Applied Linguistics and Language in Education

Group Leader(s): Professor Jane Spiro, Dr Andrie Yiakoumetti

Contact: jspiro@brookes.ac.uk +44 (0)1865 488613

About us

The members of the Applied Linguistics and Language in Education (ALLIE) research group are all engaged in researching, writing, teaching and developing the study of language in all its manifestations, as science and as personal development, as text and as spoken word, within and beyond educational settings.

Our work covers the whole spectrum of these approaches: from the science of phoneme articulation and language processing, to the politics and pedagogy of first languages in schools. We all share a common interest in the integral role of language in human development and social interaction. Our work also includes engagement with language across the curriculum in schools, and the development of academic language literacies in Higher Education. Our research spans a number of languages beyond English, including Greek Cypriot dialects, German, Bengali, Korean, Mandarin and Japanese, and international contexts including India, Hawaii, Japan, Jersey and Switzerland.

Primary school classroom

Part of

School of Education, Humanities and Languages

Related courses

Doctor of Education (EdD)
Communication, Media and Culture (BA (Hons))
Education (TESOL) (MA)

Leadership

Professor Jane Spiro

jspiro@brookes.ac.uk

Professor in Education and TESOL, National Teaching Fellow

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Dr Andrie Yiakoumetti

ayiakoumetti@brookes.ac.uk

Senior Lecturer in English Language and TESOL

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Membership

Staff

Staff

Name	Role	Email
Dr Eowyn Crisfield	Senior Lecturer in English Language and TESOL	ecrisfield-burr@brookes.ac.uk
Professor Roger Dalrymple	Visiting Professor of Education, School of Education	rdalrymple@brookes.ac.uk
Dr Hanako Fujino	Senior Lecturer in Japanese Language and Linguistics	hfujino@brookes.ac.uk
Dr Chris Rizza	Senior Lecturer in English Language and Communication	crizza@brookes.ac.uk
Mrs Jo Skelton	Senior Lecturer in Primary Maths and School Liaison	jskelton@brookes.ac.uk
Gosia Sky	Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics	gsky@brookes.ac.uk
Professor Jane Spiro	Professor in Education and TESOL, National Teaching Fellow	jspiro@brookes.ac.uk
Dr Paul Wickens	Senior Lecturer English Language and Communication	paulwickens@brookes.ac.uk
Dr Andrie Yiakoumetti	Senior Lecturer in English Language and TESOL	ayiakoumetti@brookes.ac.uk

Projects

Active projects

Project title and description	Investigator(s)	Funder(s)	Dates
Journey of words: from manuscript to mind In this project, we investigate the stress differences of Romance loans in English, German and Dutch from both historical (i.e. when the words were borrowed) and theoretical (i.e. how did the stress change) perspectives, and their effects on second-language processing and consequences for language teaching. We use psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic methods to investigate whether loans with different stress patterns in English, German and Dutch (e.g. universitéit (D), univérsity (E), Universitä́t (G)) cause L2 learners of English difficulties in processing. These findings will then be used to create a digital teaching tool for English language students and teachers which will be designed in close collaboration with English language teachers and tested in classrooms to maximise its usefulness.	Professor Aditi Lahiri	AHRC	From: October 2019 Until: September 2022

Completed projects

Project title and description	Investigator(s)	Funder(s)	Dates
Writing Identities The project researched the processes of writers who traverse the domains of poetry and academic writing. Its aim was to consider the ways knowledge is revealed and adapted for these two different audiences, as perceived by the writers themselves.	Dr Sue Dymoke, Professor Jane Spiro		From: September 2014 Until: September 2016
Beyond EAL This study investigated the impact of a whole-school teacher development programme on class teacher attitudes and self-reported effectiveness working with students with EAL. The project was in collaboration with New Marston School, Oxford.	Dr Eowyn Crisfield, Professor Jane Spiro	National Teaching Fellowship	From: September 2015 Until: September 2018
Crossing Borders in University Learning and Teaching: navigating hidden cultures This project drew on 106 ‘critical incident’ narratives of learners as they moved to a second culture for study. It investigates these moments of collision or surprise, using a sociocultural framework to tease out aspects of hidden cultures and ways these are navigated and experienced.	Professor Jane Spiro	Westminster Trust Sabbaticals	From: September 2019 Until: September 2021

Past and current consultancy roles

Eowyn Crisfield and Jo Skelton:

The Multilingual Learner: From theory to practice (International School of Geneva)

Eowyn Crisfield:

States of Jersey EAL Review and Language Policy Development
Aga Khan Academies: Developing and Sustaining Local Languages in International Education
Current consultancy roles with Dulwich Colleges International, International School of Geneva, International School of Delft; Institut le Rosey

Sandra Kotzor:

Consultant for Creative Multilingualism (AHRC, University of Oxford; 2016-2020; PI: K. Kohl)
Creative Multilingualism, for example work on the LinguaMania podcast
Consultant for The ‘morphome’: a psycholinguistic investigation (John Fell Fund, University of Oxford; 2021-2022; PIs M. Maiden & C. Cappellaro)

Jane Spiro:

