Myself, my education and my career

Though many have remarked that I do not look very Chinese, I am Chinese – but a Singapore Chinese who was born and bred in this island nation smaller than Greater Tokyo in land area. Perhaps it is the dark tan of my skin, a result of the unrelenting tropical sun in Singapore, that is so deceiving. As a Chinese, I have retained my mother tongue, Mandarin, and speak it regularly at home, though I must say that English is the language I speak best – like so many other Singaporeans, as it is the first language in school and the language of administration in the country. Besides Mandarin and English, I also speak German and two Chinese dialects, Cantonese and Hokkien.

I am very much a product of the Singapore school system up till the post-secondary level, though my subsequent university education was acquired in a country much further away, in the heart of Europe – Germany. I first arrived as a young student at the University of Würzburg in Franconia in the 1980s and completed a direct M.A. degree in German Language and Literature in five years. Considerably later in life, in 1994, I was to embark on my Ph.D. programme at the University of Kassel in Hesse, working on my thesis (Topic: Metacognition in the teaching of German as a foreign language) and lecturing at the National University of Singapore at the same time. This stressful situation was to continue for another 5½ years until I finally managed to submit and defend my thesis in February 2000.

Armed with my German M.A., my working career began in 1988 at the Ministry of Education Language Centre in Singapore, a centralised language school, where I taught German to some very talented secondary school pupils for four years. In 1992, I made a decisive move to the National University of Singapore to realise my ambition of teaching and researching at a university. It was also this move that gave me the impetus to work towards a Ph.D. degree, and the completion of this degree consolidated my university career. It also opened numerous doors for me in the academic world and enabled me to join the international academic circuit of conferences, seminars and workshops.

Today, at the age of 46++, I am an Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Language Studies at the same university. I am active in research into the theory and practice of foreign language education, specialising in German as a foreign language, metacognition and learner autonomy, and new technologies in language learning. Till date, I have published numerous books, book chapters and journal articles on these areas. Perhaps the many invitations I have received to lecture and present papers, seminars and workshops at international conferences and universities in Europe, Asia and Australia also serve as testimony to my achievements in research. I am currently also the Editor of e-FLT, or the Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching, published by our Centre and available at http://e-flt.nus.edu.sg.

I also teach the German language in our Centre, something I enjoy tremendously, as I like to very much work with students in class. Perhaps it was this love of teaching that motivated me to constantly innovate and to explore new modes of teaching, especially in the application of computer, Internet and mobile technologies. In 2000, I led a team of German language colleagues to create the Electronic Self-Access Centre for German as a Foreign Language (or e-daf, available at http://courseware.nus.edu.sg/e-daf/), which houses a wide range of multimedia applications, interactive exercises, electronic worksheets, hypertext notes, and communication platforms such as chats and discussion forums. I also started exploring the use of mobile technologies in 2007 and initiated the creation and use of customised podcasts to supplement the learning of our German language students. My efforts have not gone unnoticed, and I feel honoured to have received several teaching excellence awards at the NUS, including the prestigious Outstanding Educator Award in 2005. In May 2009, I was appointed as a Founding Member to the NUS Teaching Academy, currently a select community of less than 20 distinguished teachers at the university.

My stint at Waseda

I first met Assoc Prof Makiko Hoshii(Photo left)in 2002 and had the opportunity to meet her again several times in subsequent years, and I must say I was most impressed by her strong interest in foreign language learning research and her untiring efforts to promote empirical research among her German Language colleagues in Japan and her students at Waseda University. It was for this reason that I approached Prof Hoshii to collaborate with me on a podcasting project during my sabbatical year in 2009. I am privileged indeed that she readily agreed to it and also supported my application to Waseda University’s International Office to be accepted as Exchange Researcher. It certainly helped that NUS and Waseda are very close partners which have had numerous formal and informal academic interactions.

Ably supported by three research assistants, all students at Waseda with amazing German language abilities, Prof Hoshii and I are currently producing a weekly podcast for her advanced German language students(Photos left). Students receive an authentic listening text in German as well as a comprehension and a summary task with each podcast unit. By collecting data through stimulated recall and students’ journals, it is hoped that we will gain vital insights into students’ cognitive and metacognitive processes, and the manner in which they interact with the podcast units. These insights can potentially make an important contribution to the development of a pedagogy of podcasting.

I have been overwhelmed by the hospitality of my host professor, the Waseda International Office, and the colleagues and students I have met thus far. They have spared no effort in making me feel at home and in facilitating my work, and for this I owe them all a huge debt of gratitude.


Me and my wife on a trip to Gunma prefecture