PhD in TESOL, Applied Linguistics and Language Acquisition

University of Sheffield

Those of us in the school interested in language learning and acquisition have conducted research in both first- and second-language acquisition, investigating contexts where issues such as language teaching methodology, assessment, language teacher education, and curriculum design are highly relevant and modeling the mental processes and structures involved in learning all aspects (from pragmatics, through semantics and syntax, to phonology and phonetics) of a linguistic system. There is a strong international dimension to our work, many of our projects involving the relevance of intercultural communication and English as a global language in debates about language acquisition and learning, and teaching. Our research group is a pioneer in bringing together theoretical research on the nature of language and actual classroom practice.We regularly participate in professional service, ranging from peer review for academic journals, consultancy with the British Council and DFID and service on the Executive Committee for the UK Linguistics Olympiad, to active involvement in various professional organizations, including the British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL), American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL), the Linguistics Association of Great Britain (LAGB). Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition (GALA), Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition (GASLA), and the European Second Language Acquisition (EUROSLA) organization.