We invite PhD proposals (to be carried out at the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University) that seek to draw on the analysis of the new large-scale EMI Corpus from a range of perspectives. PhD proposals can be submitted at any time throughout the year – the PhD programme can be also started at time throughout the year.
The projects can focus on the topics below (and modify them as appropriate), or the candidates can propose a different topic. We welcome proposals with different types of focus – for example, they can adopt the following approaches:
Descriptive – describing different aspects of academic language,
Comparative – comparing the language use in the EMI corpus with different corpora/datasets,
Applied – projects with application for language teaching, learning or assessment).
The projects can focus on different aspects of contribution to our understanding of EMI and academic writing and their combinations: theoretical, methodological or practical.
If you are interested in proposing a PhD project using the EMI Corpus and would like to discuss this further, you can email Dr Dana Gablasova (d.gablasova@lancaster.ac.uk).
You can read more about the PhD studies at our department at Lancaster University on our website: PhD studies. This website also contains information about the application process and available scholarships and bursaries.
Suggested research topics with the EMI Corpus
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- Cross-disciplinary differences in academic writing (comparing writing from disciplinary areas)
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- Specific linguistics features/functions in the academic writing in the corpus (e.g. lexical, grammatical, pragmatic features in student academic writing in specific disciplines)
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- Effect of writer/assignment variables (e.g. the mark, perceived level of difficulty) on linguistic features in student writing
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- Relationship between marks awarded and the linguistic features in student writing
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- Change in academic writing overtime (comparing the EMI Corpus with other corpora of student academic writing).
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- Genre and register features in student academic writing (across different disciplines)
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- Comparison of disciplinary writing (from the EMI Corpus) and EAP writing (e.g. from EAP classes)
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- Use of formulaic language in student academic writing (e.g. collocations, lexical bundles, multi-word expressions)