I took up the post of Director of the Centre for Corpus Research at Birmingham in September 2009, after working for thirteen years as a lecturer in EAP/Applied Linguistics at the University of Reading. I had taught in Kenya and Japan before moving to Reading in 1996 to do doctoral research.

One MA module:

• Computer-Assisted Language Learning (with Crayton Walker)

I also do some undergraduate teaching:

• Discourse and Society (for Erasmus students)
• Language for Literature Students
• Corpus Linguistics (for Erasmus students)

 I supervise a number of undergraduate and MA dissertations.

I am interested in supervising postgraduate research students in the areas of:

• corpus linguistics
• applications of corpus-based approaches to language description, particularly in education
• applications of IT in language teaching

I am currently supervising seven PhD students at the University of Birmingham:

• Eman Al-Ajaji: 'Self representation in student academic writing: a comparative study' (joint supervision with Suganthi John)
• Nourah Al-Alaji: 'Analysis of writer perspectives in medical case reports'
• Manal Al-Makoshi: 'Frequency and distribution of spoken discourse markers in NNS academic lectures in Medical Health Colleges in Saudi Arabia using English as a medium of instruction' (joint supervision with Crayton Walker)
• Mark De Boer: 'Tool-mediated learning'
• Yoko Hirata: 'Data-Driven Learning in a Japanese Context'
• Nurcan Ileri: 'Lexical phrases in research article and PhD thesis abstracts in Applied Linguistics and Psychology'
• Mehrdad Sepehri: 'The effect of Data-Driven Learning on EFL learners' writing skills development'
• Aleksandar Trklja: 'A corpus linguistics study of translation semantic fields in English and German' (joint supervision with Wolfgang Teubert, viva pending)

I have supervised the following to successful completion of their doctorates:

• Andy Cresswell, 2010 (Reading):
  Textual metadiscourse in research articles and student essays : a corpus investigation using discourse tagging (joint supervision with Clare Furneaux)
• David Giannoni, 2009 (Reading):
  A corpus-based investigation of the academic value system
  Published as 'Mapping Academic Values in the Disciplines: A Corpus-Based Approach' Bern: Peter Lang
• Lu Yang, 2006 (Reading):
  A discourse analytic study of EFL test-takers' spoken discourse competence and its impact on their oral proficiency and spoken grammatical competence (joint supervision with Pauline Robinson)
• Shih Pei-Chun, 2011 (Birmingham):
  Cross-linguistic Transference of Politeness Phenomena
• Catherine Spargo, 2010 (Reading):
  A corpus-based study of the semantics of the core modals MAY and CAN in human resource management texts
• Alastair Stone, 2012 (Reading):
  Evolving identity - changing discourse: and examination of the representation of Slovene national identity in the leading daily newspaper during the transition from Yugoslav republic to an independent state
• Nawel Toumi, 2012 (Reading):
  A comparative study of reflexive metadiscourse research articles: An EAP perspective, with implications for teaching writing to EAP learners at tertiary level in Tunisia
• Linda Weinberg, 2010 (Reading):
  A contextual study of language learner autonomy and motivation in a technology-enhanced EAP course

With Alison Sealey and Mike Scott, I worked on an ESRC project (R000223900), 'An investigation into corpus-based learning about language in the primary school', June 2002 to May 2004.

With Hilary Nesi, a lecture and seminar recording project, the British Academic Spoken English (BASE) corpus, funded by a Resource Enhancement grant from the Arts and Humanities Board (RE/AN6806/APN13545), April 2002 to March 2005.

With Hilary Nesi, Sheena Gardner and Paul Wickens, an ESRC funded project, "An investigation of genres of assessed writing in British Higher Education" (RES-000-23-0800), December 2004 to November 2007. The major output of this project was the British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus.

My research interests are in academic and other specialised discourses, in the linguistic aspects of human-computer interaction, in uses of educational technologies in language learning, and in the exploitation of corpus resources and methodologies in learning about language.

• Co-Editor of the Journal of English for Academic Purposes.
• Member, ESRC Peer Review College

Conferences

I have given talks at conferences and research meetings in more than fifteen countries. In 2012, I gave talks in March at CILC 2012 in Jaen, Spain, and at TESOL in Philadelphia (colloquium page), and in May at the Third Tamkang Conference on Second Language Writing in Taiwan. I was on the organising committee for the Summer School in Applied Linguistics at the University of Birmingham, 2-13 July 2012.

University roles

Examinations Officer, Department of English

Peer-reviewed articles

• 2007 Corpus, Concordance, Classification: Young Learners in the L1 Classroom, Language Awareness 16/3: 208-216. (with Alison Sealey)
• 2007 Through children’s eyes? Corpus evidence of the features of children’s literature, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 12/1: 1-23. (with Alison Sealey)
• 2006 'Nice things get said': corpus evidence and the National Literacy Strategy. Literacy Vol 40/1: 22-28 (with Alison Sealey)
• 2005 Points of focus and position: intertextual reference in PhD theses, Journal of English for Academic Purposes 4/4: 307-323
• 2004 'What do you call the dull words?' Primary school children using corpus-based approaches to learn about language, English in Education 38/1: 80-91 (with Alison Sealey)
• 2001 Looking at citations: Using corpora in English for Academic Purposes, Language Learning & Technology 5/3: 91-105 (with Chris Tribble)

Book chapters

• 2012: Thesis and dissertation writing. In B. Paltridge and S. Starfield (eds) Blackwell Handbook of English for Specific Purposes Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, pp 283–300.
• 2012: Achieving a voice of authority in PhD theses. In K. Hyland and C. Sancho-Guinda (eds) Stance and voice in academic writing Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, pp 119–133.
• 2010: Building a specialised audio-visual corpus. In A. O’Keeffe & M. McCarthy (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics London: Routledge, pp 93–103.
• 2009 Shared disciplinary norms and individual traits in the writing of British undergraduates. In M. Gotti (ed) Commonality and Individuality in Academic Discourse Bern: Peter Lang, pp 53-82.
• 2009 Literature reviews in applied PhD theses: evidence and problems. In K. Hyland & G. Diani (eds) Academic evaluation and review genres Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, pp 50-67.
• 2006 A corpus perspective on the lexis of lectures, with a focus on Economics lectures. In K. Hyland and M. Bondi (eds) Academic discourse across disciplines Bern: Peter Lang, pp 253-270.
• 2005 Spoken language corpora. In M. Wynne (ed) Developing Linguistic Corpora: a Guide to Good Practice Oxford: Oxbow Books, pp 59-70, Available online at: ahds.ac.uk/creating/guides/linguistic-corpora/
• 2005 Aspects of identification and position in intertextual reference in PhD theses. In E. Tognini-Bonelli and G. del Lungo (eds) Strategies in Academic Discourse Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 31-50

Edited collections

• 2011 IELTS Research Reports, Volume 11 Manchester: British Council (with Lynda Taylor)
• 2009 IELTS Research Reports, Volume 9 Manchester: British Council (with Lynda Taylor)
• 2007 Special issue on ‘Corpus-based approaches to EAP pedagogy’ Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 6/4
• 2002 Unity and Diversity in Language Use London: Continuum (with Kristyan Spelman-Miller