Dr Mark Brenchley

Dr Mark Brenchley

Senior Research Manager

Mark manages research supporting the development and validation of Cambridge Assessment English products, with a special focus on the application of corpus-based methodologies. His areas of interest/expertise include corpus linguistics, tagging/parsing systems, automarking, writing, the nature and development of lexico-grammatical knowledge, and the linguistic basis of register development.

Mark holds a PhD in Education from the University of Exeter, where he explored the development of spoken and written syntax in L1 English students. Following his PhD, he co-developed the Growth in Grammar Corpus, a novel corpus of student writing that covers the primary and secondary phases of the English education system. Prior to his PhD, Mark taught in the English education system across a variety of contexts, both mainstream and non-mainstream.

Outside of work, Mark remains first and foremost a Londoner. When not reading or walking, he spends an inordinate amount of time building Lego cars with his 3-year-old.

Key publications and conference presentations

Brenchley, M, Durrant, P and McCallum, L (forthcoming 2021) Understanding Development and Proficiency in L1 and L2 Writing: Quantitative Corpus Linguistic Approaches, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Durrant, P, Brenchley, M and Clarkson, R (in press) Syntactic development across genres in children's writing: The case of adverbial clauses, Journal of Writing Research.

Brenchley, M (2020) Natural Language Processing and the Validation of Language Exams, keynote paper presented at the 9th NLPCALL, Swedish Language Technology Conference, Stockholm University.

Xu, J, Brenchley, M, Jones, E, Pinnington, A, Benjamin, T, Knill, K, Seal-Coon, G, Robinson, M and Geranpayeh, A (2020) Linguaskill – Building a Validity Argument for the Speaking Test, Cambridge: UCLES.

Lanes, A, Love, R, Kalman, B, Brenchley, M and Pickles, M (2019) Updating the A2 Key and B1 Preliminary vocabulary lists, Research Notes 76, 12–18.

Durrant, P and Brenchley, M (2019) Development of vocabulary sophistication across genres in children's writing, Reading and Writing 32 (8), 1,927–1,953.

Durrant, P and Brenchley, M (2019) Corpus research on the development of children's writing in L1 English, in Glaznieks, A, Abel, A, Lyding, V and Nicolas, L (Eds) Widening the Scope of Learner Corpus Research. Selected Papers from the Fourth Learner Corpus Research Conference, Lovain: Presses Universitaires de Lovain.

Brenchley, M (2019) Corpora and Cambridge Assessment English: A widening perspective, keynote paper presented at the 5th Learner Corpus Research Conference, University of Warsaw, 12–14 September 2019.

Brenchley, M (2019) Building a spoken counterpart to the Cambridge Learner Corpus, paper presented at Language Testing Forum 2019, Swansea University, 22–24 November 2019.

Brenchley, M and Durrant, P (2019) Noun phrase development across genres in children's writing, paper presented at the 10th International Corpus Linguistics Conference, Cardiff University, 22 July to 26 July 2019.

Brenchley, M (2019) Writing from a second language perspective, Workshop delivered at the British Educational Research Association – English in Education Curriculum & Assessment Forum, University of Exeter.

Brenchley, M, González-Díaz, V and Durrant, P (2018) The noun phrase in children’s narratives: Then and now, paper presented at the 2018 BAAL Linguistics and Knowledge about Language in Education (LKALE) SIG meeting, Birmingham, 2018.

Lobina, D and Brenchley, M (2018) Fiat recursio! Inference Magazine 3 (1), available online: https://inference-review.com/article/fiat-recursio.

Brenchley, M (2017) The developmental relationship between spoken and written clause-combining in an English secondary school, paper presented at the 9è Colloque International de Linguistique de Corpus, Paris, 2017.

Brenchley, M (2017) The developmental relationship between spoken and written clause packages in an English secondary school, paper presented at the 9th International Corpus Linguistics Conference, Birmingham, 2017.

Brenchley, M and Cushing, I (2017) Ten things every teacher should know about grammar, Times Educational Supplement 5278, available online: https://www.tes.com/news/tes-magazine/tes-magazine/toyoufromtes-10-things-every-teacher-needs-know-about-grammar.

Brenchley, M and Durrant, P (2017) Growing grammar: Mapping the dimensions, paper presented at the University of Exeter-University College London Grammar in the Classroom Symposium, Exeter, 2017.

Brenchley, M and Durrant, P (2017) When corpus linguistics goes “boink”, paper presented at the Trondheim-University of Exeter Symposium, Exeter, 2017.

Brenchley, M (2016) School-Age grammar: Not whether, but how, paper presented at the Philadelphia Writing Program Administrators Conference, Philadelphia, 2016.

Brenchley, M (2016) The Grammar of school-age writing development: What do we already (think we maybe (don’t)) know?, paper presented at the University of Pennsylvania Department of Linguistics, Philadelphia, 2016.

Brenchley, M (2016) The Growth in Grammar Corpus: On working with children, not animals, paper presented at the Linguistic Data Consortium, Philadelphia, 2016.

Lobina, D J and Brenchley, M (2012) Knots, language, and computation: More Bermuda than love, Biolinguistics 6 (2), 176-204.