In press for SIYASIG (2014 Golden Issue), The Official Journal of Research of Southern Luzon State University, Philippines CATEGORICAL ANALYSIS OF POST-GRADUATE RESEARCH ON ENGLISH STUDIES IN SELECTED UNIVERSITIES IN SOUTHERN LUZON (2001-2011 ) 1 by Nicanor Legarte Guinto Department of Languages, Literature, and Humanities College of Arts and Sciences Abstract. This paper is an attempt to profile research efforts and directions on English studies in the post-graduate level in the last ten years in Southern Luzon through a categorical analysis of annotated researches written from 2001 to 2011 and gathered from selected state-owned and private universities in the said region. It specifically aims to identify the strong areas as well as point out areas needing attention in the research efforts in the region. It similarly attempts to offer potential reasons as to why the resulting strong areas are valued more over others based on existing policies, realities and region-specific trends. A quota of 100 postgraduate theses was initially set, but only 95 were annotated due to the absence of postgraduate courses related to English studies in some Universities and Colleges, and because of the relatively few number of graduate students who actually graduate from the programs. Results indicate that research efforts on English language studies in Southern Luzon in the last ten years are centered around the teaching-learning process, particularly on instructional material development and teaching strategies. Research direction in English language in Southern Luzon is strongly influenced by the needs of students, research policies of potential funding agencies, local HEI’s research policies, and graduate school faculty members’ priority areas. 1. Introduction Earning a post-graduate 2 degree, or at least graduate units gives a person the competitive advantage over others when it comes to priority in promotion in her/his job. This is because most institutions would always look back at academic qualifications among others, in awarding key positions in the workplace. However, pursuing a post-graduate degree is not an easy task. Graduate students in the thesis track are required to write a terminal paper, in the form of a thesis or a dissertation, which will determine whether the student deserves to be awarded with the degree or not (Biggam, 2008). 1 This paper was presented at the Joint International Conference of the Pan-Asian Consortium of Language Teaching Societies and the Philippine Association for Language Teaching held at Cebu City, Philippines on December 5-7, 2013. 2 Post-graduate degree refers to either Master’s or Doctorate degrees which are taken by students who wish to advance their knowledge on a given field. The term is widely used in Europe and its North American counterpart is “graduate degree” (Biggam, 2008). In this paper, both terms (post-graduate and graduate) are used interchangeably to mean the same.