IOE doctoral students win prestigious funding awards

Ting Zeng was awarded a Language Learning Doctoral Dissertation Grant by the international journal Language Learning. Ting’s study investigates how various implementations of a task-based writing course influence second language learners' cognitive writing processes and their writing outcomes. Ting specifically compares the impact of inductive versus deductive approaches to genre instruction integrated into a task-based writing course.

Xin Rong received a grant from the International Research Foundation for English Language Education, and was awarded the Russell N. Campbell Award for the top-ranked proposal in the 2023 competition. Xin’s doctoral work explores the cognitive writing processes in which second language learners engage when working collaboratively on computer-mediated writing tasks and how these processes might influence the quality of the texts they produce, as compared to when they write individually.

Shishi Zhang won the 2023 British Council Assessment Research Award, and the 2023 Asian Association for Language Assessment Best Student Paper Award. Shishi's thesis centres on designing and trialling a second language pragmatic competence assessment tool for intercultural communication. This research deliverable is designed to both enhance UK pre-sessional students’ spoken communication skills, and to help them reflect on and calibrate meanings in interaction.

The student's principle supervisors Professor Andrea Révész and Dr Talia Isaacs said: "We are very pleased that our doctoral students have been awarded these prestigious awards. It's a well-deserved recognition of their cutting-edge contributions to the field of second language learning and assessment.”

Links

• Graduate research at the IOE
• Centre for Applied Linguistics
• Department of Culture, Communication and Media