Winfred Wenhui XUAN (禤文輝), PhD

I am an assistant professor of language education at the School of Education & Languages, Hong Kong Metropolitan University. My current research interests are:


• Second Language Writing
• Systemic Functional Linguistics
• Teaching English/Chinese as a Second Language
• Research Synthesis and Meta-analysis in Applied Linguistics

I am a passionate trained language instructor (both in teaching English as a second language and teaching Chinese as a second language). I enjoy second language writing research, and I take it as my lifelong career and I do believe that it can bring me both joy and meaning in my life.

As a systemic functional linguist, I am keen on introducing SFL into the world of applied linguistics research. Over the past years, the learning of linguistics has definitely boosted my understanding of language learning and teaching, especially in L2 writing research. There are two axioms that guide my research: 1) Learning a language is equal to developing control over different text types that function in different contexts to make meaning. 2) Writing is a meaning-making activity and learning writing means learning how to mean.

Because of my professional experience, I am interested in the field of adolescent L2 writing. I have investigated Chinese adolescent (aged 15-16) L2 writing in my PhD project, using the framework of SFL to see how these learners use their L2 linguistic resources to do meaning-making in their L2 writing. I endeavor to apply my findings to teacher training, L2 writing material development and curriculum design.

In addition, with the accumulated findings from SFL and L2 writing, I aim to utilize my research to enrich the teaching and learning of L2 writing. For example, I aim to adapt SFL to develop a pedagogical grammar based on my empirical findings, making the relevant linguistic resources explicit to L2 teachers and learners.

I am also interested in research synthesis and meta-analysis in applied linguistics studies. I have applied this methodology to the survey of literature in SFL. For instance, I have several synthesis projects on language description, grammatical metaphor, projection, genre, and translation studies etc. This methodology provides me with an innovative perspective to explore and take stock of the accumulated knowledge in a specific field.