English Language And Applied Linguistics

BAAL Routledge workshop flyer

All students and staff interested in L2 Fluency are welcome to the L2 Fluency workshop organised by DELAL staff, held at Institute of Education campus, London Road. See attached for details.

The Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics was delighted to host the second L-SLARF colloquium on Saturday 30^th May 2015. This was a a very successful event featuring a number of renowned scholars and key researchers in the field of second language acquisition, including Peter Skehan and Pauline Foster from the UK and Roger Gilabert from the University of Barcelona. On this one-day event, researchers from different universities from the UK and abroad presented the findings of their latest research and discussed the implications of these findings for future research and practice.

The London Second Language Acquisition Research Forum (L-SLARF) was recently formed by academics from St Mary’s University, Kings College London, the Institute of Education, the University of Greenwich and the University of Reading as a way to share and develop research in the field of cognitive and task-based approaches to second language acquisition in and around our region.

The colloquium was held in the Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) with 7 presenters and more than 50 delegates. Although we had not advertised it widely, we had a waiting list of people interested in attending the event. The delegates were a mix of MA and PhD students, language teachers, EAP instructors and researchers from different universities in and around London. We had 5 invited talks and a very engaging panel discussion.

We had a very unique closing to the event as the fire alarm went off, and we were evacuated from the building 2 minutes before the colloquium came to an end! We are certain that the delegates will never forget the closing of the colloquium as it was done at the fire assembly point with the fire alarm ringing in the background. All in all, there were many hot topics discussed, but fortunately no real flames!

Photographic evidence below!

Parvaneh Tavakoli and Anas Awwad

Lucy Skinner tells us about her career and life after studying English Language at Reading:

Lucy Skinner graduated in 2009.

I left Reading in 2009. To be honest it feels bizarre even writing that; time really has flown!  I did a BA in Applied English Language Studies which at the time was a very new course but the opportunities it offered me were so vast.

When I graduated, I genuinely wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I dipped my hand into PR and advertising. After all I’d spent three years perfecting my writing and communication skills! I considered journalism, marketing – even nursing. Nothing felt quite right though until I spent one afternoon helping my younger cousin with her English homework and it was there that I discovered my calling, teaching.

I went to Kingston University and did a PGCE in Primary Education where I graduated with distinction in 2012. I was fortunate to land my first job as an NQT at the school I did my final training placement. During the three years I’ve been there I’ve taught a wide range of subjects across the curriculum. I’ve been based in Year 5 since qualifying which has really allowed me to cement my knowledge and build confidence and I’m really proud to be judged as an ‘Outstanding teacher’. My BA from Reading has also supported my work as shadowing Literacy Coordinator at the school.

I have now been appointed a new teaching job at an independent school to commence in September this year as an English specialist. It’ll bring new demands and challenges but I’m very excited to start anew. As well as teaching, since leaving Reading, I have also had two children who are now 4 and 1. I can’t deny that going back to university and then working full time as a mum hasn’t been easy but I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.

Laura Armstong, a final year English Language student, gives us her top tips on applying to graduate schemes:

During your time at University, the talk of the elusive graduate scheme jobs will start to creep in. Graduate schemes are run by hundreds of companies and are often thought of as the ideal graduate job, with good pay, benefits and on-the-job training; it is easy to see why! However graduate schemes are not for everyone, so don’t feel obliged to apply for one. Having been through the process, these are some tips for people setting out on the graduate scheme application journey:

1. The process is long –Don’t expect a job overnight. Graduate scheme applications are made up of multiple (often time-consuming) stages. These stages often include CVs, application forms, online tests, video interviews, phone interviews and assessment centres before your final interview! Trying to juggle applications can be exhausting alongside University work, do ensure you stay organised and don’t rush to apply to lots of schemes as the employers will be able to tell. Be selective.
2. Be boastful – you need to ensure your CV is current and contains all your achievements. The potential employer needs to see your abilities so make yourself stand out.
3. Use the careers team – the University offers great support not only for CVs and interviews, but for all different stages of applications. The careers service team are always happy to help, explore what they offer and use them!
4. Prepare- make sure you take the time to prepare for each stage, research the company and look at their job descriptions. You can also practise online assessments to make sure you are as prepared as possible.
5. Persevere – It would be a miracle if you didn’t receive at least one rejection email. They are extremely disheartening and you start to doubt yourself, but don’t! Companies have to be brutal and you have to recognise that it doesn’t make you any less employable. Pick yourself up again and continue. If you are determined, organised and you research well, you will get there in the end.

Hayley Parfitt talks about her experiences and the benefits of studying a joint degree:

I decided to take a joint honours course because I’ve always been interested in how language works, and always loved studying literature. The English Language and Literature joint honours program allowed me to pursue both of my passions at University level. My academic writing has benefitted from my course selection, as over the three years I have learnt how to write essays, academic reports and scientific literature reviews. I have also learnt flexibility through the course and developed other important transferable skills such as presentation, research, and planning.  I have really enjoyed the diversity of modules available as a joint honours student, and found Grammar and Lexis, and Decadence and Degeneration: Literature of the 1880s and 1890s to be particular favourites! Choosing modules for my degree is easy and follows the same structure as a single honours degree. I take the same core modules as my friends on the single honours program but then get to choose my options from across both subjects. This gives me the freedom to follow my own individual interests and also ensures that I receive the same core teaching as single honours students.  I have loved my time here at Reading, and am planning on returning to do a MA.

English Language student Laura Armstrong tells us about this fantastic research opportunity open to all University of Reading students which she took part in during summer 2014 with Dr Christiana Themistocleous.

