Recently completed PhD thesis topics

2017

Andre Breedt - Ghosts in the system: The shaping of professional identities within the organizational culture(s) of a private training establishment in Auckland, New Zealand

Sean Grant - Exploring the relationships between person- and product-based creativity and written language task performance

Beidi Li - Becoming English language teachers: A multiple case study of transnational native English-speaking teachers’ identities construction

Jiayan Lin - Contextual factors that affect Chinese learners' accuracy in the use of the English indefinite article

Faezeh Mehrang - The effect of task structure, task repetition and reformulation on foreign language written performance

Luzia Sauer - Second language development, language learning motivation and language learning opportunities: A longitudinal case study of German high school exchange students in New Zealand

Shuxia Yang - Mandarin Compounds at the Interface

Danyang Zheng - Cleft Constructions in Chinese: An Information Structure Analysis

2016

Guangsa Jin - Genre knowledge for intercultural communication: A contrastive genre analysis of thesis introductions and literature reviews written in China, New Zealand and America

Aziz Khan - A narrative ethnography of primary school teachers' language perceptions, preferences and practices in rural Pakistan

Sai Ma - Fictive motion in Chinese

2015

Scott  Aubrey - Effect of inter-cultural contact on L2 motivation and L2 learning: A process product study

Jenny Mendieta Aguilar -Blended language learning in a Colombian tertiary context: A narrative inquiry of teacher change and curriculum innovation

Laura Frances Thompson - Eliciting and analysing perceptions of prosodic prominence: A Māori case study

Juan Tian - Understanding Chinese EFL teachers' beliefs about English with a Yin-Yang perspective

Xiaoying Wang - Investigating assessment practices in three EFL oral language classrooms in China

Zhenjing Wang - Teachers' feedback on discourse features in EFL writing: Case studies in the Chinese context

Yongbin Zhao - The effects of explicit and implicit recasts on the acquisition of two grammatical structures and the mediating role of working memory

2014

Sara Amani - Metacognitive Strategy Instruction and Pre-task Planning: Impact on L2 Argumentative Writing Ability

Tom Finlayson - The News Interview as Contest - Constraint, Evasion and Persistence: A Diachronic Study

Takaaki Hiratsuka - Understanding the Perceptions and Practices of Team Teachers and Students in Japanese High Schools through Exploratory Practice (EP)

Ajmal Khan - A study of the language attitudes and practices in the context of two elite english-medium schools in Pakistan

Jiancheng Qian - Second Language Reading in a CALL Environment: The effect of annotation use and the role of working memory

Kishwer Sultana - Hybrid Language and Constructions of Modernity in Pakistani Advertising Discourse

2013

Airil Adnan - Language use and workplace participation in the identity construction of Bumiputera Malay undergraduates in Malaysia

Colleen Bright - The role of academic writing in the study experience of undergraduate business students

Chen (Arthur) Chen - Conditional Constructions in the Manchu Language: A Study from the Perspectives of Semantics, Morphosyntax, Pragmatics and Typology

Cendrine Jarraud-Leblanc - The evolution of written Bislama

Rachel Lee - Writing as a literacy development for low achievers: The case of a neighbourhood school in Singapore

Lin Yan - The effects of task planning on L2 writing

Darcy Sperlich - The acquisition of Long-Distance Reflexives in Chinese as an Interlanguage: An Experimental Study

Hideyuki Sugiura - Positionally-sensitive grammar: Reversed polarity questions in Japanese

Runhan Zhang - Positionally-sensitive grammar: Reversed polarity questions in Japanese

2012

Dawn Booth - Exploring the washback of the TOEIC in South Korea: A sociocultural perspective on student test activity

Vaclav Brezina - Epistemic markers in university advisory sessions: Towards a local grammar of epistemicity

Le Chang - Investigating the relationships between Chinese university EFL learners' metacognitive listening strategies and their comprehension and incidental vocabulary acquisition from listening tasks

David Frear - The effect of written corrective feedback and revision on intermediate Chinese learners' acquisition of English

Dana Gablasova - Learning and expressing technical vocabulary through the medium of L1 and L2 by Slovak-English bilingual high-school students

Margaret Kitchen - Imagined lives: The Korean community and policy and practices at a New Zealand high school

Nadia Mifka-Profozic - Oral corrective feedback, individual differences, and L2 acquisition of French past tenses

Mohammadtaghi Shahnazari Dorcheh - The role of working memory in second language reading comprehension

Jeannet Stephen - English loan words in the Malay print media and their implications for English vocabulary acquisition

Qunyan Zhong - The beliefs and learner strategy use of low-proficiency chinese learners and their impact on learning English in a New Zealand context

2011

Xiaoping (Sherri) Gao - Variation in the ba construction in the interlanguage of L2 Chinese

Qi Li - The motivation of Chinese Learners of English in a foreign and second language context

Natsuko Shintani - A comparison of the effects of comprehension-based and production-based instruction on the acquisition of vocabulary and grammar by young Japanese learners of English

Baljit Kaur Surjit Singh - Relational work in requests in service encounters in Malaysia

Jianxin Wang - Contrastive connectors in English and Chinese: a corpus-based study

2010

Morad Abdulaziz Al-Sahafi - The dynamics of language maintenance among Arabic-speaking Muslim immigrant families in New Zealand

Jennifer Marguerite Jones - An ethnographic inquiry into the implementation of the Kenyan language-in-education policy: Mother tongue as subject and medium of instruction in the Sabaot language group

Alison Sophie Ann Reissner-Roubicek - Communication strategies in behavioural job interviews: The influence of discourse norms on graduate recruitment

Tun Nur Afizah Binti Zainal Ariff -  English for daees: An ethnographic discourse analysis approach to understanding the spoken language use/discourse of daees

2009

Akakura Motoko - Effect of explicit instruction on implicit and explicit second language knowledge: An empirical study on English article acquisition

Yiqian (Katherine) Cao - Understanding the notion of interdependence, and the dynamics of willingness to communicate

Thomas Delaney - Individual differences, participation, and language acquisition in communicative EFL classes in a Japanese university

Yi-Chieh Ho - Evaluation of an online English learning program

2008

James Murray Feist - The order of premodifiers in English nominal phrases

Penelope Ann Hacker - Understanding the nature of language teacher educator learning: Substance, narrative essence and contextual reality

2007

Andreea Calude - Demonstrative Clefts in Spoken English

Sŏn-hŭi Kim - First language attrition in a second language learning environment : The case of Korean-English late bilinguals

Ute Knoch - Diagnostic writing assessment : the development and validation of a rating scale

Mark Andrew Wolfersberger - Second language writing from sources: An ethnographic study of an argument essay task

Keum-Ja Nam - The effects of corrective feedback on second language learners' responses and acquisition of Korean