Wen-Hsin (Kelly) Chen joined the Second Language Studies Ph.D. Program in fall 2009. She received her M.A. in Teaching English as a Second Language from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her B.Ed. in Children’s English Education from National Taipei University of Education (Taiwan). During her second year at UIUC (2008-2009), she taught Chinese reading and writing to undergraduate students at UIUC. Kelly worked as a research assistant for Dr. Xiaoshi Li from Fall 2009 to Spring 2013 on research projects relating to variation in the use of null subjects and objects in Mandarin Chinese. During her second year, Kelly was a research assistant for Dr. Shawn Loewen on a grant-funded research project (funded by the Center for Language Education and Research at MSU) which investigated the role of explicit feedback in American English speakers’ acquisition of Chinese perfective -le. Currently, Kelly is teaching CHS201/202: Intermediate Chinese at MSU.
Kelly’s major research interest is related to the second language acquisition of morphosyntax, particularly the acquisition of articles and inflectional morphology (specifically, agreement and tense). Other research interests include language processing and Chinese as a second language. She is currently working on her dissertation on the topic of second language perception and production of English regular past tense. She focuses especially on the role of L1 transfer and phonological effects. She expects to defend her dissertation in the end of Spring 2014.