People

Introduction

My research deals with cognitive psychology of second language learning, which means I’m interested in psychological mechanisms of how people acquire a second language (L2) and how the knowledge about the process and mechanism of learning can be applied to classroom instruction. I place the premium on practice, defined as “specific activities in the second language, engaged in systematically, deliberately, with the goals of developing knowledge of and skills in the second language” (DeKeyser, 2007, p.1), and hence echo with Lightbown (2019, p.704) when she claims “practice is the only way to make perfect, but the challenge is to understand what kind of practice will lead learners closer to that goal”. My research investigates how people (especially adults) develop accuracy and fluency as they deliberately and systematically practice using the L2 and how we teachers can better enhance their learning by optimizing the condition of practice.

Keywords for my research interests include (a) skill acquisition, (b) practice and automatization, (c) explicit and implicit learning, (d) individual differences in language learning, (e) task-based language teaching, and (f) applied statistics in language research. I have collaborated with many researchers widely across the globe, with most of my publications appearing in journals such as Language Learning and Studies in Second Language Acquisition. Recently, I am extending my interests to cognitive neuroscience to further expand our knowledge of how people learn a second language.