Journal of Studies in the English Language

Note from the Editor-in-Chief

2026-08-31T16:06:38+07:00

Toward AI-Scaffolded Pedagogical Stylistics: A Conceptual Framework for Bridging the Language–Literature Divide in L2 English

2026-08-20T10:56:14+07:00

Literature has a long-standing place in second-language (L2) English teaching because it offers learners language that is rich, patterned, and affectively charged, and pedagogical stylistics provides a principled way of turning that language into learning by having students notice the choices through which literary effects are achieved. Recent classroom evidence is sobering. Large-scale observation and competence profiling show that literary texts still appear in L2 classrooms yet work with them seldom moves beyond literal comprehension and personal reaction; furthermore, learners’ aesthetic-stylistic competence lags well behind their interpretive and empathic competence. The reason is structural rather than attitudinal: contingent stylistic guidance, responsive to what each reader notices, cannot be given to thirty readers at once. This article proposes AI-Scaffolded Pedagogical Stylistics (ASPS), a conceptual framework in which a generative language model is positioned not as an interpreter but as a semiotic tool within a teacher-designed activity, one that issues questions directing attention to stylistic features while the learner’s aesthetic response and interpretive authority remain primary. Its contribution is threefold: it defines the construct of AI-scaffolded stylistic noticing by conditions that separate it from neighboring ideas; it specifies the mechanism by which repeated, progressively faded questioning is internalized as a transferable reading routine; and it advances the distinction between scaffolding and substitution as a falsifiable claim, namely the prediction that the same tool used to question rather than to answer will yield more learner-initiated stylistic noticing, and better delayed transfer to unaided reading, a difference traceable in a transcript. A preliminary coding framework and a set of testable propositions set out how the claim can be examined empirically.

Editorial Team

2026-08-31T16:01:22+07:00

About the Journal

2026-08-31T16:03:59+07:00

“I Decided to Be a BRAVE English Speaker”: A Case Study of Learner Responses to a Global Englishes-informed Listening Curriculum Intervention

2026-06-20T07:21:13+07:00

This multiple case study investigated learner responses to a Global Englishes-informed listening curriculum intervention targeting comprehension of varieties of English through explicit and implicit classroom exposure. Two adult learners engaged in the use of English as a Lingua Franca in their professional contexts took part in a four-week curriculum intervention introducing accents they had identified as important to their professional lives. A mixed-methods approach was employed, with data collected through participant logs and journals, interviews, and pre- and postclass activities eliciting numerical ratings of attitudes, comprehension, intelligibility, accentedness, and comprehensibility. Despite no improvement in numerical ratings, both learners developed new listening strategies, expressed increased confidence and evaluated the curriculum intervention positively, particularly explicit phonological instruction. The impact on attitudes was more mixed, with one participant expressing negative views about classroom exposure to varieties of English. Given positive affective outcomes, this study recommends teachers incorporate a wider range of English varieties into classroom activities. However, with the negative attitudinal impact potentially due to a lack of tasks encouraging engagement with global English use today, such exposure should be accompanied by critically reflective activities.

Developing a Corpus-Based Immigration Keyword and Key Cluster List for ESP Settings

