Why research language learning motivation?
As a Mandarin Chinese language teacher, I always strive to help my students reach their goals and succeed in their studies. There are countless variables that contribute to their success, or sometimes failure, in learning the language. According to research, and my personal observation as a teacher for the past 8 years, motivation is an essential key in unlocking mastery of a foreign language. When a student stops learning Chinese, and I’m talking about adult learners outside of the university context, they often can find a list of reasons for doing so: not having enough time, the language being too difficult, lessons being expensive or hard to find a suitable…
Before starting my PhD
I’m officially starting my Ph.D. studies in January, but before that and at the beginning of my studies, there is quite a lot of paperwork and administration to be done. As I have mentioned before, I always enjoy writing about my studies and I wish to document these first steps of my Ph.D. as well. I have also seen blog writing being used in research writing courses as one tool to improve your writing skills, the more you write, the better you can get! And being a non-native English speaker doing my research in English, I definitely hope to improve my language skills as well. Verification of my diplomas As…
My Ph.D. Journey Begins!
It’s quite incredible to be able to share this news that I’ve dreamed about and prepared for over a year now. At the same time, I’ve been utterly scared that it would never become a reality, but here we are! I will be starting my doctoral studies this coming January! In October 2021 I shared on the blog that I had decided to apply for a doctoral program and in March 2022 I shared how I actually applied. What I didn’t share is that I was denied once last Spring when I applied for the first time. It was devastating news to hear, but at the same time, I got…
Application sent! How I applied to a PhD programme in Finland
Last year I wrote about my big decision to apply to a PhD program in Finland. I just sent in my application last week and wanted to take the time to write down my experience from the idea to actually finishing up that research proposal. After all, most of my blogging “career” I’ve been writing about my studies. In October I had just started to find out if it would be possible for me to apply to a PhD program and do it remotely from Guangzhou. Via Facebook, I got in touch with a university lecturer from Helsinki University who had expertise in China and the Chinese language. He shared…
