MA Hons; MA; RSA Dip TEFL; PhD

Profile

I have a background in Functional Linguistics, English Language Teaching (Germany, Sudan, Ukraine), EFL/ESL/EAL Teacher Education and Applied English Linguistics (Canada and UK), with experience in Malaysia, Botswana, Pakistan, and China.

In the School of Education I am a member of the Language, Discourse and Society Academic Group, and the MOSAIC Centre for Research on Multilingualism.  My research in this area has been with young learners in EAL and multilingual contexts. I work on the BA ELLE, MA Education TEFL and MEd Bilingualism programmes, and currently supervise doctoral students examining classroom discourse and academic writing across disciplines internationally.  I am interested in research on English use in Education, particularly from a broadly systemic functional perspective. 

Responsibilities held within the School

Course co-ordinator, MA Education TEFL;

Module leader, Grammar, Text and Discourse, BA ELLIE

Research Interests

My research interests lie in the linguistic analysis of educational texts from systemic functional and other perspectives to enhance teaching, learning or understanding. 

One recent project involves the development of a corpus of assessed student writing (The BAWE Corpus), and, employing ethnographic, multidimensional and genre approaches, an investigation of student writing across 28 disciplines and four years of study.  An Investigation of Genres in Assessed Writing in British Higher Education, ESRC RES-000-23-0800 (2004-2007) with Hilary Nesi (Warwick/Coventry), Paul Thompson (Reading) and Paul Wickens (Oxford Brooks) (£453,000)

I am also particularly interested in the language of learners and teachers of English in diverse (EFL/EAL/ESP) educational contexts.  Two current concerns are the impact of ICT on classroom interaction, and the language and content strategies of the children of student sojourners in the UK. An earlier project investigated the nature of classroom based assessment of EAL.   Classroom Assessment of English as an Additional Language in Key Stage 1 Contexts ESRC R000238196 (1999-2003) with Pauline Rea-Dickins of Bristol University (£93,000).

Teaching Interests

Systemic Functional Linguistics, Grammar Teaching and Learning, Language and Content

Publications (selection)

Gardner, S. and Holmes, J. (2008/09) From section headings to assignment macrostructures in undergraduate student writing. In E. Swain (ed.) Thresholds and Potentialities of Systemic Functional Linguistics: Applications to other disciplines, specialised discourses and languages other than English.  Trieste: Edizioni Universitarie Trieste (EUT)

Gardner, S. (2008/09) Integrating ethnographic, multidimensional, corpus linguistic and systemic functional approaches to genre description: an illustration through university history and engineering assignments. In  Neuman,  S.and Steiner, E. (eds) Proceedings of the 19th European Systemic Functional Linguistics Conference and Workshop, Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken, July 2007.

Yaacob, A. and Gardner, S. (2008/09) Interactive Teaching Styles with CD-ROMs: Malaysian Perspectives. In U. Rahman, U., Enever, J.,  Moon, J. (eds) Proceedings of The Way Forward: Learning from the International Experience of TEYL conference, January 2008. Regional Institute of English, South India, Bangalore. 

J Shak, J., Gardner, S. (2008) Young Learner perspectives on four focus on form tasks. Language Teaching Research, 12 (3)

Gardner, S. (2008) Mapping Ideational Meaning in a Corpus of Student Writing In Jones, C. and Ventola, E. (eds) New Developments in the Study of Ideational Meaning: From Language to Multimodality.  Series:  Functional Linguistics edited by R. Fawcett.  London: Equinox Publishing

Gardner, S. (2008/09) Changing Approaches to Teaching Grammar.  ELTED

Publications 2001 - 2008 [complete, pdf]

Publications pre-2001 [pdf]