The establishment of the Center for the Advancement of Language Sciences relies much on the professionalism of the University of Science and Technology Beijing. Conforming to the national strategic needs of language cognition and information processing, the Center is committed to promoting cross-disciplinary development potential in the studies of foreign language and information technology. The Interdisciplinary methodologies and advanced apparatuses on language cognition and neural detection are employed to address the questions of language cognition, language learning mechanisms, and intervention and correction of Linguistic dysfunction. The findings have positive implications for improving student language skills as well as suggestions for language policies.
The Center is part of the University of Science and Technology Beijing and is administered by the School of Foreign Studies. The Center’s research team includes talented professors specifically Prof. Jingyuan ZHANG (the Director), Prof. Jin XUE, and Prof. Hulin REN. The chief consultants are Esther Geva, Ph.D. (Professor and Former Chair of the Department of Applied Psychology & Human Development,OISE, University of Toronto ), John R. Kirby, Ph.D. (Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Education, Queen’s University), and Liying Cheng, Ph.D (Professor and Director of Assessment and Evaluation Group (AEG), Queen’s University ).
The Center strives to conduct fundamental and innovative exploration motivated by general questions in language sciences with empirical data and facilitate multi-disciplinary research and education in language sciences, with a goal to become an academic brand “domestic top, internationally renowned” in language sciences at University of Science and Technology Beijing.
The Center is equipped with an independent language sciences laboratory with an area of 80 m2. It has an eye tracker (Eye-link 1000 plus) that can collect the visual signal of adults and children in real time, an event-related potential electroencephalograph (Neuroscan 64 channel), a portable eego™mylab (ANT Neuro), and a portable fNIRS (NIRSport, NIRxMedical Technology LLC, Glen Head, NY, USA) ), and 4 operation platforms for neural simulation and sub-laboratories. It has tentatively realized the breakthrough in the technology of collecting the signal of eye movement and neuronal activity simultaneously and endeavored to explore the possibility of collaboration in multi-platform.
In the past three years, the faculties in the Center have been awarded a number of grants, including 2 projects funded by the China National Science Foundation, 5 projects funded by the China National Social Science Foundation (including sub-projects), 3 projects by the Social Science Foundation of Beijing, 2 by Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education, and 1 key project from the National Institute of Educational Sciences (NIES), the total funding has been greatly appreciated in supporting our goals. The center is prepared for educating masters, doctorates and researchers with solid language abilities and high-level academic skills. Upholding the ideal of “harvesting a win-win fruit in interdisciplinary cooperation with pragmatic and creative spirit under the leadership of great ambition”, the Center is collaborating with distinguished scholars and experts both domestic and international to write a glorious chapter enjoying international perspective and Chinese elements in the advancement of language sciences.