Research Interests

I am a doctoral candidate in the Department of Education (Applied Linguistics) program at Concordia University, located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal), where I am training to become an applied critical sociophonologist.

I am interested in the sound of voices, specifically the act of listening: Are learners ‘hearing’ the whole picture of a language? Or is the classroom privileging certain voices over others? What is the cumulative effect on learners' perceptions of the target language?

Phonology tends to consider the act of listening as a purely auditory experience; one sensitive to frequencies in the input that are mediated by neural processes. But what if the act of listening wasn't so disembodied? My research aims to understand, firstly, how listeners navigate a linguistic environment bursting with dialectal varieties from multiple unique speakers; and secondly, the ways in which listening is a multi-modal, not simply acoustic, experience and includes sensitivity to the land(s) on which we live (i.e., ‘landguaging’). Ultimately, my research investigates how the act of consciously listening to multiple voices can affect learner perceptions.

As an instructor of two colonial languages, I am committed to creating strategically inclusive pedagogies, ones that specifically invite learners to reflect on what it means to engage with learning English or French in “Canada”--a settler colonial state established by two European nations. This curriculum provides historical content allowing learners to evaluate both French and English Canada's relationships with Indigenous and migrant peoples. It is hoped that language learners make informed decisions about how invested in the target language they wish to be.

Finally, my research is shaped by my experiences as a woman raising a future generation, while tending to the two generations before me. It is also informed by my particular identity, which was largely engineered by the colonizing actions of British imperialists on the lands of Abya Yala (South America/West Indies). The work is, therefore, personal to me.

My PhD is supervised by Walcir Cardoso with Laura Collins and Norman Segalowitz as committee members.

My research is funded by a doctoral scholarship from the Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Société et Culture.

2016: M.A. Applied Linguistics, Concordia University (my thesis was completed under the supervision of Dr. Cardoso)

2013: Graduate Diploma in Teaching English as a second language, McGill University

2012: Certificate in French and theoretical linguistic studies, Concordia University

2005: Honours Bachelor of Arts in Literatures in English and Political Science, University of Toronto 

My specific research interests are:

  • Sociophonological aspects of dialect perception in language learning

  • Land-sensitive curriculum (ecopedagogy; ‘landguaging’) based in plurilingual and multi-modal methodologies

  • Direct Realist and Ecological models of embodied cognition, perception, and social interaction

  • High variability perceptual training methodologies and gamification practices

  • Decolonial principles, which include presenting the natural dialectal variations inherent in a given language and giving voice to the speech communities who speak them.

Current member

Previous affiliations

  • 2017 - Concordia University's Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology - Education Makers

News & Upcoming Conferences

2024

Chung, R. & Cardoso, W. (June 2024). Parlure Games: Leaping outta the HVPT lab into the classroom. Accepted for paper presentation at the Canadian Association of Applied Linguistics - CAAL/ACLA, McGill University (Montreal, QC).

Chung, R., dela Cruz, J., Gutierrez, A., Passi, A. & Burton, J. (2024, May 10). Conversations that Include: Workshopping Inclusive Pedagogies. Accepted for paper presentation at MonISLA Symposium in Emerging Perspectives in Language Research, Concordia University (Montreal, QC).

Presentation (2024, March 25). EmpowerGrad Workshop: Meeting the Neighbours. Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance, Concordia University (Montreal, QC). Discussion to assist current graduate students on how to to develop networks within the university community to develop future projects.

Chung, R. & dela Cruz, J. (2024). Pedagogies of inclusion must start from within: Landguaging teacher reflection and plurilingualism in the “L2” classroom. In A. Charity Hudley, C. Mallinson, & M. Bucholtz (Eds.), Inclusion in Linguistics (pp. 291-311). Oxford University Press. Downloadable Plurilingual Landguaging teaching template.

2023

Recipient of the 2023 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences Graduate Merit Award (CGMA) for: “Landguaging” Relationships through Arts-based L2 Teacher Reflection: Can We De/colonize the Colonizer?

2022

Recipient of the 2022 - 2023 Bourse aux doctorant(e)s en sciences de l’éducation (Ministère de l’enseignement supérieur) | Scholarship for Doctoral Students in Education (Ministry of Higher Education)

Winner of EUROCALL 2022’s Best Paper Prize (Student) for: Ecological CALL: Development of a self-location listening tool for attuning to the ‘chorus of [settler colonial] voices’.

Recipient of Experiential Learning Grant for creating the workshop series: Conversations that Include. Proceedings published in COPAL.

2018

Recipient of the Fonds de recherche du Québec: Bourse au doctorat en recherche