Creative Poetry Writing (Oxford University Press 2004)
Storybuilding (Oxford University Press 2007)
Changing Methodologies in TESOL (Edinburgh University Press 2013)
Linguistic and Cultural Innovations in Schools: the languages challenge (Palgrave Macmillan) 2018 with Eowyn Crisfield)
Reflective Writing (2020 Palgrave Macmillan with Kate Williams and Mary Wooliams)
Crossing borders in university learning and teaching: navigating hidden cultures (2021 Routledge)
Doctoral external examining for Queen’s University Belfast, Dublin City University, Exeter, Reading, Warwick, Leeds Met, Coventry, University College London Institute of Education, York St John, Monash Australia

Community engagement projects

NALDIC (EAL Subject Association) Executive Committee member, SIG coordinator
Poetry walks with Arts4Dementia connected to the Robert Burton Anatomy of Melancholy Exhibition, Weston Library (Jane Spiro 2021)
Think Human Exhibitions with Oxford local writers: 2018 - Remembered Pasts (Jane Spiro)
Think Human Exhibition: images and voices of refugee stories 2019: Testimony of Flight (Jane Spiro)
09/2017 Participation in the Curiosity Carnival, University of Oxford (Sandra Kotzor)
09/2018 Showcasing research at the Durga Puja Reading (Sandra Kotzor)
2021 Advisor for Waynflete project at Magdalen College School (Sandra Kotzor)

Events

ALLIE members host the following regular events:

Monthly peer review circles for the exchange and discussion of work in progress
Monthly writing days for sharing writing goals and outcomes with others
Participation in weekly research seminars contributing a language perspective to debates and panel discussions

ALLIE members have conceived and facilitated the following conferences:

English as an Additional Language (2016, 2017)
Materials Writing (2018)
Writing in other words (2021)

Recent publications

2021

Crisfield, E. (2021) Bilingual Families: A practical language planning guide. Multilingual Matters.

Crisfield, E., Holland, A., & Gordon, I. (2021). Translanguaging as a pathway to ethical bilingual education: An exploratory case study from Kenya. In B. Paulsrud, Z. Tian, & J. Toth (Eds.), English-Medium Instruction and Translanguaging (pp. 62-76). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

Spiro, J. (in press for 2021) Why do I write this way? Tracking the stylistic leap from professional to academic writing in Zyngier, S. and Watson, G, (eds) 21st Century Pedagogic Stylistics Palgrave Macmillan: Chapter 14

Spiro, J. (in press for 2021) Developing writing mastery in Buchanan, H, and Norton, J, (eds) Routledge Handbook of Materials Development, Routledge (Chapter 20)

Spiro, J. (in press for 2021) Crossing borders in university learning and teaching: navigating hidden cultures. Routledge.

Kotzor, S. (in press for 2021) Antonyms in Mind and Brain: evidence from German and English. Routledge Focus.

Wynne, H., Kotzor, S., Zhou, B., Schuster, S., & A. Lahiri. (in press for 2021) Morphology Attaches, Phonology Binds, Language.

Kim, Y.,Kotzor, S. & Lahiri, A. (in press for 2021). Is Hanja represented in the Korean mental lexicon?: Encoding cross-script semantic cohorts in the representation of Sino-Korean. Lingua, 103128.

Meng, Y., Kotzor, S., Xu, C., Wynne, H. & Lahiri, A. (2021). Asymmetric influence of vocalic context on Mandarin sibilants: Evidence from ERP studies. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 15, 617318

Kotzor, S., Schuster, S. & Lahiri, A. (2021). Still native?: morphological processing in second-language immersed speakers. International Journal of Bilingualism, 1-28. https://doi.org/10.1177/136700

2020

Kotzor, S., Schuster, S., Wynne, H. & Lahiri, A. (2020) Form or structure? Morphological processing in second-language English speakers: evidence from long-lag lexical decision. In: Sanchez-Stockhammer, C., F. Günther & H.-J. Schmid (eds), Language in Mind and Brain. Proceedings of the workshop held at LMU Munich on December 10–11, 2018. Munich: Open Access LMU. https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de

Williams, K., Wooliams, M, and Spiro, J. (2020) (2nd edition) Reflective Writing Palgrave Macmillan

Brown, C., Spiro,J. and Quinton, S. (2020) The role of research ethics: friend or foe in educational research? An exploratory study in British Educational Research Journal (BERJ) Vol. 46 (4) pp. 747-769

Wynne, H., Zhou, B., Kotzor, S. & Lahiri, A. (2020). The effect of phonological and morphological overlap on the processing of Bengali words. Journal of South Asian Linguistics 11, 25-51.

Kotzor, S., Zhou, B. & Lahiri, A. (2020). (A)symmetry in vowel features in verbs and pseudoverbs: ERP evidence. Neuropsychologia 143, 107474.

2018

Spiro, J. and Crisfield, E. (2018) Linguistic and Cultural Innovation in Schools: the languages challenge Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319643816

Crisfield, E. (2018). Challenging the Monolingual Habitus of International School Classrooms. International Schools Journal, XXXVII(2), 77-84.

Crisfield, E. (2018b). Dynamic Multilingualism in International Schools. In J. Spiro, & E. Crisfield, Linguistic and Cultural Innovation in Schools: The Languages Challenge (pp. 93-123). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Crisfield, E. (2018c). Moving from 'English-only' to Multilingual Empowerment. In J. Spiro, & E. Crisfield, Linguistic and Cultural Innovation in Schools: The Languages Challenge (pp. 159-184). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Crisfield, E. (2018d). To Square the Particular with the Global. In J. Spiro, & E. Crisfield, Linguistic and Cultural Innovation in Schools: The Languages Challenge (pp. 57-92). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.