Yu-Hua Chen

Profile

As a linguist and language educator, my career spans academia and industry. Before joining Leeds, I taught Applied Linguistics, ELT/TESOL, and Academic English at Coventry University and University of Nottingham Ningbo China. In industry, I worked as a Test Developer/Test Development Manager at the Language Testing Division at Pearson in London and the Language Training & Testing Centre (LTTC) in Taiwan previously. I have experience developing both paper- and computer-based language tests for a range of purposes, including Academic English, General English, and English for Young Learners.

Specialising in English and Mandarin Chinese as second/foreign languages, I am interested in the intersection of Language Testing & Assessment, Corpus Linguistics, and Second Language Learning. I am also passionate about leveraging technology to innovate language teaching, learning, and assessment.

In recent years, I have engaged in projects related to Collaborative Online International Learning/Virtual Exchange (COIL/VE) and English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI), exploring how digital tools and cross-cultural approaches can enhance language education.

Research interests

In my research and professional development work, I led a project team in constructing the Chinese Corpus of Academic Written and Spoken English (CAWSE - temporarily unavailable, new link coming soon), a resource comprising written and spoken samples from Chinese students in a preliminary-year programme at an EMI university in China. This corpus enables investigations into distinctive L2 English features - lexical, grammatical, and discoursal - across band scores, assessment tasks, and other contexts. My research has been published in leading international journals, including Applied Linguistics, Journal of English for Academic Purposes, and Language Learning & Technology. Additionally, I played a key role in co-developing the Academic Collocation List (ACL), a widely used reference for ESL/EFL learners and educators aimed at improving fluency and communicativeness in academic settings.

Most recently, I collaborated with the University of Southampton on the British Academy funded project "Aligning A-Level Mandarin Chinese to CEFR", where we developed evidence-based frameworks to bridge UK secondary education standards with international proficiency benchmarks. This work advances equitable language assessment practices while addressing growing global demand for language qualifications.

Qualifications

• PhD Linguistics
• MPhil Applied Linguistics (Merit)
• MA Teaching Chinese as a Second Language

Professional memberships

• Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA)

Research groups and institutes

• Language Centre