Profile
I am a multidisciplinary specialist with degrees in applied linguistics, education, computer science, mathematics education, business administration, creative writing, and combined studies.
I started my career teaching English as a foreign language in schools, colleges and universities in East Asia and the United Kingdom. I have lived and worked in Hong Kong, Thailand and Japan for extended periods. Over the years my professional interests have cycled through various roles, such as teacher trainer, assessor, and materials developer. Currently, I am a senior associate professor in the Center for Language Research within the School of Computer Science and Engineering and a faculty member of the Graduate School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Aizu.
As a writing specialist, I have developed and taught courses on business, academic, scientific and creative writing for many years. The development of a writing course and online tools for writing scientific research abstracts evolved into the topic of my doctoral dissertation. Through the necessity to develop bespoke software for my PhD., my focus switched from corpus to computational linguistics. I now view myself as a corpus-computational linguist who coordinates, designs and delivers both computer science and language courses.
I am fascinated by the complexity and patterns within business and research communications. I view academic, business and scientific writing as requiring a combination of knowledge, skills and behaviours that draws upon a range of literacies, e.g. critical, digital, logical and statistic; and requires mastery of range of language features, e.g. coherence and cohesion. I enjoy applying my knowledge and experience to lead research teams to develop language analysis and learning tools which harness cutting-edge technologies. My current research interests include:
- Forensic linguistics: authorship verification, profiling and attribution
- Computational linguistics: developing bespoke tools for language analysis
- Corpus linguistics: analyzing texts using corpus tools and statistical analysis
- Technology-enhanced learning: developing tailormade tools for learning
- Artificial intelligence: generative AI, explainable AI, expert systems
I firmly believe that research and teaching go hand in hand, each enriching the other. By actively engaging in areas like forensic linguistics, computational linguistics, and artificial intelligence, I stay at the forefront of language and technological advancements, which, in turn, fuel my role as a dynamic educator. In the role of tutor or lecturer, I strive to deliver classes that are evidence-based, learner-centered and harness the latest technological developments. My elective courses adopt a content and language-integrated learning approach in which I develop both content knowledge and language. My current portfolio of courses includes: authorship analysis using Python, expert systems with Python, information ethics and thesis writing.
When teaching language, I use corpus linguistics and discourse analysis to develop research-based materials to deliver learner-centered EAP or ESP classes that are enjoyable, challenging and relevant. I am an avid grammarian, and enjoy discussing any aspect of any grammar from anaphora to zeugma.
When teaching computer science and other content-focus subjects, I adopt a hands-on, interactive approach with students engaged in problem-solving and learning by doing. I tailor my materials, lectures, exercises and jokes (at least my attempts) to the learner needs, interests and abilities while covering the required content dictated by the syllabus and ensuring students are sufficiently prepared to excel in the assignments and assessments. I am believer in criterion-based assessment and do not use norm-referenced assessment (unless mandated).
TLDR: Language enthusiast, computational linguist, and educator. Passionate about grammatical intricacies and communication patterns. Leading cutting-edge language analysis research.
Awareness and defense
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3150-4995
