Conferences are an important, and a fun, part of being a phd student. You get to showcase your research and make important connections. As an introvert, I enjoy conferences as you can often skip the small talk and get to discuss interesting issues with people who are interested in the same topics as you are. That is, if you get into the conference in the first place! Depending on conferences, the amount of competition or what they are looking for can vary. Remember, that conference acceptances or rejections do not make your value as a researcher. I try to remind myself of this as well, as I wa ..read more

The first year of my PhD was full of refining my research plan, rewriting most of it, and conducting interviews for my empirical article known as Article 2. I also started a systematic review known as Article 1. During the first half of 2024, it was sometimes a struggle to balance full-time work and a PhD. The systematic review that had started well was put on hiatus and the little focus I was able to have, was given to the empirical study. The highlight of the Spring was my first international conference in Madrid and my very first poster presentation. That week in Madrid gave me a lot of con ..read more

Scientific writing can be a scary thing for a new PhD student, at least that was the case for me. I wrote my research plan for a couple of years and once I was accepted into the program, I mostly read and collected data during my first year. I did not write at all! I felt that I was never ready to start writing, instead I read one more article, and another one, and then ten more. This week I published a video on my YouTube channel about getting rid of my fear of writing. Watch the full video above or directly on YouTube, but here are my three takeaways: The post Getting started with academic w ..read more

I was listening to a webinar on English learning in Japan, and it was mentioned that many Japanese students might lack the motivation to study English or see themselves as English users in the future. It got me thinking about how language choice, and if it is a choice, affects second language learning motivation. My experiences choosing languages If I first take myself as an example, I have experience learning English, Swedish, German, Latin, Cantonese, and Mandarin. When it comes to English, is a compulsory subject in Finland and as a global language, there are many incentives to learn it. I ..read more

Pre Conference Event, on the screen to the right Dr. Rebecca Oxford being interviewed Attending conferences is a great way to share your research with a wider audience, meet other researchers and PhD students, and learn scientific discussion. That is what I learned this week while attending my first international conference! Plenary speech by Dr. Gary Barkhuizen on emotional rexlexivity Submitting an abstract Each conference has its requirements, so check them carefully before preparing, and submitting your abstract. As a PhD student, you can usually give a paper presentation (a talk with p ..read more

My first year as a doctoral researcher is now behind me and it is time to look back on what I achieved in 2023. If you want to read more about my first semester, check out my review of Spring 2023 here. My Ph.D. courses I applied to university pedagogy courses, but they are very popular and I was not chosen this time, therefore I didn’t have any courses this semester. In hindsight, that was probably for the best as I was very busy with both work and my research. My research Autumn 2023 was a very important semester for my research, as I finished data collection for both substudy 1 and su ..read more

As I am conducting my Ph.D. research on Chinese language learning motivation, I am also looking back on my journey of learning the language. I believe that being an L2 speaker of Chinese myself, I can have a unique lens into learning, teaching, and researching Mandarin. I feel that with the cooperation of both native and non-native teachers and researchers, we can together paint a comprehensive picture of what it is like to learn Chinese. My first memory of being interested in the Chinese language and culture is from primary school, when we had to do notebook presentations by designing a poste ..read more

Me and my daughter during my Master’s graduation ceremony in 2016 What makes an exceptional language learner and how can we achieve native like fluency? Late 2022 a book was published on the topic of motivation, cognition and identity with a title “Lessons from Exceptional Language Learners Who Have Achieved Nativelike Proficiency” by Zoltán Dörnyei and Katarina Mentzelopoulos. They interviewed 30 participants that had achieved nativelike fluency in a foreign language as adults. Through analyzing the interview data, they categorized different variables explaining why these learners had achiev ..read more

After listening to an interesting podcast episode by David Moser in a discussion with Matthew Coss about handwriting Chinese characters and whether students should be expected to learn handwriting, I’m interested in continuing this discussion as a Chinese language learner, teacher, and Ph.D. researcher. My own current research focuses on learning motivation, but learning characters is also an important element in the complex topic of motivation. Perceived difficulty in the Chinese language definitely affects learning motivation. Two of the most difficult aspects of the language that students ..read more

My first semester as a doctoral researcher is almost finished, and it’s time to look back at what I have done and learned during this Spring. As I’m not really a student, the meaning of a semester isn’t as important as when I did my Bachelor’s or Master’s degrees, but nevertheless, I enjoy doing some reflection every six months or so. My year started with an online meeting with my two supervisors, followed by my supervisor’s seminar where I introduced my plans. My goal was to finish three courses, get started with my systematic review, and plan for data gathering to begin in September. In thi ..read more