DPhil student’s viva success

Congratulations to Dr Johannes Schulz who passed his DPhil viva with no corrections last week.

In Johannes’ thesis, “Multi-word constructions and linguistic development in early foreign language classrooms: the role of input variability”, he reported on two German teaching interventions in a British primary school.

Johannes said: “The data from a range of outcome measurements provided robust evidence for the positive effect of increased input variability on children’s ability to generalize underlying grammatical rules to novel contexts, thereby increasing their communicative agency. Although this is a proof-of-concept study, finding evidence for this variability effect – which is ubiquitous across cognitive domains – is a promising initial step towards improving primary school L2 teaching input and supporting learning outcomes.

“My favourite thing about studying in the Department was the opportunity to work with my supervisors, Professor Liz Wonnacott and Professor Victoria Murphy. I would choose them again, 100% recommend, 10/10!

“After two and a half hours of examination, I was quite beat to be honest. Also, it took a while to realise that I received no corrections which I did not expect. So, I was happy about that – tired, but very happy.”

After completing his senior-school teacher education in Germany, Johannes hopes to find a long-term position in education that combines work in both schools and research.

“I firmly believe that education, like any other scientific discipline, needs robust research evidence to inform realistic pedagogical guidelines. The emphasis is on ‘scientific’ on the one hand and ‘realistic’ on the other hand, which is why we need people who can understand and empathise with both worlds.”