I am an applied linguist who is interested in theoretical as well as practical issues of second language reading and bilingual children’s literacy development. I received my PhD in Second Language Acquisition from Carnegie Mellon University, and am currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University where I also coordinate the Chinese Teacher Certification Program. 

Prior to my current appointment, I was a Research Scientist in the Center for Research in Pedagogy and Practice at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) where I conducted research on Singaporean children’s bilingual and biliteracy learning in English as well as their ethnic language.
My current research is particularly interested in cross-linguistic and developmental issues pertaining to reading and vocabulary knowledge in learners of English as a Second/Foreign Language and children who are learning to become biliterate. Using causal modeling as well as quasi-experimental methods, I examined the linguistic and metalinguistic underpinnings of ESL/EFL or bilingual reading development, particularly, how learners’ metalinguistic awareness can be transferred from one language to facilitate the development of reading related abilities in the other language, such as word decoding, lexical inference, and reading comprehension. Research in this line has been published in Applied Psycholinguistics, Modern Language Journal, Reading and Writing, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, International Journal of Bilingualism, among other journals.
In the Department of Teacher Education, I teach online courses for students enrolled in the Chinese Teacher Certification Program and the Master of Arts in Teaching and Curriculum or MATC program; and also offer seminars to and supervise doctoral students who are interested in language and literacy issues.

It is my great pleasure to be an affiliate of the Second Language Studies (SLS) program. I look forward to working with SLS faculty and students in the future.