Graduate Students in the SLS Program are working toward their Ph.D. in Second Language Studies. They are listed below in alphabetical order.
Joanne Cheng joined the SLS program in the Fall of 2024. She received her MA in TESOL at the University of Mississippi and her BA in Language and Creative Writing, with a concentration in Chinese Education, from National Taipei University of Education in Taiwan. Prior to joining MSU, Joanne taught Chinese at an HBCU, and English as a Second Language (ESL) at various levels, including K-12, Intensive English Program, and adult learners in a faith-based ministry. Before coming to the US, she also taught English as a Foreign Language (EFL) for adults at community centers and public schools in Taiwan. Joanne is certified as a national ESL faith-based literacy workshop leader. Her research interests include the relationship between socio-affective factors and learners’ speaking performance, identity, games and learning in the classroom, and teacher education.
April Day is a Ph.D. Student in the Second Language Studies program. She earned her MA in Applied Linguistics and her BA in Linguistics and Drama from the University of Queensland, Australia. April has taught in many countries around the world, including China, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates and Japan. Her research interests include critical multilingual language awareness, non-verbal interaction styles and critical discourse analysis.
Oluwaseyi Fasunhan completed her Bachelors’ degree in African Language, Literatures, and Communication Arts from Lagos State University and her Masters’ Degree in Yoruba Language and Literature from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Before joining the SLS Ph.D. program at Michigan State, she taught Yoruba as a second language at the Yoruba Language School of New South Whales, Australia. She also taught Yoruba as a second language at MSU to undergraduate and graduate students as a Fulbright FLTA. Additionally, She taught Yoruba to L1 & L2 learners in senior high school and English as L2 to Junior school students in Nigeria. Her research interests include task-based teaching, syllabus/curriculum design in African language classroom, motivation and placement assessment, technology in LCTL programs, HL program, and teachers’ training.
Kevin Fedewa is currently a PhD student in Second Language Studies at Michigan State University and an instructor and coordinator of Foundations Writing courses for Environmental Science students at a University of Arizona micro-campus in China. Since 2009, he has served in various teaching and program administration roles for English and Mandarin language programs in China, Korea, and the US. His interests are in second language writing, language for specific purposes, task-based language teaching, as well as program development and evaluation.
Elena Gorshkova joined the SLS PhD program in the Fall of 2023 while completing her master’s degree in TESOL at Michigan State University. She holds BA with honors in Teacher Education with specialization in Foreign Language Instruction from Saratov State University in Russia. She has taught English in Russia, China, and the US. Her research interests include formative and standardized assessment, eye-tracking and nonverbal behaviors.
Xinyi Guan joined the SLS PhD program in Fall 2024. Her research focuses on task-based language teaching and assessment (TBLA), language teacher education, and program design. Prior to joining the program, she spent four years implementing TBLT in various educational contexts across mainland China. Her experience spans working with primary school children, young learners aged 2 to 6-, and 6- to 15-year-olds, college students, and ethnic minority Uyghur undergraduates. Driven by a commitment to addressing the “Mute English” phenomenon, she is dedicated to advancing the use of TBLT in China.
Leonardo Guedez is interested in linguistic variation, particularly with regard to using corpus methods to refine psycholinguistic accounts of learner language. Other areas of interest include studying the interaction between prosody and lexico-grammar across registers, and investigating the cognitive mechanisms of language production in non-native language varieties.
Alexandra Hafer-Horowitz joined SLS in Fall 2025. She earned her MA in TESOL at MSU in Spring 2025 and her BA in English and German from the University of San Diego in 2016. Before joining MSU, she spent a year as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant at a secondary school in Germany and additionally taught elementary school in Detroit and Chicago for 6 years. Her research interests include identity, ideology, and learner emotion, particularly in religious language education.
Shannon Harasta joined the SLS program in the fall of 2023. She earned her MA in Linguistics from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and her BA in Cognitive Science and Game Simulation Arts and Sciences from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Prior to her graduate studies she served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Nepal where she worked as a food security volunteer and taught ESL. She is broadly interested in the intersection of sociolinguistics and SLA.
Hendriwanto joined the SLS program in Fall 2024 as a scholarship awardee from the Center for Higher Education Funding, Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology, Republic of Indonesia. He received his S.Pd. in English Language Education from Universitas Swadaya Gunung Jati and his M.Pd. in Applied Linguistics from Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta. He is a faculty member in the English Language Education program at the Faculty of Science and Education, Universitas Swadaya Gunung Jati. His research interests include genre-based pedagogy, English for scholarly writing, and corpus analysis.
Eunmi Kim is a doctoral candidate in the Second Language Studies program. She holds a Ph.D. in linguistics from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS) in South Korea. After earning her doctorate, she worked as an academic research professor at the Language Research Institute at HUFS. Her research has been published in several international peer-reviewed journals, including English Studies, Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics, and the Australian Journal of Linguistics. She has received research grants from the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea, the National Research Foundation of Korea, and the Research Affairs/R&DB Foundation of HUFS. Her current research focuses on complexity, stance, and a range of semantic, pragmatic, and morpho-syntactic features in the speech and writing of L1 users and multilinguals. She also investigates how such linguistic features are produced in both human and AI-generated texts through a corpus-based approach.
