Language testing and assessment
English for academic purposes
Educational measurement
Quantitative research methods

My research broadly focuses on speaking and writing assessment. My specific research interests include scale development and validation, rater behavior and training, assessment literacy for language teachers, and test score use in educational settings.

Ph.D., English (Second Language Studies), Purdue University, 2015
M.A., TESOL, Ohio State University, 2009
B.A., English, Wuhan University, China, 2008

2015-2016, SPAAN Research Grant, CaMLA (with Shelley Staples, University of Arizona); Project: Investigating lexico-grammatical complexity as construct validity evidence for the ECPE writing tasks: A multidimensional analysis.

2016-2018, British Council Aptis Assessment Research Grant (with Ha Ram Kim, UIUC, and Ji Young Kim, UCLA); Project: Complexity, accuracy and fluency features of speaking performances on Aptis across different CEFR levels

2018-2019, IELTS Research Grant, British Council / IDP: IELTS, Australia (with Shelley Staples, University of Arizona); Project: Investigating the cognitive and social aspects of IELTS speaking performances across proficiency levels: Comparing the CAF-based and register-linguistics- based analyses

EIL 460 Principles of Language Testing
LING 489 Theoretical Foundations of Second Language Acquisition
EIL 411 Introduction to TESL Methodology

Department of Linguistics
4080 Foreign Language Building, MC-168
707 S. Mathews Ave.
Urbana, IL 61801