Dr. NICKALLS Richard (SFHEA)

Senior Lecturer

Tel.: 2616 7769
LBY206

SFHE University of Birmingham
DPhil English and Applied Linguistics, University of Birmingham
MA Applied linguistics, University of Birmingham
DELTA Cambridge Diploma in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
PGCE University of York
BSc University of Cardiff

In an earlier life Richard taught EFL (with a CELTA) in France, Switzerland, Germany and Peru and has worked as an IELTS examiner. He has also taught at Imperial College London and British secondary schools. Richard began an EAP lecturing career at Leibniz University in Germany before returning to England to work at the University of Birmingham for 14 years as a coordinator of Presessional/Insessional EAP programmes. He completed his DPhil part-time while at Birmingham and was awarded a Senior Fellowship in Higher Education (SFHE) for his work in teacher training, blended learning environments and a British Council project improving EAP teacher training in Brazil.

Richard’s research interests include teacher training, blended learning and how teachers believe their students improve language accuracy. In his doctorate Richard investigated Chinese L1 learners’ accuracy of use of structures ungrammaticalized in their first language (e.g. English articles), L1 transfer effects and teacher attitudes and beliefs about teaching such grammar.

Publications and Scholarly Activities

Nickalls, R. The British Association of Lecturers in EAP (2026, June 19). Piloting the use of Generative AI for written corrective feedback for handwritten writing tasks on an English for Academic Purposes course [paper presentation]. BALEAP PIM. EAP and the Academy in the Age of GenAI: Implications for practices and practitioners. Leeds, UK. [Video] YouTube. https://youtu.be/BJeL79YtDHg?si=9QfHJ-vUJ1IN4RSh

Nickalls, R. (2025). Teaching presentation skills to undergraduate EAP students: The need for authenticity, scaffolding and humour. STiLE - Scholarship of Teaching in Language Education, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.59936/stile.v4i1.202

Nickalls, R. (2025, May 22). AI Literacy in English for Academic Purposes: We Only Had to Change One Thing – Everything [Paper presentation]. AHKLC Symposium 2025 – Repositioning Language Education in the Age of AI (The Hong Kong Polytechnic University). https://www.polyu.edu.hk/elc/docdrive/ahklc_symposium_2025/AHKLC_Symposium_Programme_Book.pdf

Maxwell, H., Mottura, A.,Nickalls, R., Nightingale, K., Sjoberg, J. (2014) “ Developing E- and Blended Learning Approaches for International Students”, University of Birmingham Teaching and Learning Journal, Vol. 1 No. 1, ISSN 2057-2069, pp.11-15.

Nickalls, R. (2025). “Sorry to interrupt you there, but could you engage in more authentic spontaneous real-time discussions in EAP?”. STiLE - Scholarship of Teaching in Language Education, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.59936/stile.v4i1.179

Nickalls, R. (2024, July 3). Navigating a Route Between the Generative AI Evangelicals and the Luddites: A Case-study of Piloting an EAP Syllabus that Trains University Students to Use Generative AI Appropriately Without Hitting the Rocks. International Conference on Technology-enhanced Language Learning & Teaching Symposium 2 (The Education University of Hong Kong). https://www.eduhk.hk/lml/telltcollt2024/downloads/TeLLT%20&%20CoLLT%202024_%20Programme%20Book_Final.pdf

Nickalls, R. & Overall, C. (2019, February 3). Human versus machine: evaluation of the BIA’s “Academic Paraphrase Practice” automated marking LTi application. BALEAP PIM: Assessing the assessors (The University of Birmingham). https://www.baleap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Cathryn-Overall-Richard-Nickalls.pptx

Nickalls, R. (2014, June 24). The use of IPads to enhance learning in English for Academic Purposes lessons. Teaching and Learning Conference (University of Birmingham).

Nickalls, R. (2013, September 27). Inter-rater reliability testing of article error tags in a small learner corpus: an argument for framework simplicity. Learner Corpus Research Conference (University of Bergen, Norway). https://lcr2013.w.uib.no/files/2013/09/abstracts-book.pdf

Nickalls, R. (2011, September 3). Is the impact definite or indefinite? A study of L1 Chinese learners' written use of the English article system before, during and after explicit grammar teaching. British Association of Applied Linguistics: Annual Conference (University of the West of England, Bristol)

Nickalls, R. (2011, July 21). How definite are we about articles in English? A study of L2 learners' English article interlanguage during a university presessional English course. Proceedings from the 2011 Corpus Linguistics Conference, https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/documents/college-artslaw/corpus/conference-archives/2011/paper-92.pdf