Biography:
I am a bilingual speaker of Korean and English. As a bilingual, I have always had an interest in the relationship between language and cognition, as I often find myself changing my thinking depending on the language that I use. I have been receiving research training in two labs at Pennsylvania State University, Dr. Janet van Hell’s Bilingualism and Language Learning lab and Dr. Jonathan Cook’s Group Identity and Social Perception lab. I am specifically interested in bilinguals’ language development and their language preference in different social contexts.
Project Summary:
During my PIRE fellowship for the summer of 2020, I will be visiting Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. I will be working with Dutch children who are classroom learners of English, and study their social preference for foreign- and native-accented speakers of English (i.e. Dutch-accented and Chinese-accented, and British-accented and American-accented). This study is part of an ongoing collaboration with Dutch schools in the Netherlands, and with Dr. Sharon Unsworth, and extends a study conducted by PIRE graduate fellow Yushuang Liu in the Netherlands in Summer 2019. Yushuang Liu also tested Dutch child classroom learners of English, and studied their comprehension of English sentences produced by native-accented and foreign-accented speakers.