Nigel Harwood
Biographic Data
| ID | 1127041 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nigel Harwood |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nigel |
| FAMILY NAME | Harwood |
| SIGNATURE | HARWOOD N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sheffield |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9474-4865 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 27 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 16 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Feature Article: ELT Materials
After providing a working definition of ELT materials that encompasses both commercial and noncommercial instructional resources, I differentiate between studies of materials content, consumption , and production , reviewing notable studies of each type, most of which have appeared in the pages of TQ. Studies of materials content are classified into studies of erasure, representations of culture, critical discourse analyses, and corpus‐based rese…
Alignment between intended and enacted pedagogies: A study of ELT curriculum innovation implementation in Pakistan
Why Tesol Textbooks Are the Way they Are: The Constraints of Writing for a Global Audience
Materials development in TESOL has been gaining popularity as a field of study for the last few decades. TESOL materials research as an area of inquiry includes studies focusing on textbook content (e.g., grammar, cultural representation, and authenticity), consumption (use/adaptation of materials by learners and teachers), and production (design and publication) of materials (Harwood, 2014a,b). Materials production is the most neglected of these…
Lecturer, Language Tutor, and Student Perspectives on the Ethics of the Proofreading of Student Writing
Various forms of proofreading of student writing take place in university contexts. Sometimes writers pay freelance proofreaders to edit their texts before submission for assessment; sometimes more informal arrangements take place, where friends, family, or coursemates proofread. Such arrangements raise ethical questions for universities formulating proofreading policies: in the interests of fairness, should proofreading be debarred entirely or s…
‘Teaching the writer to fish so they can fish for the rest of their lives’: Lecturer, English language tutor, and student views on the educative role of proofreading
This qualitative study draws upon questionnaire and interview-based data collected from 32 disciplinary lecturers, 34 English language tutors, and 56 students (24 undergraduates, 32 postgraduates; 29 L1, 27 L2) to explore participants' beliefs about the educative value of the proofreading of student writing. No consensus emerged between or within parties, with a range of pro- and anti-educative views. Those who spoke of the educative value of pro…
Understandings of the Role of the One-to-One Writing Tutor in a U.K. University Writing Centre: Multiple Perspectives
This article presents findings from a study of a U.K. university writing centre regarding understandings of tutor roles, involving 33 Chinese international students, 11 writing tutors, and the centre director. The research used interviews and audio-recorded consultations as data to analyze and explore participants’ beliefs and understandings. The most common roles associated with tutors were proofreader, coach, commentator, counsellor, ally, and …
Coda: An Expanding Research Agenda for the Use of Instructional Materials
The rationale behind this special issue is to underscore the importance of studying instructional materials in context—that is, how materials and textbooks are used by teachers and learners. Research on teaching materials needs to reach beyond traditional ‘armchair’ analyses and evaluations to appreciate the place of instructional materials in the wider social and educational context, and to do so in a methodologically and analytically principled…
Educational Perspectives on Mediality and Subjectivation: Discourse, Power and Analysis
There is no education without some form of media.Much contemporary writing on media and education examines best practices or individual learning processes, is fired by techno-optimism or techno-pessimism about young people's use of technology, or focuses exclusively on digital media.Relatively few studies attend -empirically or conceptually -to the embeddedness of educational media in contemporary cultural, social and political processes.The Palg…
I Have to Hold Myself Back from Getting into All That’: Investigating Ethical Issues Associated with the Proofreading of Student Writing
L2 student writers in UK universities often seek the services of a ‘proofreader’ before submitting work for assessment, and the proliferation of freelance proofreaders and online proofreading agencies has led to debates about the ethics of the proofreading of student writing in publications such as Times Higher Education. This study investigates the kinds of ethical issues that confront proofreaders and how they deal with them. Nine UK university…
Cleaner, helper, teacher? The role of proofreaders of student writing
As part of a larger interview-based study of the beliefs, practices and experiences of 16 proofreaders of student writing in a university setting, this article reports informants’ conceptualisations of their role. ‘Proofreading’ is defined for the purposes of this research as ‘third-party interventions (that entail some level of written alteration) on assessed work in progress’. Informants’ descriptions were grouped using five metaphors to descri…
