Yaoyao Ruan

I’m interested in understanding how people, especially adults, learn new language sounds, particularly those segmental sounds that don’t exist in their native languages. My DPhil project brings together applied linguistics and experimental phonetics, with a focus on how different types of inputs and the order in which they are introduced can influence the learning of new speech sounds.

Short biography

I’m from Hangzhou, China. I began my undergraduate studies in Japanese literature at Sun Yat-sen University (Guangzhou, China) before transferring to the University of Queensland in Australia. After graduating, I worked as an English teacher in China for about four years, then went on to earn a master’s degree in TESOL In-Service from UCL’s Institute of Education, supervised by Professor Kazuya Saito. Since October 2022, I have been pursuing a DPhil in Applied Linguistics at the University of Oxford, under the supervision of Professor Elizabeth Wonnacott (Liz) and Dr Robert Woore. I’m currently working as Liz’s research assistant and have also worked as a research assistant for Kazuya, a Chinese language teacher at UCL’s Confucius Institute, and an EFL teacher at Hertford College, Oxford.