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), 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. Collaborating with a computer scientist, I also co-developed Transcribear, an online automated transcription tool that streamlines language data processing. 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