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Globally there is recognition that doctoral programmes need to offer the opportunity for career pathways beyond academia, as PhD graduates are entering a range of careers. Consequently, some doctoral programmes now provide opportunities to develop a broader skill set. However, most PhD programmes in the United Kingdom and Australasia still concentrate on disciplinary knowledge and developing research skills. Moreover, the assessment has remained narrowly focused on a written thesis and an oral examination. Here we apply the notion of 'constructive alignment' to doctoral education and find that, even in terms of preparing PhD graduates for academic and research careers, the curriculum lacks opportunities to develop and assess relevant skills. The situation is even more extreme for wider careers beyond academia. To achieve alignment, we suggest providing more structured learning opportunities and personalised professional development plans with formative portfolios. If wanting true alignment in the PhD, a portfolio would be the summative assessment, but this is likely a step too far for a conservative academy.

Feedback plays an intervention role in the writing process. It is through feedback that writers are guided to achieve negotiated writing goals. Feedback encourages a process of discovery and this plays a developmental role in the writing process. In this paper, we report on three case studies that sought to understand cognitive processes when writers attended to feedback. Three ESL postgraduate students were asked to think aloud while attending to lecturer written feedback. Concurrent verbal protocols were analysed qualitatively using computer assisted data analysis software called Nvivo8. The findings from this study indicate that attending to written feedback is a recursive process. While recursively attending to feedback, the writers planned globally, locally, reflected, and justified. The findings suggest that dialogical type of feedback encourage recursiveness and planning. These are essential for the potential development of a writer. (Contains 1 figure.)

Diasporic Indian languages in Malaysia are unique and distinguishable from their native variants. Past studies have indicated that dominant languages tend to overpower minority languages in multilingual communities, hence causing languages to shift. The aims of this study are to identify the language choices of Malaysian Tamils and to what extent does English influence their shift from their native language. The respondents were 30 Malaysian Indians. The findings of the study revealed that in the family domain, there was an alarming shift to English when participants spoke to their children (93%) and their spouses (63%) as opposed to the older generations. Meanwhile, in the friendship domain, 76% of the participants preferred using English when they had to speak to other Malaysian Tamils. As for strangers, there was a 50–50 distribution between English and Malay between these participants. These findings seem to show that most families shifted from their native language to English among children in the family domain, education domain and friendship domain. Therefore, it is possible to note that factors such as imperialism, economic status and relevance of usage in language domains are the driving factors behind the shift of Tamil to English in Malaysia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Doctoral examiners are increasingly assessing theses that include publications that have been peer reviewed and accepted for publication. This paper presents insights into the nature of commentary that examiners provide on doctoral theses that include publications. Data were gathered from examiners who had experience assessing publication-based theses (PBTs) over the past ten years at a research intensive university in New Zealand. Data were procured through a survey (n = 62), interviews (n = 15) and written examiners' reports (n = 12). The survey data were analysed using a descriptive analysis, while free form comments and interview data were analysed using a general inductive approach. A linguistic analysis was used to identify the nature of commentaries on examiners' reports. A qualitative analysis of the data showed that examiners provided a range of feedback and assessment commentary. Even though PBTs incorporate work that has been published, examiners still consider it as work in progress. The findings indicate that they provide similar amounts of commentaries as compared to traditional theses, provide more feedback than summative assessment, and expected candidates to make changes on published chapters.

In this article we explore how examiners assess a thesis that includes published work. An online survey was used to gather data on approaches to assessing publication-based theses (PBTs). The respondents were 62 supervisors who had experience examining PBTs across a range of disciplines at a research-intensive university in New Zealand. Nearly half of the respondents had examined 'hybrid' theses with papers inserted as chapters, 41% had examined theses with publications appended and 14% had examined PhDs by publication (i.e. papers alone). Twenty-nine per cent of examiners used their own extended set of criteria to assess PBTs, 48% found them easier to assess but 26% wanted more guidance. Our analysis also indicated that 86% of the examiners were highly influenced by publications in top-ranked journals and international peer-reviewed journals. Among the concerns of the examiners was the intellectual input of the candidate in any multi-authored publication, as well as the coherence of the thesis. We recommend the need for clearer guidelines for doctoral candidates, supervisors and examiners managing PBTs.

Although many articles have been written about thesis assessment, none provide a comprehensive, general picture of what examiners do as they assess a thesis. To synthesise this diverse literature, we reviewed 30 articles, triangulated their conclusions and identified 11 examiner practices. Thesis examiners tend to be broadly consistent in their practices and recommendations; they expect and want a thesis to pass, but first impressions are also very important. They read with academic expectations and the expectations of a normal reader. Like any reader, thesis examiners get annoyed and distracted by presentation errors, and they want to read a work that is a coherent whole. As academic readers, examiners favour a thesis with a convincing approach that engages with the literature and the findings, but they require a thesis to be publishable research. Finally, examiners give not only a final evaluation of a thesis, but also instruction and advice to improve the thesis and further publications and research. We hope that these generalisations will demystify the often secret process of assessing a thesis, and reassure, guide and encourage students as they write their theses.