Performance in the Citing Behavior of Two Student Writers
This article reports the results of an interview-based study which investigated the citation behavior in the assignment writing of two second-language postgraduate business management students, Sofie and Tara. Discourse-based interviews were used to elicit the students' own perspectives on their citation behavior in two of their assignments. Citations were one of the ways in which Sofie and Tara enacted performance (Goffman, 1959), aiming to crea…
An interview-based study of the functions of citations in academic writing across two disciplines
Political scientists on the functions of personal pronouns in their writing: An interview-based study of ‘I’ and ‘we’
In contrast to the numerous corpus-based studies of pronouns in academic writing, this paper uses qualitative interviews in an attempt to account for academic writers' motivations for using the pronouns ‘I’ and ‘we’ and to describe the textual effects that each case of ‘I’ and ‘we’ helps to create. Five political scientists took part in the research, commenting upon their pronoun use in one of their own journal articles and also in the other info…
‘We Do Not Seem to Have a Theory … The Theory I Present Here Attempts to Fill This Gap’: Inclusive and Exclusive Pronouns in Academic Writing
This paper is a qualitative and quantitative corpus-based study of how academic writers use the personal pronouns I and inclusive and exclusive we. Using a multidisciplinary corpus comprising of journal research articles (RAs) from the fields of Business and Management, Computing Science, Economics, and Physics, I present data extracts which reveal how I and we can help writers create a sense of newsworthiness and novelty about their work, showin…
‘Nowhere has anyone attempted … In this article I aim to do just that’
Taking a lexical approach to teaching: Principles and problems
After briefly reviewing some of the reasons why the traditional grammar/vocabulary distinction is no longer adequate, this article describes two key principles which are claimed to be at the core of teaching according to a lexical approach. There are, however, a number of major difficulties which necessarily co‐occur alongside any attempted classroom implementation. Having discussed how these difficulties may be overcome, the article closes by co…
An interview-based study of the functions of citations in academic writing across two disciplines
Performance in the Citing Behavior of Two Student Writers
This article reports the results of an interview-based study which investigated the citation behavior in the assignment writing of two second-language postgraduate business management students, Sofie and Tara. Discourse-based interviews were used to elicit the students' own perspectives on their citation behavior in two of their assignments. Citations were one of the ways in which Sofie and Tara enacted performance (Goffman, 1959), aiming to crea…
Taking a lexical approach to teaching: Principles and problems
After briefly reviewing some of the reasons why the traditional grammar/vocabulary distinction is no longer adequate, this article describes two key principles which are claimed to be at the core of teaching according to a lexical approach. There are, however, a number of major difficulties which necessarily co‐occur alongside any attempted classroom implementation. Having discussed how these difficulties may be overcome, the article closes by co…
‘We Do Not Seem to Have a Theory … The Theory I Present Here Attempts to Fill This Gap’: Inclusive and Exclusive Pronouns in Academic Writing
This paper is a qualitative and quantitative corpus-based study of how academic writers use the personal pronouns I and inclusive and exclusive we. Using a multidisciplinary corpus comprising of journal research articles (RAs) from the fields of Business and Management, Computing Science, Economics, and Physics, I present data extracts which reveal how I and we can help writers create a sense of newsworthiness and novelty about their work, showin…
‘Nowhere has anyone attempted … In this article I aim to do just that’
Political scientists on the functions of personal pronouns in their writing: An interview-based study of ‘I’ and ‘we’
In contrast to the numerous corpus-based studies of pronouns in academic writing, this paper uses qualitative interviews in an attempt to account for academic writers' motivations for using the pronouns ‘I’ and ‘we’ and to describe the textual effects that each case of ‘I’ and ‘we’ helps to create. Five political scientists took part in the research, commenting upon their pronoun use in one of their own journal articles and also in the other info…
An interview-based study of the functions of citations in academic writing across two disciplines
Performance in the Citing Behavior of Two Student Writers
This article reports the results of an interview-based study which investigated the citation behavior in the assignment writing of two second-language postgraduate business management students, Sofie and Tara. Discourse-based interviews were used to elicit the students' own perspectives on their citation behavior in two of their assignments. Citations were one of the ways in which Sofie and Tara enacted performance (Goffman, 1959), aiming to crea…
