Yu-Hua Chen

Profile

As a linguist and language educator, my career spans academia and industry. Before joining Leeds, I taught at Coventry University and University of Nottingham Ningbo China. I also worked at the Language Testing Division at Pearson in London and the Language Training & Testing Centre (LTTC) in Taiwan previously. 

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 Acquisition. I am particularly passionate about leveraging technology to innovate language teaching, learning, and assessment.

In recent years, I have also 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 designed to enhance the study of academic English in Chinese 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 accuracy in academic writing.

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 Mandarin qualifications.

Research groups and institutes

• Language Centre