Ella Lester

Ella holds a B.A. in Chinese Language and Culture from UBC, has spent four years living, traveling, studying and working in various Chinese cities, and is now pursuing graduate studies.  She is currently in the M.A. program in Modern Languages Education and works as a Graduate Academic Assistant at the Centre for Research in Chinese Language and Literacy Education.  Ella is seeking to understand the experiences of other non-heritage learners of advanced Chinese by focusing her research on identity development in non-cognate languages, motivation in “ultimate” attainment, and additional language socialization.

Elliott Yates

Elliott is an M.A. student in Asian Studies, focusing on Chinese as an additional language. He is interested in advanced and heritage language learning of Chinese, and especially reading acquisition, reading choice, and literacy education. His background is in computers, so he hopes to look at how technology is currently used and can be used in socialization and literacy development in second language and heritage language communities. Elliott’s studies involve applied linguistics and sociocultural linguistics, with a focus on Chinese language and Chinese heritage backgrounds.

Roma Ilnyckyj

Roma is a graduate from the University of Calgary, where she studied English literature and Chinese language.  Her life-long passion for language learning has lead her to study Ukrainian as her heritage language, both in Canada and Ukraine, as well as to continue her study of Mandarin by spending a year as an exchange student in Hefei, China.  Roma is fascinated by language policy, language rights, language and power relations, minority languages, official Bilingualism in Canada, heritage language learning, and prestige dialects.  Her main research interest is the relationship between additional language learning and identity formation. She is an M.A. student in Modern Language Education at UBC.

Hong Jiang

Despite a long history of effort on the part of immigrant communities to teach Chinese in weekend or after-school classes, many Canadians from Chinese linguistic and cultural backgrounds have not had adequate opportunity to develop their Chinese language proficiency. Hong Jiang's research interests are in the area of Chinese heritage language education and socialization.  Her current project is an qualitative study which involves a historical analysis of Chinese Heritage Language Education in British Columbia. She hopes this project will provide a better understanding of some central, enduring political and societal issues at the forefront of Chinese heritage language education, such as ethnic identity, bilingualism, public education, and policy making. Jiang completed her BA at UBC in Asian Studies and Psychology. Now she is doing her MA in Asian Studies (Chinese applied linguistics), working with Dr. Duanduan Li and Dr. Patricia Duff.