Lim Ni Eng

Biography

Ni-Eng Lim has been actively involved in the research and teaching of Language and Linguistics (especially Mandarin Chinese) since 2003, predominantly in Singapore and the United States. Growing up speaking three languages at home, and educated in Singapore’s bilingual school system, Ni-Eng is has taught students from a wide range of level, age and proficiency. After graduating with an honors undergraduate and masters degree from the Chinese Studies Department at the National University of Singapore, Ni-Eng spent the next 4 years teaching Chinese language and literature at two premier middle schools in Singapore. During this time, he taught in the gifted education program, the specialized Chinese language elective program; served as coordinator of exchange programs to China, and a national inter-school Chinese debate judge. Throughout his doctoral degree in Applied Linguistics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Ni-Eng continues to be involved in teaching Chinese to U.S. working adults, undergraduates and high-school students. Coming from a strong academic Chinese linguistic background, Ni-Eng has also published and presented academic papers at various international conferences, specializing in the fields of Conversation Analysis (CA), Discourse Analysis, Corpus Linguistics and language teaching in general. He has also been a reviewer for refereed journals such Discourse Processes, International Journal for Bilingualism and Issues in Applied Linguistics (IAL). He is now currently assistant professor in the Chinese Division in Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

Research Interest

My on-going research focuses on the interactional, socio-cultural and cognitive operations at work in normal everyday Mandarin Chinese talk-in-interaction, using quantitative statistical methodologies on large Mandarin corpora and qualitative conversation analysis of real-time video and audio recordings. Through investigating commonplace social action/expression and their discourse-pragmatic functions, cognitive phenomenon such as theory of mind and intersubjectivity can be empirically and discursively explicated. As insights into the language-specific resources available for interactional accomplishments is gained, pedagogical methodologies for teaching spoken Mandarin Chinese can be further refined.