Late last year, the Foundation launched the inaugural competition for its TIRF Masters Research Grants (MRG) competition. The program, designed to promote masters-level research and scholarship in Chinese-speaking contexts, drew interest from individuals across mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau, and has now resulted in the first class of TIRF MRG awardees.

We would like to thank our sponsor – Words Up Your Way (WUYW) – for their support of this new TIRF program. Without the generous sponsorship from WUYW of the MRG awards, this program would not be possible.

Presented below is information about this year’s MRG awardees. Readers can learn more about the grantees and their studies by clicking on the individuals’ names below.

  • Name & Bio: Chunxue Hu is a masters candidate at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in China, majoring in applied linguistics. Her research interests concern second language acquisition and the examination of the effects of concept mapping planning on students’ linguistic performance in college English writing. Via this line of research, she hopes to provide implications for instructors’ teaching and students’ learning.
  • TIRF Research Topic Investigated: Content-Based Instruction
  • Project Title: The Effect of Concept-Mapping Planning on Students’ Linguistic Performance in College English Writing
  • Name & Bio: Feifeng Liu is a third-year masters student at Fudan University in China. Her academic interest is in the field of applied linguistics, including second language acquisition, task-based language teaching, corpus linguistics, and quantitative linguistics. Feifeng’s dissertation research aims to investigate the effects of task complexity on Chinese EFL learners’ L2 oral performance in the Test for English Majors Band 8.
  • TIRF Research Topic Investigated: Language Assessment
  • Project Title: Effects of Task Complexity on Chinese EFL Learners’ L2 Oral Performance: A Complex Dynamic Systems Theory Perspective
  • Name & Bio: Lumeng Fang is a masters student majoring in English linguistics and applied linguistics at Beijing Foreign Studies University in China. The dissertation research she is currently working on is the validation study of the Graduate School Entrance English Examination (GSEEE) by exploring the potential topic effect on scoring and textual features.
  • TIRF Research Topic Investigated: Language Assessment
  • Project Title: Validating the Writing Part B of GSEEE: Investigating the Prompt Topic Effect
  • Name & Bio: Wandong Xu is a masters candidate in the School of Foreign Languages and Cultures at Chongqing University in China. Her primary research interests are language assessment and cognition. She is also a part-time English teacher at Chongqing Real Estate College and an instructor for IELTS reading and speaking at Foreign Languages Training Center of Sichuan International Studies University.
  • TIRF Research Topic Investigated: Language Assessment
  • Project Title: A Comparative Study on Candidates’ Cognitive Processes Completing IELTS, TOEFL iBT, and CET-6 Reading Tests: Evidence from Eyetracking
  • Name & Bio: Yiting Duan is a third-year masters student at Chongqing University in China. Her major research interest lies in self-assessment and the use of language proficiency scales. She is also a part-time teacher at a vocational college, integrating foreign language leaning, teaching, and assessment in her teaching practice
  • TIRF Research Topic Investigated: Language Assessment
  • Project Title: Assessing the Validity of CSE Self-Assessment Scale for Listening Proficiency
  • Name: Yiwei Qin is a masters student at the University of Macau. Her research interests include language teaching and assessment, test impact, and classroom-based assessment (CBA). Her study focuses on the washback effect of classroom-based assessment from learners’ perspectives. It seeks to (1) investigate the prevalent types of CBA in college-level English language classrooms, and (2) examine how they might affect L2 learning from learners’ perspectives.
  • TIRF Research Topic Investigated: Language Assessment
  • Project Title: Washback Effect of Classroom-Based Assessment from Learners’ Perspectives

Please join TIRF in congratulating these outstanding MRG awardees!