A Critical Evaluation of Graduate Theses Written in the Field of ELT in North Cyprus

The purpose of this study is to reach a common evaluation by analysing the research methods and subject orientations which have been used in MA and PhD theses written in the English Language Teaching Departments of the universities in North Cyprus in the last ten years. In this research, a literature review was done and data were collected by document analysis technique. The data were collected from the libraries of the universities and the collected data were transferred to electronic medium. The data were analysed quantitatively. For this purpose, 109 MA theses and 10 doctoral theses have been analysed. The results showed that the most popular topic is “Language Skills in English Language and Teaching” at MA level. On the other hand, for PhD level the most researched topic is “Teacher Education in English Language and Teaching”. As far as the year distribution is concerned, “2014” was the year with the highest number of theses. Regarding methodology, the most commonly used method is “the Quantitative method”, together with “the Questionnaire” as the most frequently used data collection instrument. In terms of research context, “Higher Education” had the highest rank. The implications of these results are also discussed