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Promoting EFL learners’ engagement with their targeted aspects of language is vital for successful language learning and acquisition. There has been substantial research undertaken on the role of social networking applications and their various features on promoting EFL learners’ engagement. Previous research has also indicated potential association between increased engagement and knowledge gains and development. The current research seeks to understand and explain the role of mobile microblogging in engaging EFL learners with their L2 targeted vocabulary. It primarily focuses on the use of Twitter as a mobile microblogging tool combined with a designed vocabulary learning task and its impact on learners’ engagement with vocabulary and knowledge development. This study is based on the premise that engagement with vocabulary via the adoption of mobile microblogging tool and task leads to better vocabulary learning and acquisition. This research employed both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Data was gathered using interviews, focus groups, weekly reports, questionnaires, the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS) and Twitter activity measurement. The participants showed positive attitudes towards the adoption of the mobile microblogging tool and task to approach their L2 targeted vocabulary. The findings show that the adoption of the mobile microblogging tool and task offered a great deal to the participants, facilitated approaching vocabulary learning, impacted their engagement and vocabulary gains and knowledge development positively. The study indicates that there is a positive relationship between EFL learners’ increased engagement with vocabulary and their gain and knowledge development. The study also identified a number of challenges the participants encountered during their use of the mobile microblogging. The present research confirms previous research findings and contributes additional evidence that demonstrates how learners’ connectedness is a critical factor in facilitating learning and supporting cognitive development.

This thesis aims at critically reviewing the type of discourses employed by the Centre-Left Coalition educational authorities to devise the English language policy launched by the former Minister of Education Sergio Bitar in 2003. This investigation also aims at exploring the discursive strategies used by those authorities to persuade Chileans to become Spanish-English bilingual citizens. I will observe how command of English is understood by the authorities by focusing on the text they employ to link language proficiency with economic development; globalisation; information, technology and knowledge society; and equality as it is worded within the language policy documents. I have employed a critical perspective to discourse analysis, i.e. CDA. This methodology will allow me to examine the microstructures of the language policy texts and relate them to the contextual macrostructures of contemporary Chile that trigger the composition of such texts. Thus, I will explore not only the historical, but also the contextual features of the language policy discourses which, in turn, makes embedded ideologies hidden in the discourse emerge and, hence, expose the goals that stake-holders may have had at the moment of policy creation and implementation. The critical analysis of the policy discourse has revealed some interesting patterns employed by the policy makers to devise the policy and to inculcate foreign language implementation in the Chilean educational system. For instance, the instrumentalisation of English, the commodification of the foreign language and the neoliberal reasoning embedded in those processes. This ideology is the result of 40 years' exposure to an economic, political and cultural hegemonic common-sense arguments which has shaped the Chilean citizen reasoning and behaviour.

This study contributes to the existing body of research on academic reading practices in the 21st century, by focussing on on-screen reading in the technological age. The study offers an insight into the nature of on-screen reading, and reflects the authentic on-screen academic reading experiences of international postgraduate (five Master’s and fifteen PhD) Saudi readers in the UK educational context. This was achieved by investigating participants’ reading comprehension processes and strategies while reading on-screen academic research articles, compared with those employed when engaged in print-based reading. This study also scrutinises L2 readers’ use of digital affordances and their on-screen academic reading challenges. A further objective was to examine students’ preferences and perceptions of both reading formats. Case study and interpretive qualitative approaches have been adopted in the present research study. Process oriented techniques, namely demographic questionnaires, think-aloud protocol, field notes, stimulated recall and interviews have been employed to collect the data. Thematic and content analysis; and a constant comparative method (CCM) have been applied to analyse the data. The findings of this study suggest that in order to achieve effective on-screen reading, multiple literacies are required, and this includes a newly identified digital academic strategy literacy (DASL). The research also indicates that although readers develop capabilities over time, readers are not confident enough in their digital literacies to practise on-screen academic reading regularly. Not only did many of the readers in this study lack sufficient competences and capabilities in digital literacies to derive benefit from the advantages of on-screen reading, they were also not able to interact with on-screen text as they would do with printed text. Readers’ preferences for reading printed rather than on-screen text, their L1 and L2, their discipline and/or individual differences might contribute to their on-screen reading interactions. Although new on-screen reading strategies emerged from the data, the results, in the main, reveal a transfer of print-based reading techniques to on-screen reading. This demonstrates a move from a traditional literacy to a digital one in which readers manipulate the strategies that they are already aware of, and are capable of, in order to read a text on-screen. Surprisingly, readers were much more effective; and employed more strategies and interacted more deeply with printed text than with on-screen text. The results from this study have led to the proposal of suggested models for interpreting on-screen L2 academic reading interactions. A number of pedagogical practices are suggested and recommended for preparing L2 readers for further academic study; and these also could be equally applicable and useful for L1 academic reading lessons in the 21st century, including reshaping reading skill textbooks to accommodate and meet the needs of reading comprehension practices in the technological age and promoting learners’ digital academic strategy literacy. These may be useful to teachers when teaching on-screen reading strategies for specific academic purposes in digital universities.