UROP stands for Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme. UROP’s are offered by the University to any second year student as a fantastic paid opportunity to work with staff on academic research during the summer holidays. In 2014 the English Language department conducted two UROP projects. One of which was run by Dr Christiana Themistocleous, with the help of UROP student Laura Armstrong, and explored attitudes towards old and new myths on multilingualism in Reading. Following the research, Laura created posters to be displayed at the annual Reading UROP conference. During the conference Laura achieved both category winner and joint overall winner. Consequently, Laura travelled to the international BCUR 2015 conference in Winchester and to the Houses of Parliament to present her research.

Laura at the Houses of Parliament with John Redwood, MP for Reading.

Describing her experience, Laura said “UROP appealed to me because you are offered invaluable research experience working with a professional academic, and get paid for it! This experience was great for my CV and so helpful for my third year dissertation. It was easy to apply for UROP. After filling in an application form, I was invited to interview which was really good practice for job hunting after University and learning how to demonstrate all your skills during an interview. It is amazing to have experience of working in academia, you get to put all the skills you’ve spent two years learning into practise. You work really closely with your supervisor for six weeks and no day was ever the same; I designed questionnaires, gathered 200 participant responses, input data, made posters and attempted some statistics! The Winchester BCUR and Houses of Parliament conferences were a once in a lifetime opportunity. I would recommend UROP for anyone who is able to get involved; there are projects from countless departments so there will be something for you. The experience of UROP was great, meeting new people, learning so much and adding something amazing to your CV. You never know where it will take you.”

On March 16th 2015, we had the opportunity to present at our Department’s ‘Language Studies’ PhD Conference. Our colleagues from the Departments of Modern Languages, Institute of Education and Psychology at the University of Reading also participated as presenters.

We expected the day to be long and stressful, since it was scheduled to start from 9am to 6 pm. However, it was a fruitful and interesting experience all round. One of the students summed it up really well:

Enjoying the variety

“What I enjoyed can be summarized in one word, ‘variety’: variety was found in people presenting, countries presented, fields explored, research questions raised and approaches chosen.”

For more, click on this link: PhD Conference blog

I’ve just returned from a trip to Japan, where I was representing the school at the Japan Association of Language Teachers conference (2014) in Tsukuba (http://jalt.org/conference/jalt2014). The conference was a very interesting experience and a great opportunity to meet both former and prospective students. Many former students came to the University of Reading stand to ask about current staff and to reflect on what great times they have had at the University. Many prospective students wanted to know about the great courses on offer within the University, and were keen to find out what other (non-academic) activities they could be involved in.  I also visited several universities across the country, and so visited Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, and Hiroshima. The photograph above was taken as I was just passing Mount Fuji on my way into Tokyo, it is a true sight to behold! If you have not been to Japan, I highly recommend a visit (the weather was incredible for this time of the year (November) and averaged 18 degrees centigrade).

Jon Clenton (DELAL)

The Self-Access Centre for Language Learning (SACLL) is located on the second floor of the HumSS building in room 230. It offers useful language resources for students learning English and other foreign languages for example, Arabic, Italian and Japanese. Personally, I found the centre extremely beneficial during my first year when I took a Beginners Spanish module via the Institution-Wide Language Programme. I was able to develop my language skills through the wide range of materials SACLL had to offer. Examples of such materials included books, dictionaries and DVD’s. The centre also supplies computers and a printer for students to use. Additionally, it is possible to reserve SACLL for group work. Although the centre is closed at the weekend, it is open on week days. A timetable of opening times can be found here.

Amy Banda, BA English Language, BA English Language, Part 2

The term selfie was recently named by Oxford Dictionaries as the word of 2013. This complex word is an excellent example of one of the mechanisms we use to fill a ‘word gap’ in our language. By adding suffixes like –ie/-y to the noun base self, we create a new word which conveys information that otherwise could only be expressed in a much longer expression: a photograph of oneself. Complex words such as selfie and cheerful are formed from a base and a suffix; others, such as unkind and replay are formed from a base and a prefix; these affixes are known as derivational morphemes. There are around 850 derivational affixes in English and, given that they generally modify the meaning of the base word, it is not surprising to learn that there are more complex words in the English language than there are simple words, such as self, cheer, kind and play.

The screenshot above shows a page from the website MorphoQuantics, an online corpus of complex words containing a comprehensive set of 17,943 complex word types and 1,008,280 tokens extracted from the spoken component of the British National Corpus (BNC). The corpus was developed by searching the BNC for all instances of 835 affixes. Each item retrieved was checked against the Oxford English Dictionary (OED online) to ensure that it was a true complex word. The website lists 554 word-initial and 281 word-final derivational morphemes in English (listed in the left-hand column above), their etymology and meaning, and records the type and token frequencies (the two right-hand columns) of all the associated complex words containing these morphemes together with their Part of Speech.

Derivational morphology is an important grammatical feature to explore because it falls between the domains of syntax and vocabulary and thus shares characteristics of both. The MorphoQuantics website provides baseline data of adult spoken English that L1 and L2 researchers can use to inform literacy and acquisition studies in relation to both normal and clinical populations. The corpus was designed and developed by Dr Jacqueline Laws and Chris Ryder. Chris graduated from DELAL with a BA in English Language in 2012 and an MRes in Applied Linguistics in 2014. Find out more by reading Laws, J.V. and C. Ryder (2014) ‘Getting the measure of derivational morphology in adult speech: A corpus analysis using MorphoQuantics’, University of Reading: Language Studies Working Papers, Volume 6.