2015 -2016 awards
This year’s competition was extremely impressive, with research into ELT themes such as perception of fluency, effective listening strategies, and dynamic assessment. Dissertations covered a wide range of contexts including China, Kuwait, and Greece.
The Judging Process
The judging process for the awards is a collaborative and thorough process. Each participating university submits one dissertation which the university judges to have the best potential for impact on ELT policy and practice. The dissertation must already have been marked at distinction level. The dissertations went through three rounds of evaluation. In the first round the dissertations were assessed by a British Council panel who ranked the dissertations according to the potential of the research to change the attitudes, practices or policies of individuals or institutions. The best dissertations were then evaluated by academics from the participating institutions.
Winning dissertation
Cecilia Dore, University of Reading | Perceptions of Fluency
Special commendations
Edmund O'Donovan, University of Liverpool | Exploring Culturally Sensitive Alternatives for the First Certificate in English
Naheen Madarbakus Ring, Sheffield Hallam University | My Friend TED: Implementing Effective Listening Strategies into Academic Listening Using TED Talks
Dr Ahmad Nazari, London Metropolitan University | English Language Lecturers' Views on Dynamic Assessment and Its Potential in Higher Education: Challenging the Current Assessment Status Quo
Finalists
Elisabeth Campbell, Aston University
Up, up and away! Taking off with SFG: An investigation into the impact of selected Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) concepts on students’ writing of a film review
Isabel Crofton-Martin, Canterbury Christ Church University (School of Language Studies & Applied Linguistics)
Students’ and teachers’ perceptions of the role of pronunciation in the EFL classroom
Becky Winstanley, Goldsmiths, University of London
"Bright future is English international language”- Bangladeshi Italians in east London
Ngan Mai Hoang, Northumbria University
The relationship between reading strategy use and reading proficiency of Vietnamese students in the UK
Renate Hanisch, Norwich Institute for Language Education
The effects of the implementation of an Extensive Reading Programme in ELT on the reading abilities and reading habits of 12-13 year old students in an Austrian secondary modern school
Victoria Renteria Navarro, Plymouth St Mark and St John University (Faculty of Culture and Language Sciences)
Becoming blended: a case study in teacher identity
Ronan Kelly, Ulster University
An Exploration of Instagram to Develop ESL Learners’ Writing Proficiency
Robert Hicking, University College London (UCL Institute of Education)
Subtitles in authentic video listening: An exploration of the benefits of captions in relation to sensory preference types
Hasan Mohammad, University of Brighton
An Investigation into the Relationship between Teachers' Beliefs and the Use of a set Coursebook When Teaching Vocabulary in Kuwaiti Intermediate Schools
James Scholl, University of Edinburgh
An investigation into TESOL teachers’ beliefs about post- method pedagogy
Christina Kanouta, University of Kent
The functional exponents of expressing thanks in English: a mixed methods case study of English language didactic materials in the Greek state education system
Niki Canham, University of Lancaster
Using technological tools for peer response
Jenson Deokiesingh, University of Leeds
Invisible no more: shedding light on the prejudices that native English speaking Caribbean nationals face in the TESOL job market
Jacob Lee Wild, University of Nottingham
Second language learner multimodality and linguistic development in naturalistic settings: a study of L2 learners in the Chinese street market
Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, University of Salford
A case study of the use of ESL communication strategies by Vietnamese refugees and immigrants in the Manchester context
Suzanne Sutherland, University of Sheffield
A generative second language acquisition-inspired syllabus: an article remedial course for intermediate adult ESL learners
Francesca Sluman, University of Southampton (Department of Modern Languages, School of Humanities)
A study of the factors influencing teacher and student perceptions of corrective feedback
Ben Dickson, University of Stirling
Newspaper discourses on Andy Murray’s performance at Wimbledon: a contrastive corpus-driven investigation of successful and unsuccessful tennis match reports
Jiang Jingli, University of Warwick (Centre for Applied Linguistics)
A survey of English teachers’ ability to write reading comprehension questions in classroom teaching in secondary schools in Beijing, China