Nari Kim joined the SLS program in Fall 2023 as a Fulbright Graduate Student Program grantee. She holds an MA in Foreign, Second, and Multilingual Language Education from The Ohio State University as a University Fellowship recipient. Before coming to MSU, she worked as an elementary school teacher in South Korea for 10 years and is also a certified K–12 teacher in the United States. Her research interests include how emotions, identity, ideology, and ethics intersect in relation to multilingual and transnational language learners and teachers. She is also interested in critical digital literacy, especially as it relates to issues of equity and access in online spaces.
Joanne Koh joined the SLS Ph.D. program in the Fall of 2020. She received her BA in English Education and MA in Teaching English as a Foreign Language at Ewha Womans University, Korea. Her current research interests include the role of technology in mediating L2 learning and teaching, cognitive processes in L2 vocabulary acquisition and learning, and the cognitive mechanisms under technology-mediated language learning.
Yining Kong joined the SLS PhD program in Fall 2025. She received her MA in Applied Linguistics from University College London, UK, and her BA in English linguistics and literature from Wuhan University of Technology, China. She is currently developing research interests at the intersection of bi/multilingualism and SLA.
Jared Michael Kubokawa is a doctoral candidate in the Second Language Studies program at Michigan State University (MSU) and the English Language Consultant and Instructional Coach at Ingham Intermediate School District. He is a recipient of the MSU distinguished fellowship, a Fulbright-Hays DDRA fellowship, a Susan M. Gass Scholarship Award in Service, and is a K-12 certified teacher and administrator. He has experience teaching and mentoring English language teachers in both international and domestic contexts across multiple age groups. His teaching and research interests include teacher education, educational linguistics, second language and multilingual writing, second language literacy, innovation in language teaching and learning, and sociolinguistic factors of SLA.
Yusuke Kuroki joined the SLS PhD program in the fall of 2024. He received his MA in Foreign Language Education and Research from Kansai University and his BA in Humanities from Miyazaki Municipal University. His research interests include the cognitive processes underlying second language acquisition and the role of multimodal interaction in computer-assisted language learning.
Wangyin Kenneth Li joined the SLS Ph.D. program in the fall of 2025. He received his MSc in Applied Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition with Distinction in Overall and Thesis from University of Oxford, United Kingdom. Prior to joining the program, he worked as a full-time research assistant on funded projects at The University of Hong Kong. His research interests lie in vocabulary acquisition, formulaic sequences, psycholinguistics, lexical processing, and technology-enhanced language learning. He is particularly interested in using experiments with psycholinguistic measures of reaction times (RTs) and eye-tracking to examine the cognitive mechanisms of vocabulary acquisition. He has recently expanded his areas of interest to include how linguistic features affect second language writing quality and language processing.
Sonja Mecham joined the SLS program in Fall 2024. She received her MA in TESOL and BA in linguistics from Brigham Young University. Before studying at MSU, she taught ESL to adults in both community and academic settings. Her research interests include multilingualism, teacher education, identity, and ideology. She is particularly interested in using methods such as action research and ethnography with a goal to be involved in and collaborate with language learning and teaching communities.
Yuko Nakanishi joined the SLS program in 2024. She holds an M.A. in English Linguistics from Doshisha University in Kyoto and another in Applied Linguistics from Teachers College. Yuko has five years of experience teaching English at junior and senior high schools in Japan. Her research interests include instructed SLA, form-focused instruction, and the role of communicative practices. She is particularly focused on how learners develop grammatical knowledge and improve their speaking proficiency in classroom settings.
Monique Yoder earned her MA TESOL at MSU (2008), and her MA in Language Testing from Lancaster University in England (2017). She has developed tests for Educational Testing Service, Second Language Testing, Inc., and MSU; directed the ESL Program at Lake Michigan College in Benton Harbor, MI; and served as interim director of LCC International University’s MA TESOL program. Monique’s research interests include classroom-based language assessment, language assessment literacy, language test development, task clarity in writing assessments, and rater behavior.
Hyun-Bin Yoo joined the SLS PhD program in Fall 2025. She received her MA in Linguistics and BA in History and English Language and Literature at Yonsei University, South Korea. Her current research interests include corpus linguistics, second language writing, data-driven learning, and incorporating corpus- and genre-based approaches into learning and teaching L2 writing.
Applied Linguistics Graduate Student Representative
Graduate Students in Applied Linguistics, including those in the SLS and TESOL programs, have a Graduate Student Representative who serves as a conduit of information between the AL students and the AL faculty. The Representative attends and participates in the AL Faculty Meetings, which are held at least once a month during the academic year. The Representative also may attend and participate in specific AL committee meetings, or nominate other AL students to do so.
The 2025-2026 Applied Linguistics Graduate Student Representative is Xinyi Guan. The annual procedures for electing the Graduate Student Representative are outlined in the Graduate Student Handbook.