Cleaner, helper, teacher? The role of proofreaders of student writing
As part of a larger interview-based study of the beliefs, practices and experiences of 16 proofreaders of student writing in a university setting, this article reports informants’ conceptualisations of their role. ‘Proofreading’ is defined for the purposes of this research as ‘third-party interventions (that entail some level of written alteration) on assessed work in progress’. Informants’ descriptions were grouped using five metaphors to descri…
I Have to Hold Myself Back from Getting into All That’: Investigating Ethical Issues Associated with the Proofreading of Student Writing
L2 student writers in UK universities often seek the services of a ‘proofreader’ before submitting work for assessment, and the proliferation of freelance proofreaders and online proofreading agencies has led to debates about the ethics of the proofreading of student writing in publications such as Times Higher Education. This study investigates the kinds of ethical issues that confront proofreaders and how they deal with them. Nine UK university…
Coda: An Expanding Research Agenda for the Use of Instructional Materials
The rationale behind this special issue is to underscore the importance of studying instructional materials in context—that is, how materials and textbooks are used by teachers and learners. Research on teaching materials needs to reach beyond traditional ‘armchair’ analyses and evaluations to appreciate the place of instructional materials in the wider social and educational context, and to do so in a methodologically and analytically principled…
Educational Perspectives on Mediality and Subjectivation: Discourse, Power and Analysis
There is no education without some form of media.Much contemporary writing on media and education examines best practices or individual learning processes, is fired by techno-optimism or techno-pessimism about young people's use of technology, or focuses exclusively on digital media.Relatively few studies attend -empirically or conceptually -to the embeddedness of educational media in contemporary cultural, social and political processes.The Palg…
‘Teaching the writer to fish so they can fish for the rest of their lives’: Lecturer, English language tutor, and student views on the educative role of proofreading
This qualitative study draws upon questionnaire and interview-based data collected from 32 disciplinary lecturers, 34 English language tutors, and 56 students (24 undergraduates, 32 postgraduates; 29 L1, 27 L2) to explore participants' beliefs about the educative value of the proofreading of student writing. No consensus emerged between or within parties, with a range of pro- and anti-educative views. Those who spoke of the educative value of pro…
Understandings of the Role of the One-to-One Writing Tutor in a U.K. University Writing Centre: Multiple Perspectives
This article presents findings from a study of a U.K. university writing centre regarding understandings of tutor roles, involving 33 Chinese international students, 11 writing tutors, and the centre director. The research used interviews and audio-recorded consultations as data to analyze and explore participants’ beliefs and understandings. The most common roles associated with tutors were proofreader, coach, commentator, counsellor, ally, and …
Lecturer, Language Tutor, and Student Perspectives on the Ethics of the Proofreading of Student Writing
Various forms of proofreading of student writing take place in university contexts. Sometimes writers pay freelance proofreaders to edit their texts before submission for assessment; sometimes more informal arrangements take place, where friends, family, or coursemates proofread. Such arrangements raise ethical questions for universities formulating proofreading policies: in the interests of fairness, should proofreading be debarred entirely or s…
Why Tesol Textbooks Are the Way they Are: The Constraints of Writing for a Global Audience
Materials development in TESOL has been gaining popularity as a field of study for the last few decades. TESOL materials research as an area of inquiry includes studies focusing on textbook content (e.g., grammar, cultural representation, and authenticity), consumption (use/adaptation of materials by learners and teachers), and production (design and publication) of materials (Harwood, 2014a,b). Materials production is the most neglected of these…
Alignment between intended and enacted pedagogies: A study of ELT curriculum innovation implementation in Pakistan
Feature Article: ELT Materials
After providing a working definition of ELT materials that encompasses both commercial and noncommercial instructional resources, I differentiate between studies of materials content, consumption , and production , reviewing notable studies of each type, most of which have appeared in the pages of TQ. Studies of materials content are classified into studies of erasure, representations of culture, critical discourse analyses, and corpus‐based rese…
Psychology (12 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Linguistics (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Mathematics education (8 works) · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies (7 works) · Student Assessment and Feedback (7 works) · Political science (6 works) · Pedagogy (5 works) · Second Language Learning and Teaching (5 works)