A brief overview of some of the research projects and activities in which CELS staff are currently engaged or involved.
Nicholas Groom
Corpus-based analysis of Arab EFL learners' spelling errors at different stages of proficiency (with Dr Mick Randall, British University in Dubai, UAE)
Development and evaluation of data-driven EAP course materials for discipline-specific undergraduate programmes (with Corpus Project Group, School of Languages, Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey). Currently writing a book on semantic sequences on specialized corpora.
Jeannette Littlemore
Jeannette is currently conducting research into the role of verbal and gestural metaphor in intercultural communication, and the development of metaphoric competence in second language learners.
Gabriela Saldanha
Gabriela Saldanha has recently co-edited, together with Mona Baker, the revised edition of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (in press). Her research is on corpus-based translation studies and she is a member of the European Parliamentary Comparable and Parallel Corpora (ECPC) research group.
Crayton Walker
Crayton is currently using corpus-based techniques to investigate the phraseological behaviours of high frequency nouns and verbs and looking at how these are represented in mainstream EFL coursebooks.
Bob Holland
Bob is interested in concepts of ideology and of culture as those relate to discourse. How it is that particular kinds of ideas and views of the world are realised in discourse and how some of those become aculturated - that is woven into the fabric of a particular society as normal or natural or taken for granted or self-evident. Also how other ideas might not become aculturated in that way and the role that language plays in those kinds of successes or failures.
Chris Kennedy
Chris is currently interested in researching linguistic landscapes – the worldwide spread of English and other languages in everyday contexts – signs, billboards, product labels.e kinds of successes or failures.
