturers’ viewpoints about the teaching and learning of reading comprehension. Four hundred and forty nine students filled up the questionnaires, which were analysed using SPSS while seven lecturers participated in the interviews that were analysed through content analysis. Findings revealed that students at the Department of English at Zawia University lack the reading skills and the culture of reading and face difficulties in English reading comprehension. Many lecturers are not aware of reading skills and they teach reading comprehension in a traditional way with over-emphasis on decoding and accuracy. The insufficient learning environment at the department has a negative impact on the process of learning and teaching because of the lack of facilities and library resources, overcrowded classes, and limited time allocated to reading classes. This study has added a theoretical contribution through expanding the literature, which brings about academic benefits for future researchers in education in the Arab world, particularly in Libya. Future researchers can use the conceptual model for reading comprehension that is designed by the researcher to investigate what factors influence this process.

This study examines the quality of subtitles from English into Arabic. The motivation behind selecting this topic area is that subtitling of English language programmes into Arabic is under-researched. Therefore it is in need of further research in order to enhance subtitlers’ skills and performance. The study explores the main challenges that translators face in the subtitling of English language films into Arabic and addresses the key issues, by examining the common features hindering audio-visual translation and highlighting particular cultural limitations intrinsic to translation for Arabic speaking audiences, assuming that particular fundamentals of translation theory can be beneficial in overcoming the linguistics, technical and cultural challenges. A qualitative approach is adopted in the study. The rationale for adopting a qualitative research approach is related to the purpose of the study, the nature of the problem and research questions. Thus the study data have been collected using a thematic questionnaire for general viewers who are interested in watching subtitled programmes to gauge their perceptions on the current quality of English into Arabic subtitling. The findings of this study have practical contribution to enhance the quality of subtitling. They also benefit academic research through expanding the literature in the field of subtitling which in turn will benefit future researchers.

In this thesis I present an original theory of language learning behaviour derived from a grounded theory analysis of interview testimony from five Japanese learners of English. The theory takes the form of the basic English Learning as a Means of Self-fulfilment (ELMS) model. This model explains English-learning behaviour in terms of the engagement of four types of self-fulfilment drive: a drive for intellectual and affective stimulation (entertainment drive); a drive to ‘expand one’s horizons’ (perspective drive); a drive to make a ‘success’ of oneself (status drive); and a drive to engage in interaction with others (communication drive). Two additional models built on the foundation of the basic ELMS model are also introduced: the expanded ELMS model explains how learning behaviour is mediated by cultural and institutional context, and by the individual’s attempts to make sense of, and control, experience; and the Learning as a Means of Self-fulfilment (LMS) model is a hypothetical general model of learning which incorporates existing concepts from the literature. The results of the analysis demonstrate the importance of structure, rather than agency, in shaping language-learning behaviour. The theoretical rendering of motivation that emerges from the analysis is differentiated from that of motivation as a force constantly underlying behaviour. Instead, motivation is seen to make only sporadic appearances on the stage of consciousness, and to be responsible for behavioural change rather than behavioural routine. It follows that unexpected events that stimulate changes in beliefs about the self or about language learning may have much to tell us about motivation. This research does not so much build upon existing theory as problematise it. The results challenge prevailing conceptualisations of motivation, dominant discourses and practices associated with the term within applied linguistics and Japanese English language education, and the utility of the concept itself. It is a methodologically innovative investigation into the relationship between motivation and English learning in the Japanese context, with implications that extend beyond this context.