I am an associate professor of Chinese in the Department of Languages and Literary Studies at Lafayette College. As the section leader of the Chinese language program, I have spearheaded a series of decisive and carefully-chosen actions aimed at facilitating further program growth, such as the creation of the Chinese minor, the establishment of the self-designed Chinese major, and the initiation of the Chinese-American Telecollaborative Learning Program. In my classes, I seek to create an engaging, supportive, and intellectually rich environment in which I encourage meaningful interactions, in-depth discussion and analysis, critical thinking, creativity, innovation, self-autonomy, and community-building, and I strive to prepare my students to become competent global citizens by developing their linguistic proficiency, cultural literacy, critical depth, and intercultural competence. Please watch this video to see why students are so passionate about taking Chinese at Lafayette!
I joined Lafayette College in the fall of 2014. Before coming to Lafayette, I worked as a lecturer of linguistics and English at the Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing for six years and then as a lecturer of Chinese at Northwestern University in Chicago for three years. I received a PhD in Foreign Language Education with a specialization in the teaching of Chinese from the University of Texas at Austin in 2011, and a PhD in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics from Beijing Foreign Studies University in 2007. My research interests include Chinese linguistics, cognitive linguistics, second language acquisition, foreign language anxiety, heritage language education, online intercultural exchange, and foreign language pedagogy.