Dr Yen Dang

I am an applied linguist specialising in second language vocabulary learning and teaching. I joined the School of Education in September 2018 as a Lecturer in Language Education. Before that, I was a lecturer at Vietnam National University, Hanoi where I taught various programmes – General English, English for Academic Purposes, and English language teacher education. I also worked as a tutor and a guest lecturer in courses in Applied Linguistics and TESOL at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

My research expertise lies within the area of second language vocabulary learning and teaching. In my research, I have employed different methods (e.g., corpus linguistics, experimental, off-line testing, questionnaire, interview) to address key questions related to vocabulary description, assessment, and pedagogy. For example, what words and multiword sequences do different groups of second language (L2) learners need to know to effectively communicate in a certain kind of discourse? How well do they know these lexical items? To what extent do teachers and mainstream learning materials help these learners to narrow their lexical gaps? Are there any other resources and activities that can help learners to optimize their vocabulary learning? I am particularly interested in academic/specialised vocabulary, especially vocabulary in academic spoken English. I am also keen on promoting the use of corpus linguistics as a method in vocabulary research, learning, teaching, and assessment. Most of my research has been conducted with English language learners in Asia, especially in Vietnam.

My research has been published in various journals (e.g., Applied Linguistics, Language Learning, TESOL Quarterly, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Language Teaching Research, System, Journal of English for Academic Purposes, English for Specific Purposes). I have been awarded the prize for the Best PhD thesis (2017) by the Applied Linguistics Association of New Zealand and the Early Career Research Grant (2023) by Language learning. I am currently a member of the TESOL Quarterly editorial and advisory board. I have been invited to give keynote speeches at conferences and invited talks at universities in Australia, Indonesia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Vietnam, and the UK. I have reviewed for 25+ journals, several edited books and conferences in TESOL/Applied Linguistics. I have acted as internal examiner and external examiner for doctoral theses in my areas of expertise in different universities in Belgium, Japan, the UK and the US.