Literacy Research

My journey into researching literacy is likely not hard to understand. I worked in China for four years and trying to navigate China without Mandarin is pretty difficult. I initially struggled with reading signs and menus in Chinese, but after adopting different strategies, I realized that reading in Chinese is not as difficult as it sounds. From then on, I have attempted to study literacy in order to teach people the most proven skills for learning how to read and write.

Since then, I have joined the Language and Cognitive Development Lab, headed by Professor Tomohiro Inoue at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. My primary research goal is to study how the visual complexity of scripts interacts with how we read and write. A primary component that I am working on is the nexus between visual complexity and the cognitive skills which may overcome this potential barrier. I informally call this the graphic complexity hypothesis (GCH), which you can read about in this published article, through the open access version, or in brief at My Research. My work in this area has concentrated on Chinese, Japanese, and Chinese as a Second Language (CSL), where I feel this issue is the most relevant in early literacy acquisition. I also work on methodological issues, my most recent analysis looking at the effects of dichotomization on continuous data in language research.

Science Writing

I think it is important to not only do science, but also communicate science. Respectively, I try to inform peers and the public on literacy science and research methods. This is primarily done via my own "community articles" which are written for non-scientists, conference presentations that are created for peers in my area, LinkedIn shared posts which communicate these ideas to a broader audience, and articles I have written for newspapers, such as The South China Morning Post.

If you are interested in reading about current trends in my field, I have been writing a series of articles called Making Sense of Literacy. This series shares research on reading and writing in a readable format for educators, parents, and other literacy advocates. My articles have so far focused on Chinese and Chinese as a Second Language, but I plan on expanding these topics soon to a wider audience, which includes more general topics that I believe are important to learn about.

Teaching

Before I started my program, I taught in a variety of settings and eventually obtained a Masters in Education. I have carried that experience into my current practice. Despite the challenges it brings, I have a passion for teaching students, and there is no greater joy than creating those "ah-ha" moments for those who struggle to learn. As such, I am a huge proponent of practical and engaging instruction. My M.Ed. research capstone involved teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) students basic writing skills. I was drawn to this issue because many of my students had little interest in writing. To solve this problem, we created comic books together using a scaffolded semester program that utilized both their L1 and L2 language skills. My students went from writing two-word sentences to completing a 10-page Chinese-English comic book.

Since beginning my PhD, I have taught a number of undergraduate and graduate-level courses, with a special focus on courses involving methodology. Just as second language learners struggle with learning English, many aspiring researchers hit a brick wall when learning specialized topics like statistics. My approach to instruction involves careful scaffolding of the content, an applied perspective using statistical programming, and the use of real-life examples. I believe this to be the most effective way to teach people methodology, rather than hiding behind a wall of nebulous mathematical formulas and unrealistic "textbook" examples. 

Additionally, I engage with the community by answering statistics questions on sites like Cross Validated, LinkedIn, and ResearchGate. As a public service to those in my field, I am also currently writing a series of articles on this site which teach both statistics and R programming. For those interested, visit the Stats and R page. I also teach a course at Quantfish for learning the fundamentals of R, which is available here.