Lab Members
DIRECTOR
CV
Li SHENG 盛欐
Dr. Sheng is the director of the Language Learning and Bilingualism Laboratory. Dr. Sheng completed her doctoral work at Northwestern University. Between 2007 and 2016, she was a faculty member at the University of Texas-Austin. In August 2016, she started a new position at the University of Delaware and became one of the founding members of the newly established program in Communication Sciences and Disorders. Since July 2021, Dr. Sheng has been a faculty member at the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies and an affiliated member of the Research Centre for Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
Dr. Sheng’s research interests are in the areas of language development and disorders and bilingualism. Her current projects examine the manifestations of language impairment in Mandarin Chinese and the development of assessment tools for the Chinese population. She is also interested in how linguistic typology affects vocabulary and grammar development in bilingual children who speak different first languages such as Mandarin and Spanish.
Dr. Sheng has published papers in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, Child Development, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, among others. She was an editor for American Journal of Speech Language Pathology and editorial consultant for over 30 academic journals and publishing companies. Her research has been funded by the National Academy of Education, the Spencer Foundation, Chinese Ministry of Education, and Shanghai Ministry of Education.
STAFF
Jiayu YU
Jiayu is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies at The Hong Kong Polytechic University. Jiayu obtained a master's degree in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at Nanjing Normal University where she studied language deficits of Mandarin-speaking children with High-functioning Autism. Her major research interest is language acquisition in Mandarin-speaking children, especially those with disorders, such as autism and Developmental Language Disorder.
Ellen LI
Ellen is a DALS student in the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She received her Master of Art in the same department where she majored in Teaching Chinese as Foreign Language. Her primary research interest is the language development trajectory of multilingual adolescents. She is also a project associate of the project “Provision of School-based Professional Support Services on Enhancing the Learning and Teaching of Chinese for Non-Chinese Speaking Students in Primary School”.
Luyuan GENG
Luyuan is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Luyuan obtained her master’s degree in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics in Foreign Languages at East China Normal University where she studied joint book reading of Mandarin-speaking mother-child dyads under the theoretical framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics. Her research focuses on the reading activities of Mandarin-speaking children, especially those with Developmental Language Disorders.
Jinghong NING
Jinghong is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Chinese and Bilingual
Studies at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her research focuses on second language acquisition, psycholinguistics and phonetics.
Haolun LUO
Haolun is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Haolun obtained his bachelor’s degree in Audiology and speech therapy at Sichuan University. His research focuses on using neuroimaging technology to study language acquisition in Mandarin-speaking children, especially those with disorders, such as Dyslexia and Developmental Language Disorder.