Graduate Researcher Series: an interview with Yizhou Wang
Catherine Roberts
Yizhou Wang is a doctoral candidate in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics in the School of Languages and Linguistics. His research explores cross-language speech perception – How does Australian English sound to native Mandarin listeners?
Catherine interviewed Yizhou about his doctoral research, his PhD journey, and imposter syndrome.
***
I wonder if you can start by telling us about your doctoral project. What is your topic and the significance of this research?
I’m studying how people perceive sounds in another language. In this case study, I look at how native Mandarin speakers perceive English phonemic sequences. For example, what happens when you put more than one sound in a string? Mandarin speakers are familiar with some strings, but are unfamiliar with other sequences, and these unfamiliar sequences can sometimes cause trouble in verbal communication. It can adversely affect their ability to communicate, for instance. A word could be mistaken for another word and cause a breakdown.
***
What words are the ones that seem to trip Mandarin speakers up?
In one study, I looked at how Mandarin listeners perceive the sequence ‘we’ (i.e., /wiː/)[1], a ‘w’ followed vowel ‘ee’, which we describe in phonetics as a high front vowel. The consonant and the vowel are shared by Mandarin and English, but the two languages have different co-occurrence restrictions. In particular, English allows ‘w’ (i.e., /w/) at the syllable onset position and ‘ee’ (i.e., /iː/) at the nucleus position, so we have words like ‘we’, ‘week’ and ‘wheat’. In Mandarin, these two sounds are not allowed to be put together. In other words, ‘we’ (i.e., /wiː/) doesn’t exist as a string. In those cases (‘we’, ‘week’, ‘wheat’) I observed Mandarin speakers tend to substitute the vowel with an ‘ay’ (i.e., /æɪ/). So instead of ‘we’, ‘week’ and ‘wheat’, they would interpret them as ‘way’, ‘wake’, and ‘wait’.
By comparing the phonology of Mandarin and English, we can see where the mismatches are and with experiments uncover if it is substantial, persistent, and systematic.
***
This could have implications for teaching as well. If you know that your students are L1 Mandarin speakers, they may have trouble with ‘we’, ‘week’ and ‘wheat’.
That’s right. Prior to now, I believe that language teachers have concentrated on consonants and vowels, but they haven’t addressed the interaction between the two. That’s one of the practical implications of my research.
***
How did you come to this research topic?
I was always interested in how speech learning occurs. When I took English class in high school, we had to learn new words, but English phonology is very different to Mandarin, and it caused difficulties at times. Some pronunciations were so difficult to remember until I transliterated them into Chinese words. One I still remember was the word ‘fundamental’. I wrote out the four syllables with Chinese counterparts 方 ‘fāng’ 的 ‘dē’ 馒 ‘mán’ 头 ‘tóu’, which means ‘squared steamed buns’. Then I could remember it. One day my English teacher noticed all these Chinese words in my textbook. He was quite amused and told me that’s not the right way to learn English.
Many years later I came here to study a Master of Applied Linguistics and I took the course called English Phonetics and Phonology. I learned an important theory called Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) developed by Professor Catherine Best who is now working at Western Sydney University. The central idea is that second language listeners tend to assimilate second language sounds into first language sounds. In other words, second language speech is perceived in terms of L1 speech. I suddenly understood what I was doing in high school. I adapted English sounds into Chinese pseudo words to remember them.
However, this strategy doesn’t succeed 100% of the time and sometimes it can fail people. A well-known example is Japanese learners of English who can’t differentiate between an ‘l’ and ‘r’. They might pronounce ‘fried rice’ as something like ‘FLIED LICE’. There are very similar things with Mandarin speakers. My PhD thesis is focusing on these effects and try to figure out why these perceptual modifications occur by analysing the phonology of both languages.
***
You’ve had the opportunity to teach semantics, phonetics, and syntax here in the School of Languages and Linguistics here at Melbourne University. Can you tell us a bit about this experience?
We moved to online teaching since 2020, so I’ve mostly taught online. I like it. I like the flexibility. The classes aren’t on campus and sometimes it’s stressful when there are 20 other students in the room. Once, I was sitting next to a student reiterating the concept of the week. He just let out a deep yawn probably because it was boring.
Online teaching depends on how active the students are. Overall, local Australian students are more active in the classroom than international students. There were many times when you were just talking to black screens on a computer. It’s also a good way for me to learn. I am doing a PhD in phonology and it’s my area of interest, but that doesn’t mean I am familiar with every aspect of phonology. Every week I learned it and then I taught it.
***
I struggle with names and dates. I know names but then can’t remember the year, especially when an author published on the same topic over 30 years.
I have a little bit of imposter syndrome sometimes. Because I’m only just learning this stuff, did I really know how to teach it? Despite that, it was a great experience.
***
Impostor Syndrome is something that seems to plague lots of PhD students. It certainly plagues me even now.
The feeling is similar to mine. I was reading the textbook on syntax the other day and I’ve already given up the book. After tutoring syntax for two years, I still feel I know little about it.
***
Do you have anything that helps you overcome impostor syndrome?
Once I read a joke the other day on Twitter, and it was that you can always teach your class as long as you know more than your students.
***
I know you’re co-authored several papers, collaborating with researchers from across the globe. How has this experience enriched your PhD journey?
We had another paper accepted last week. It’s investigating second language writing, although that’s not really my primary area of research. The role I play in those projects is data analysis, for example, stats. That’s a good chance for me, not only to get a publication but also to practice my data analysis skills. I used to take a week to process data, but now I can do it in a day. My knowledge has also grown in this area. While studying for my master’s, I had some training in second language acquisition, but we only touched the surface of quantitative data analysis. I find these skills useful because they can be applied to other fields as well as my own research.
***
You’re heading towards the end of your PhD journey now. What do you envision as the next steps in your career?
The final phase of my PhD is mainly about drafting the chapters and polishing them before submission. Additionally, I will tutor undergraduates. Hopefully, I’ll receive my PhD by the end of this year or early next year. In the ideal scenario, I would like to continue doing research either as a Postdoc researcher, a research scientist or as a university lecturer.
***
You’re heading towards the end of your PhD. Thinking back on when we started, what is something you wished you’d know then?
I wish I knew more about how to be an independent researcher. My supervisor is quite open-minded. He told me, ‘It’s your thesis, you can do whatever you want.’ Graduate research programmes are very different in China. Supervisors in China have full authority over your work, and they can decide what topic you will cover, and sometimes they even give you a hand. It’s more liberal here, so I must find my own topics, and my supervisors ask questions instead of telling me what to do.
***
Has there been anything in your PhD journey that looked at the time like it was a set-back, but you later realised was advantageous?
I spent a lot of time learning research methods in the first year. Originally, I was planning to investigate cross-language speech perception by focusing on methodological improvements, but I changed the direction later. Even so, the learning process was rewarding, and I did have to use different treatments and experimental paradigms later in my research. As part of my research, I also learned how to design experiments and bring together different approaches into a cohesive project.
***
What’s been your favourite memory from your PhD so far?
My supervisors gave me a high grade on my paper at the end of my first year. That made me happy. During my supervisory meetings, my supervisors were very critical, but they thought my writing and paper were great.
***
Thank you for having a chat with me about your research and your PhD journey, Yizhou.
Thank you, Catherine.
[1] Note: For the phonetic transcription in this article the Harrington, Cox and Evans (1997) system is used.