Over the last four decades, the research interest on foreign language anxiety (FLA) as a distinct complex of situational anxiety has been arising in EFL setting. Especially in Chinese EFL classrooms, such an anxiety is observed frequently among Chinese learners in their English speaking apprehension. Many scholars have investigated the anxiety-provoking factors to FLA or English-Speaking Anxiety in their empirical studies within different Asian contexts and findings have shown varying associations to cultural and contextual variables. However, these cultural and contextual-subjective influences on Chinese students English speaking anxiety (ESA) have not been explored extensively or specified and most importantly, little research exists for experimenting ways to a solution through systematic teaching practice. With Stern’s (1980) proposal and the researcher’s personal experience in the subject, drama approach has inspired the researcher to take the study further. Therefore this thesis focuses on formulating theories of the nature of the English-speaking anxiety experienced by Chinese learners of English, establishing the relation between the anxiety and drama approach, and exploring the influence of a specifically-designed drama class intervention in a higher education setting. The research questions aim to answer how the level of the participants’ anxiety is influenced by the diverse factors situating in this drama English class, e.g. classroom social factors, cultural variables, teacher and learner variables. In addition, this study aims to identify the crucial factors to the ESA experienced in the Chinese context as for explicating the cultural-situational dimension and how this relates to the application of drama approach. This study reflects the nature of action research and adopts mainly qualitative and partially quantitative data collection procedures. The field work took place in a Chinese university over a period of three months. The researcher designed the course and worked as the teacher of a random group of thirteen students who reported the anxiety. The survey was included as part of the questionnaire to assess the participants’ general ESA levels, selected and reformed on existing scales. Qualitative data was obtained from the teacher’s journals, observing the class and interviewing every participant. Both group results and three individual cases were presented and analysed. The findings of this research suggest that this drama course has a positive effect on reducing participants’ anxiety to various degrees. Three types of change in the anxiety level were revealed as drastic, fluctuated and mild decrease. The decrease in anxiety was explained by the increase in self-confidence through repeated conversation rehearsals of drama plays as oral practice in a learner-friendly language environment. The potentials of creating learning interest, effective collaboration and interaction contributed to a supportive language environment, which helped the reversal of vicious cycle of ESA. The teacher’s role is also essential in facilitating such a friendly learning environment. The predictors of the anxiety are shown to link to socio-psychological factors interacting with classroom social variables. Self-confidence was found to greatly influence the anxiety level and the willingness to communicate, which was directly or indirectly connected to fears of negative evaluation, public attention, face-protection and face loss. The lack of experience in learning and using oral English was highlighted as the main source of the anxiety to affect the self-confidence. This study furthers the understanding of ESA construct in the Chinese context, and contributes to increase the methodological and socio-geographical diversity in both FLA research and action research for language programme development in drama approaches.

Taking the sociocultural theory as theoretical framework, this thesis investigates the process of group regulation. It describes how regulatory mechanisms emerge and evolve in interactions among beginner English language learners considering the complexity of the dimensions involved. In an EFL context, many language learners are unlikely to encounter conditions in which they can practice their L2 and participate in meaningful conversation, even in language learning classrooms. This problem is accentuated when it comes to beginning language learners whose participation in communicative activities is likely to be even more limited. The current study starts from the premise that working in groups generates opportunities for learners to communicate in the L2 and share their learning problems with others instead of dealing with them on their own. The research explores regulatory mechanisms in conversations amongst four groups of Mexican adult beginner learners of English as a Foreign language (N=16). It enquires about the ways in which peer interactions in groups of learners mediate conversation during the completion of three open-question tasks. It also aims to explore the ways in which these language learners exert control over their limited resources to achieve their goals and to solve their emerging problems, without the guidance of a teacher. A mixed method research design was employed with a predominantly qualitative methodology. The main data was collected from the participants’ conversations during their weekly learning meetings in a Self Access Centre at a Mexican University over a nine-week period. Microgenetic analysis of their conversations provides a rich description of the moment-by-moment development of the regulatory mechanisms in play. Secondary data (such as learners' diaries, systematic observations, and group feedback) serves to complement the findings. The study resulted in the design of a new model of regulation, which suggests that during the completion of tasks, learners are confronted with the challenge of finding solutions to problems they draw on the group resources, negotiate the management of the task, and engage in meaningful communication. The findings also suggest that language learners at beginning stages can exert control over their cognitive, affective and social domains to engage in meaningful dialogues while using the target language to communicate, despite their limited resources. Understanding how groups can collaborate and regulate their actions leads to important implications for ELT. It can be concluded that language students need to be provided with favourable circumstances for group work in which they can raise their metalinguistic awareness, improve their interpersonal communication skills, experience support from their peers, use strategies to manage their communication and gain insight into their language learning process.