She is one of the primary developers of the Pattern Grammar model of linguistic analysis,[3] which is a way of describing the syntactic environments of individual words, based on studying their occurrences in large sets of authentic examples, i.e. language corpora.
She has served as the Head of the School of English, Drama and American and Canadian Studies at the University of Birmingham.
[6] In addition to research and teaching, she is a co-editor, along with Carol A. Chapell, of the Cambridge Applied Linguistics book series.
[9] She serves on the executive board[10] of the International Association of Applied Linguistics, a non-governmental organization (NGO) that has formal consultative relations with UNESCO ("the 'intellectual' agency of the United Nations")[11] and which is devoted to supporting applied linguistics in developing countries.
[12] She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to higher education and applied linguistics.