- Email:
- sydcatal@iu.edu
Sydni (江红) is a PhD student majoring in Chinese pedagogy, minoring in second language studies and currently teaching third-year Chinese. Her research interests include heritage language learning, language ideologies, and the relationship between language and identity. She is especially interested in further exploring the social and educational resources available to transnational adoptees to support continued acquisition of their birth language(s), their relationship with family and communal language policies, and implications for teaching methodology as applicable to other heritage learners and foreign language learners at large. As an adoptee herself, Sydni aims to be an encouraging example to language learners and a motivating force through her thoughtful and effective teaching practices. In addition to linguistic and second language acquisition theory, Sydni’s teaching philosophy is grounded in her professional experiences as a teacher of language and performing arts, as well as her own experiences as a language learner.