Persuasion is an important aspect of giving a speech. It can be achieved through various persuasive strategies. Past studies related to persuasion have predominantly focused on male politicians' inauguration, presidential campaigns, and legislative debates, however, not many have focused on speeches delivered by reputable female leaders. Thus, the present study aims to examine the persuasive strategies employed by Okonjo-Iweala in her 2021 International Women's Day speech. This speech was analysed using Johnstone's (1989) persuasive strategies and the findings showed that she utilised quasilogical (60.86%), presentational (34.79%) and analogical (4.35%) strategies of persuasion in her speech. In other words, quasilogical strategies were used most frequently compared to the other strategies and were expressed through enthymemes, syllogisms, and subordinate clauses (result, conditional, and causal clauses) to relate premises to conclusions in her speech. It was then followed by presentational strategies when Okonjo-Iweala involved her audience and aroused their emotions through the use of rhetorical deixis, repetition, and parallelism in her speech. She also reminded her audience of the importance of gender equality in trade, economics, and leadership with the use of an analogical strategy. This study hopes to contribute to the field of women's discourse in social practices and persuasive discourse in leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Code-switching (CS) is widely used across the globe despite the unclear research trends and gaps in CS studies due to under-researched reviews on it. The current study is a systematic literature review (SLR) of conversational CS from a sociolinguistic perspective from 2010 to 2022 using the PRISMA 2020 framework. Keywords query was performed at Oct 31, 2022 on Scopus and Web of Science databases. As a result, a total of 117 articles were included for further analysis. It is found that the number of CS studies was continuously increasing before encountering declines from 2019. Previously, scholars preferred empirical studies, qualitative designs, and data collection methods including discourse analysis, observation, interview and questionnaire. Regarding research objectives, a majority of studies examined the factor of CS, mainly from the micro levels. Besides that, many studies had explored attitude and identity towards CS in the past five years. As for research contexts, Asia became the research centre of previous CS studies. However, there was a lack of CS studies worldwide, especially among Oceania, South America and Africa. Multilingual societies in the Expanding Circle require more discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have pointed out that rhetorical strategies have a significant impact on producing humour in Chinese talk shows, while few of them have investigated the factors that affect the rhetorical choice in humorous discourse in that context. This study aims to identify the rhetorical strategies used in humorous discourse and investigate the factors that impact on the rhetorical strategies chosen by the hosts or comedians to produce humour. Thus, the current study selected 24 monologue samples from a popular programme called Rock & Roast and conducted a discourse analysis on them. Kenneth Burke's rhetorical theory is adopted to uncover the factors that influence rhetorical choice in the humorous discourse of Chinese talk shows. The findings reveal that the realisation of rhetorical strategies in the humorous discourse of talk shows is rich, including rhetorical devices, foreign language (English), and internet buzzwords, among other things. The main factors influencing the rhetorical strategies chosen in the humorous discourse in Chinese talk shows are the 'ratio' of 'agent and agency,'which are talk show comedians and the Chinese language. This study contributes to helping the audience gain a better understanding of rhetorical humour in Chinese talk shows and provides a new perspective for humorous discourse analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Verbal humor is a prominent characteristic of talk shows, which has inspired many humor linguists' study enthusiasms from a variety of perspectives. Nevertheless, the rhetorical strategies adopted by the host to achieve verbal humor in talk shows are always complex and not easy to understand by the audience. What's more, the literature on this point is scanty. To address the gap, the current research tries to examine the rhetorical strategies in the host's verbal humor on the Ellen talk show. Sixteen monologues from the Ellen talk show were selected as data resources. After the data was transcribed, the rhetorical fragments that made the audiences laugh were coded as data, and NVivo was used as the main instrument in the study's process of coding and analysing. The findings of the present study reveal that Ellen DeGeneres adopts eighteen kinds of rhetorical strategies to achieve verbal humor in her sixteen monologues: exaggeration, facetiousness, personification, satire, simile, over literalness, metaphor, puns, bombast, ridicule, irony, repartee, misunderstanding, insults, analogy, definition, infantilism, and allusion. Ellen tends to produce verbal humor with the type of single rhetorical strategy, but she also adopts the type of two or three mixed rhetorical strategies to produce verbal humor occasionally. Moreover, the use of rhetorical strategies in samples is unevenly distributed, and the data suggest that Ellen prefers to use the rhetoric of exaggeration, facetiousness, and satire more frequently than other rhetorical strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]