The Moray House School of Education
Staff Profiles

Qualifications

• University of Birmingham, BA Hons French Language and Literature, Italian
• Trinity College Licentiate Diploma Teaching of English as a Foreign Language
• University of Edinburgh, MSc Applied Linguistics
• University of Edinburgh, PhD in Applied Linguistics: 'MSc common room casual conversations: a lexico-grammatical longitudinal study of a discourse community in formation'

Principal Interests

I analyse naturally-occurring spoken and written language, using corpus linguistics, and suggest applications to TEFL and teacher training. My main interests are:

• Vague language (e.g. 'do', 'thing', 'and all that') and its social function
• International student interactions in UK university tutorials

Other interests include:

• In-group code of academic discourse communities
• The language of conferences - questions from the floor; abstracts
• Airport groundstaff spoken grammar and vocabulary

Research Supervision

I am keen to supervise research under the headings above. I currently supervise students in the following areas:

• Airport English in China: raising awareness of politeness strategies
• Computer Mediated Communication in TESOL teacher-training
• Encouraging pupil engagement in the reading hour in Scottish primary schools
• English literature and gender in education in Tanzania
• English vague language used by Japanese learners of English
• Globalisation and English language teaching in Egypt
• Needs assessment for volunteer English workshops in Laos
• Perceptions of the effectiveness of teaching Law courses in English in Italy
• Reading literacy needs of EAL pupils in Scottish secondary schools
• Techniques used by modern language teachers in Scottish secondary schools

Biographical Note

I began my teaching career in Havana, Cuba, where I taught Business English and ran a TEFL Masters programme for English teachers in the medical schools, for 13 years. I returned to the UK in 1990 and taught English for Academic Purposes and MA TESOL in the University of Sunderland. I now teach on the University of Edinburgh's MEd TESOL and MSc Education: Language. I have undertaken consultancy in Russia (Cherepovets), mainland China (Beijing, Changchun, Chongqin, Guangzhou, Hefei, Nanjing, Nanning, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Tianjin and Zhejiang) and Hong Kong. I was Meetings Secretary for the British Association for Applied Linguistics 2004-07.

Current and Recent Research

Current projects:

• The organisation, with Dr Brona Murphy, of the 2010 Inter-Varietal Corpus Studies (IVACS) Conference, held at Moray House, The University of Edinburgh, 18-19 June 2010
• The compilation of the EDASE (Edinburgh Academic Spoken English) Corpus with Dr Brona Murphy, University of Edinburgh
• A TEMPUS staff exchange project with Karlsruhe Education University, Germany

Recent projects:

• The organisation of the Annual 2009 Inter-Varietal Corpus Studies (IVACS) Symposium, held at Moray House, The University of Edinburgh
• The organisation of a seminar of the British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) and Cambridge University Press entitled 'Academic Language Corpora and Education' (ALCE), held at Moray House, The University of Edinburgh
• Scottish Council for Research in Education: 'Institutional Support for Overseas Students'
• European Commission Leonardo Languages Competences: 'ELSY: Devising a Multi-media Airport Syllabus for Young People who are Unemployed and Under-qualified'
• European Commission Leonardo Mobility: 'English for Tourism and Catering'
• European Commission Leonardo Mobility: 'Airport English'
• The University of Edinburgh Development Trust fund. 'Conference abstracts'
• The University of Edinburgh RAE Enhancement fund. 'Chinese students' needs in the UK'

Publications

Selected Publications:

Cutting, J. (2008) Pragmatics and Discourse (2nd edition) Routledge: London

Cutting, J. (2007) Vague Language Explored (Editor) Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke

Cutting, J. (2007) 'Introduction to Vague Language Explored'. In Vague Language Explored (Editor) Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke

Cutting, J. (2007) 'Doing More Stuff - Where's It Going?: Exploring Vague Language Further'. In Vague Language Explored (Editor) Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke

Cutting, J. (2005) Spoken Grammar: Vague Language and EAP. In TESOL, Spoken English, Applied Linguistics and TESOL: Challenges for Theory and Practice. Ed. R. Hughes. Palgrave Macmillan: Basingstoke

More on the School's Publications Database