2026-07-31T11:52:04+07:00

Vocabulary knowledge plays a central role in English for Specific Purposes, yet immigration remains a professional domain that has received little attention in specialised word list research. This study developed a corpus-based Immigration Keyword and Key Cluster List (IKKCL) to support ESP learners working with immigration forms. Data were collected from 1,670 official immigration forms downloaded from government websites in different countries. Of these, 1,500 forms formed the primary Global Immigration Forms Corpus (2,939,837 tokens), and the remaining 170 formed a secondary validation corpus (179,897 tokens). Candidate items were extracted through keyword analysis, applying Log-likelihood, Log Ratio, and Simple Maths together against the British National Corpus, followed by lexical profiling and, for two-word clusters, compounding identification and Mutual Information filtering. Surviving candidates were then validated against five institutional immigration glossaries and, where needed, examined through expert concordance analysis before being classified into technical, semi-technical, and supportive profiles. The final IKKCL contained 589 items, including 21 technical, 196 semi-technical, and 372 supportive words and clusters. The list covered an average of 19.06% of running words across both corpora, with near-identical coverage on the unseen validation corpus, indicating stable performance within the same sampling frame. Combined with the General Service List and the Academic Word List, total coverage reached approximately 90%, falling short of the threshold typically associated with independent reading comprehension. The IKKCL can be used as a resource for teaching and learning in courses such as English for Immigration and Tourism, as well as related curricula, through approaches such as data-driven learning.

Examiners’ Perspectives on Assessment Criteria for Doctoral Dissertations and Oral Examinations in English Language Education in Thailand

2026-07-16T12:57:14+07:00

While concerns regarding evaluation criteria in doctoral assessment persist, existing research has largely focused on student experiences. Apart from a single-institution account (Adunyarittigun et al., 2023), the practices of dissertation assessment and oral examination in Thailand’s English language education (ELE) programs remain largely uninvestigated. This study explores doctoral assessment practices in ELE and related fields in Thailand from the perspectives of experienced examiners, with particular attention to evaluation criteria. Of the 121 eligible participants, 71, each with experience supervising and/or examining doctoral dissertations, completed a survey; 19 informants agreed to participate in a follow-up interview. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize participants’ backgrounds and perceptions, while qualitative data were analyzed using thematic analysis with intercoder reliability checks. The findings revealed that, although institutional documents outline assessment procedures, they lack detailed rubrics. Interviews identified seven key evaluation criteria: mastery of the intellectual landscape, argumentative rigor, effective presentation, research integrity, methodological rigor, originality, and publishability. The examiners adopted a holistic approach, emphasizing the interconnectedness of these criteria. Nevertheless, argumentative rigor was expected to be evident throughout the dissertation, suggesting greater emphasis on this criterion than reported in other international contexts. Examiners also showed tolerance for minor linguistic inaccuracies, prioritizing argument quality, and demonstrated a distinct, context-specific interpretation of originality in terms of utility. The findings provide insights into discipline-specific criteria for doctoral assessment. Informing candidates of these expectations may help demystify the assessment process and support them more effectively during their doctoral journey.

Lexical Richness and Academic Writing Performance in a Thai University Academic English Test

2026-08-22T09:51:58+07:00

Although lexical richness is an important feature of L2 writing quality, research on its predictive ability in university entrance tests, particularly in the Thai EFL context, is limited. Following Read’s (2000) framework, this study analyzes the relationship between lexical richness and academic writing performance in an academic English test at a Thai university. The study aims to (1) compare lexical richness characteristics across proficiency levels; (2) examine their relationship with writing scores; and (3) determine their predictive power independent of text length. A corpus of 103 argumentative essays was analyzed using TAALED and TAALES. The essays were classified into two groups based on university admissions criteria. The Meets Standard Group outperformed the Below Standard Group on text length (d = 1.54), lexical diversity as measured by HD-D (d = 0.76) and MATTR (d = 0.75), and bigram frequency (d = 0.47), but not on the Maas index, lexical density, word frequency (KF and BNC written), word range, and AWL proportion. Text length correlated most strongly with scores, followed by HD-D, MATTR, and bigram frequency, while other indicators did not reach significance. Regression analysis showed that, when text length was controlled, the model explained 64.8% of the variance, with text length as the dominant predictor (β = .691). Lexical diversity (HD-D) retained a small but significant independent effect (β = .174, p = .010), whereas lexical sophistication (bigram frequency, BNC written frequency, AWL proportion) and lexical density did not. These findings provide empirical evidence from the Thai EFL context for vocabulary instruction and rubric design.

2026-08-31T16:05:15+07:00