East Asian Languages and Cultures

Yan Li

Assistant Professor

Yan Li studies Chinese linguistics and second language acquisition. She earned her B.A. and M. A. in Chinese linguistics from Peking University (1998, 2001), and Ph.D. in second language acquisition from the University of Southern California (2008).

She taught Chinese to American students at Princeton in Beijing, an intensive summer Chinese program provided by Princeton University at Beijing normal university, for the summer of 1999 and 2000. She taught at the Middlebury College Chinese Language School for two summers (2006, 2007). While studying at the University of Southern California for her Ph.D., she taught Chinese at different levels as an assistant lecturer.

She has examined the role of first language playing in second language acquisition and how second language learners overcome the interferences of their first language. Her most recent publication is an article titled, The Acquisition of the Interaction between Negation and Numeral NP by Adult English-speaking L2 Chinese Learners (in The Proceedings of the 18th North American Conference on Chinese Linguistics, 2006).

Her current research investigates POS Problems found among English-speaking L2 Chinese learners.