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 Language Science and Technology (previously known as 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
Ellen LI
Ellen is a DALS student in the Department of Language Science and Technology 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. candidate in the Department of Language Science and Technology at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She obtained her master’s degree in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics in Foreign Languages from East China Normal University, where she examined joint book reading in Mandarin-speaking mother–child dyads within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics. Her doctoral research focuses on the narrative performance of Mandarin-speaking children with developmental language disorder (DLD). She has participated in and led projects on the macrostructure, microstructure, referring skills, and disfluency patterns of children with DLD in narrative tasks over the past three years. Her Ph.D. thesis specifically investigates the relationship between referring skills and cognitive profiles in Mandarin-speaking children with DLD. Outside of research, she enjoys reading, stand-up comedy, good food, and simply taking time to daydream.
Jinghong NING
Jinghong is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Language Science and Technology 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 Language Science and Technology 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.
Jingdan (Aria)
Jingdan (Aria) is a Ph.D. student in Clinical Linguistics at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, specializing in the development of narrative assessment tools and interventions for Mandarin-speaking children with language disorders. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Speech and Hearing Sciences from Beijing Language and Culture University and an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s degree in Clinical Linguistics from the Universities of Groningen, Potsdam, and Eastern Finland. As a bilingual speech-language therapist, Jingdan provides individualized assessment and therapy to both children and adults with a variety of speech and language disorders.
Jingbo
Jingbo is a PhD student in the Department of Language Science and Technology at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She received her Master’s degree in Speech and Language Sciences from University College London. Jingbo is a registered speech-language therapist in both the United Kingdom and China. She is passionate about connecting research with practice to better support children and adolescents with language and communication needs.
Hoi Tung Katherine
CHANKatherine is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Language Science and Technology at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She obtained her master’s degree in Speech Therapy from the same department and has since gained extensive clinical experience providing speech therapy services to diverse populations. Her research interest is on the advanced language development of Cantonese school-aged students, with a particular focus on those with speech, language and communication needs. Her current work explores expository discourse and aims to develop clinical assessment tools to support this population.
Mingyue TANG
Mingyue is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Language Science and Technology at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She obtained her master’s degree in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics at Nanjing Normal University where she examined how metalinguistic awareness and literacy skills influence each other in primary Mandarin-speaking children. Now her research focuses on the narrative abilities and literacy development in Mandarin-speaking children, especially those with Developmental Language Disorder.
Jiahan CHEN
Jiahan is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Language Science and Technology at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She obtained her MSc degree in Language Sciences from University College London. Her research interests center around the closed-loop neural mechanisms that underpin language processing, especially syntactic processing in the developing brain. By integrating brain imaging and stimulation techniques, she aims to characterize dysfunctional communication within brain circuits across developmental disorders. A core focus of her work is identifying shared neural mechanisms that transcend traditional diagnostic boundaries, using comorbid presentations as a critical lens to reveal fundamental principles of system-level dysfunction. The ultimate goal of her research is to bridge these foundational discoveries in neural circuitry to clinical applications, informing the future development of targeted, brain-based interventions that can be adapted for multiple disorders.
Yunqi (Lizzie)
Yunqi is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Language Science and Technology at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She obtained a Master’s degree in Language Data Science and Application at Shanghai International Studies University and a Bachelor’s degree in English (Linguistics) at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Her research interests lie in the computational mechanisms (e.g., rule generalization, distributional analysis, predictive processing) underlying typical/atypical language development, with specific focus on Chinese syntax/semantics and Mandarin-speaking children.
Tong LI
Tong is a full-time Research Assistant in the Department of Language Science and Technology at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She obtained her MSc degree in Language Science: Neuroscience of Language and Speech at University College London where she investigated how English-native speaking adults process language in real-time. Now her research focuses on the learning and incremental processing of language in Mandarin-speaking children, especially those with language impairments.
Claudia
Claudia is a Part-time Research Assistant in the LLB Lab at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She just obtained her Bachelor Degree in Linguistics and Psychology from The University of Hong Kong. She is interested in language learning in child as well as SEN education.