Professor Becky Muradás-Taylor

Profile

I am Professor of Languages and Linguistics in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies at the University of Leeds. I manage Languages for All, our institution-wide languages provision, as part of my role as Director of Programme Design.

I completed my PhD at the University of Nagoya, Japan, in second language phonology, title: 英語話者による日本語の語アクセントの習得 [The acquisition of Japanese lexical accent by English speakers].

I am a keen advocate of languages other than English (LOTE). I speak Japanese (I wrote my PhD thesis in Japanese) and Spanish.

Research interests

I research the learning and teaching of languages other than English by English speakers.

My doctoral research was on the second language acquisition of Japanese pitch accent. The way Standard Southern British English, and other Englishes, use pitch as intonation makes it difficult to use pitch to differentiate word meanings when learning Japanese.

My recent research is on language education. I produce maps showing cold spots in language degree provision in England and make recommendations on how to close the cold spots and make language degree study more accessible.

I am also interested in how to design attractive and sustainable programmes for languages at university, both degree programmes – especially at widening participation universities – and not-for-credit provision such as Languages for All.

Recently I have been reflecting on how to decolonise the teaching of phonetics.

My professorial inaugural lecture, "Hotpots and cold spots: English speakers learning other languages" covered the second langauge acquisition of Japanese pitch accent, decolonising the teaching of second language phonology, language education provision at English universities and sustainable language degree programme design.

PhD students

I welcome applications for PhD research in topics related to second language phonology, language education or language policy in relation to English-speaking users of other languages.

Lindsey (Lixin) Chen. The Antonym Construction: A Comparison between English and Mandarin. Completed 2024.

Mian Feng. Finding the place of West Yorkshire and Glaswegian vowels in the Chinese phonological system: Perception of English accents by Chinese EFL learners.

Qualifications

• PhD (Nagoya University, Japan)
• MA (Nagoya University, Japan)
• MSci (University of Cambridge, UK)
• FHEA

Student education

I am Professor of Languages and Linguistics in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies at the University of Leeds. I manage Languages for All, our institution-wide languages provision, as part of my role as Director of Programme Design. I teach second language phonology at MA level and supervise MA dissertations.

Research groups and institutes

• Linguistics and Phonetics
• Linguistics and Phonetics
• Linguistics and Translation

Current postgraduate researchers

• Mian Feng