Current and Completed Projects

Current Projects

 

Staff in the Centre for Applied Linguistics are engaged in a number of important research projects. These include:

  • Addressing the needs of international students with academic writing difficulties, pilot project 2010-11

This project, which is funded by the Centre and by the International Office, investigates the academic writing progress of international first year undergraduates in the departments of Law and Statistics, and of international students across the university who have undertaken the pre-sessional programme. Further details here

  •  The Discourse of British Academic Spoken English.

A number of projects make use of the BASE Plus (British Academic Spoken English Plus) collection of video recordings of authentic lectures, seminars, workshops and conferences. Topics include the relationship between academic identity and argument, and the uses of metaphor in academic talk.

  • The Discourse, Grammar and Vocabulary of British Academic Written English. 

A number of staff and postgraduate research students are using the BAWE Plus (British Academic Written English) collection of student essays in their research. Topics include metadiscourse in academic essays, science and engineering laboratory reports, and applications to proficiency testing.

  • The TELC Network

For more information on the Teaching English in Large Classes (TELC) Research Network, click here.

 

recently Completed Projects

    Several of the following recent projects have developed major research collections for our Centre:  

    Building an archive and a record of the history of British Council involvement with ELT, 1934­-2009 (2010-2011)

    This project (January 2010 - December 2011) was led by Richard Smith with British Council funding as part of the overall Warwick ELT Archive enhancement programme. Research assistance was provided by Gosia Sky, Penny Trigg and Sheila Verrier. Further details here.

    This survey research project (December 2010 - September 2011), commissioned by The British Council, provided copy for a comprehensive Directory of UK ELT Research, 2009-2010, as well as data for uploading to the British Council's TeachingEnglish website. The project built on previous work carried out for the period 2005-2008 (see below). The project was led by Richard Smith with Seongsook Choi and was managed by Stuart Reid, with research assistance from Gosia Sky. Further details here. Guardian Weekly article (8 February 2011) related to the project here.

    The Kings-Warwick Globally-Oriented Curriculum Project (2009-2010)

    This project (April 2009 - March 2010) built on the intercultural competency framework developed in the Global People project. The aim was to adapt the framework to suit the needs of undergraduate students and to identify ways in which students' abilities to work and communicate across cultures could be enhanced. The project was funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) (£36,000).

    The main project report, Internationalisation in the UK HE Sector: A Competency-based Approach, is available here.

    The project is one of the themes of the Kings-Warwick Graduate Pledge Project.

    Directory of UK ELT Research, 2005-2008: Adding value to the database (2010)

    This project (February - November 2010), which was funded by The British Council, made the existing database more comprehensive and added value by other means including management of online discussions. Led by Richard Smith, with research assistance from Seongsook Choi. Further details here.

    The Global People Project (2008-2009)

    This project (January 2008 - August 2009) explored intercultural effectiveness in global education. It was funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) (£194,000) and formed Phase 3 of the £4 million eChina-UK Programme. The team developed a number of resources to promote intercultural effectiveness in international partnerships, including a lifecycle model, a competency model and a learning model. Outputs are available on the Global People website and in the Global People toolbook.

    An Archive and Record of UK-funded ELT Projects, 1950 onwards (2009)

    As part of the overall Warwick ELT Archive enhancement programme led by Richard Smith, this project (Jan.-Dec. 2009) aimed to systematically increase the stock of knowledge relating to UK-supported ELT projects undertaken in different parts of the world since the 1950s. This was done with research assistance from Sian Alsop, Seongsook Choi and Sheila Verrier by building an archive of reports and other documents and by constructing an inventory/chronology, and a bibliography, on this basis. The project was funded by The British Council.

    ELT Research in the UK, 2005-2008 (2009)

    This survey project (Jan.-July 2009), coordinated by Richard Smith with Shelagh Rixon, and with research assistance mainly provided by Seongsook Choi and Duncan Hunter, produced a Directory of UK ELT Research, 2005-2008 for the British Council, as well as a database for uploading to the British Council TeachingEnglish website as a searchable resource. The Directory (downloadable in pdf form here) contains an introduction and a comprehensive listing of research projects and papers. The searchable database is available at: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/elt-research  

    An investigation of genres of assessed writing in British Higher Education (2004–2007)

    Co-ordinated by Hilary Nesi and Sheena Gardner at Warwick with input from Paul Thompson at the University of Reading and Paul Wickens at Oxford Brookes University. This was a major project which received an award of £453,594 from the ESRC. The project aimed to develop the British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus and describe the linguistic features of genres of assessed student writing in different disciplines. The corpus was initially developed by Hilary Nesi, Gerard Sharpling and Lisa Ganobscik-Williams with funding from Warwick University. Further details here .
     
    CUTE 2: Chinese University Teachers Training in English (2005–2007)
    Hilary Nesi, Ema Ushioda and Tim Kelly, in partnership with the Language Centre, Cambridge University and Tsinghua University, China. £643,116 from HEFCE eChina-uk..
     
    Enhancement of the Warwick ELT Archive, with a particular focus on the work of A.S. Hornby (2005–2007)
    Richard Smith. £10,000 granted by the A.S. Hornby Educational Trust (Oct. 2005-September 2007). Further details here .
     
    The Development of an On-line Grammar Resource for International Students at Warwick University. (2005–2006)
    Hilary Nesi with Fei-Yu Chuang. £19,000 from the TQEF Challenge Fund for Departmental E-Learning Projects.
     
    International research project on developing learner autonomy (2004–2006)
    Five members of staff from our Centre were involved in a collaborative international research project on learner autonomy entitled InterAya. The project was coordinated by Andy Barfield (Chuo University, Japan) and Steve Brown (Konan Women’s University, Japan), and involved research teams working in a number of different countries. The outcome of the project was a collected volume of research papers published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2007. The two contributions from our Centre were: Chapter 6: Responding to resistance (Peter Brown, Richard Smith & Ema Ushioda) and Chapter 17: Collaborative development of teacher autonomy in multi-cultural materials design teams (Judith Kennedy & Annamaria Pinter)
     
    The effectiveness of computer-based materials as a means of teaching the English article system (2004–2005)
    Fei-Yu Chuang. TIRF (TESOL International Research Foundation) 2004 Doctoral Dissertation Grant of $5000 awarded.
     
    The enhancement of the British Academic Spoken English corpus (2002–2005)
    Led by Hilary Nesi at Warwick, working in collaboration with Paul Thompson at the University of Reading. This project was funded by an award of £230, 556 from the AHRB, and aimed to develop the BASE corpus of academic speech (with video recordings and transcripts of lectures and seminars across disciplines).
     
    English Language Teaching for Speakers of Other Languages, 1900-1980: A Comprehensive Bibliography, with Identification of Key Texts and Authors (2003–2004)
    Richard Smith. University of Warwick Research Development Fund grant of £4,677 awarded. Further details here .
     
    Classroom Assessment of English as an Additional Language in Key Stage 1 Contexts (1999–2003)
    Sheena Gardner. ESRC Major Research Grant No. R000238196 of £98,043. Reported on March 2003.

    Please go to the Collections page for outputs of some of these projects.