Dick Smakman

Below is the list of MA thesis topics which I have supervised so far. It demonstrates the range of topics that students may write their MA or BA thesis on. Typically, the investigations are based on experimental data: listening tests, evaluation tests, surveys, phonetic transcription, acoustic description, language tests, perception tests, and so on.

PAST THESIS TOPICS

Pronunciation/phonetics

• Pitch as a cue to compare Chinese, Dutch and native speakers' sentence accent in happy-sounding English
• The acquisition of pronunciation by British learners of Chinese
• Sociolinguistic choices in western classical singing - a study of the articulatory modification of /e/
• Reading two languages. An acoustic description of code-switching in Friesland and Wales
• When all is said and done. An assessment of the effects of pronunciation training on the speech of native Dutch learners of English
• Phonological variation among African American rappers; significance of features in the "dirty" south and New York city
• How British or US is the English of Dutch learner’s pronunciation?
• Silences in glottal stops by native speakers and non-native speakers
• Correlation between perceived and real dialect difference
• Lax/tense in Singapore English
• Are we at sixes and sevens? An evaluation of grading practices of teachers assessing English pronunciation

Sociolinguistics

• Competing attitudes in Poland: a comparison of attitudes towards foreign languages; English, French and German
• Down under stereotypes; a comparative study of stereotypes and racial attitudes in Australia and New Zealand
• He brought home the English - Language loss at the Isle of Skye
• Male and female attitudes towards the English language in Cyprus; a study about Greek-Cypriots in Cyprus
• The Australians; what they are and what they speak
• Biological sex versus social gender differences in the writings of English eleven-year-old boys and girls
• Looking at cosmopolitan English; English words and phrases in the Dutch and French edition of a woman's magazine
• Inner beauty: Dutch and Chinese evaluations of English language varieties
• Attitudes & acceptability; an evaluation of Dutch speakers' accents in English by other Dutch speakers
• What makes them positive or negative? Evaluation of non-native English accents
• Conditionals in Krio from Sierra Leone
• An empirical study of gender differences and similarities in English language use among Chinese learners
• ESP inhibitions: usage thresholds and user strategies in the use of corporate English
• Look to the future: the production and perception of the future by Chinese and Dutch learners of English
• Variation and change in African American English. A comparison of early and modern African American English
• Particle usage in naturalistic Singaporean English. Forensic implications
• English by Germans: attitudes and skills
• English/Italian in the daily speech of Slovenes: regional differences
• A matched a guise test involving British and American English
• Style in Second Language Academic English - A Contrastive Rhetoric Analysis of Scholarly Publications by Polish and Anglophone Authors
• Language shift in Huangdao district, Qingdao city
• Language choices in de Hoekschewaard
• Language shift in Romagnolo, Italy
• The English in Dutch pop music lyrics
• Shift in a Latvian dialect
• Shift in an Indian dialect
• Language shift on the island of Goeree Overflakkee

Teaching and language acquisition

• Who is hot and who is not? The effect of teacher nationality on the evaluation of student work and on perceived teacher training quality
• Raising children bilingually. Which factors account for a successful upbringing?
• Early English education in Korea
• Which factors determine English language levels amongst ethnic students?
• Learning success at bilingual VWO
• Trilingualuity: criteria to define the real first language
• The role of literature education in secondary schools
• Vocabulary learning strategies
• Ways to teach/offer vocabulary
• Feedback (negative and positive) in SLA success

POSSIBLE THESIS TOPICS

• The relationship between culture and language family. Does language family determine culture? How come Rumanians share more culturally with Italians than with Bulgarians. How come Finns are culturally slightly different from both Russians and from other Scandinavian countries? Is there a way to to determine North-Wester Europe culturally as well as the Mediterranean? Where does France fit in? Survey and literature study.
• The rise in status of non-native English pronunciation. A study in which older and younger people give their opinions on how acceptable native and non-native pronunciations are. Study involving theories and views by Jenifer Jenkins of European and other regional Englishes. Includes the issue of acceptability as teaching model.
• The pronunciation of Mick Jagger, singer of the Rolng Stones. Has it changed over  years, and what way? The reseach involves transcription an acoustic measurements of interview recordings. Ths neds to be matched with hypotheses of why individuals vary and chang thir language.
• Intergenerational dialect shift in the Netherlands (or another country). An investigation into knowledge and use of specific lexical and/or grammatical dialect forms across generations. This involves making recodings of dialect speakers and finding out whether younger speakers use the dialect in a different way.
• Linguistic landscape and how it is perceived in inner cities.