Hongyi Zhao

Profile

I am currently a PGR with a special interest in corpus linguistics and vocabulary teaching and learning. I also work as a teaching assistant, research assistant and academic personal tutor at the Language Centre and the School of Education, University of Leeds.

I was born into a family of teachers, where both my grandma and mother teach English. My grandma taught me English when I was three. Her love, affection and passion to teaching English inspires me to be an English teacher like her. With her as my role model, I have been taking teaching positions as part-time jobs in various language institutions since I was an undergraduate student in China (2015-2019). I have taught different versions of school textbooks for primary and secondary students in China. Later I completed a Masters Degree of Arts at the University of Leeds in 2020, where I developed my interest in vocabulary and corpus research. I applied what I learned in vocabulary and corpus to my IELTS reading and writing courses, but found that I would like to explore more on vocabulary and corpus fields. Therefore, I came back to Leeds in 2022 for further study.

Alongside my PhD research at Leeds, I also worked as a tutor at the Language Centre in summer 2023, where I taught academic language to students, helped with session material development and delivered a lecture on practical guide to corpus analysis. I was a teaching assistant on two modules at the School of Education in the 2023/24 academic year. In early 2024, I also joined the research project Reimagine essay-based assessment in the wake of ChatGPT: insights from corpus-based analyses of ChatGPT led by Dr. Huahui Zhao and Dr. Yen Dang, where I was a research assistant on corpus compilation. In July 2024, I was a local committee member and held the BAAL VocabSIG 2024 conference at Leeds. In 2024 and 2025, I was invited share my MA dissertation writing experience twice to taught postgraduates. I am now an academic personal tutor of 18 taught postgraduates at the School of Education. Outside the University, in 2024, I was invited to design an online course on ESP and Radiology. The one year course included 52 sessions on techniques of reading academic journal articles on Radiology. An 8-million-token corpus was compiled and used for this online course.

As well as Chinese and English I am able to speak basic French. In my free time I enjoy travelling. I have been to all 76 UK cities listed by the UK government. I also enjoy reading books on history and Chinese classical philosophy.

Professional Memberships:

I hold memberships at; Centre of Language Education (CLER), British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL), International Association for Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATERFL), TESOL International Association, Publink Extensive Reading Club (PERC) and UK Association for Language Testing and Assessment (UKALTA).

Publications: 

Zhao, H. (2023). 国外语言政策与规划著作年度扫 描（2022）. In: 中国语言生活状况报告 . edited by: 郭熙. 上海：商务 印书馆.

Conference/Workshop Presentations:

Zhao, H. (2024). Corpus Analysis on Collocation in Old and New Secondary English Textbooks in China. The Second National Conference on Foreign Language Teaching Materials, China.

Zhao, H. (2024). Corpus Analysis on Text-oriented Lexical Bundles in Academic Logistics Articles. The Conference on Corpus Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, China.

Zhao, H. (2024). Corpus Analysis on Vocabulary in GenAI Assisted and Non-GenAI Writings. The Conference on Corpus Linguistics and Humanity, China.

Zhao, H. (2024). Corpus Analysis on Polysemy in Academic Written Logistics - A Comparison with the BAWE. The Fifth Asian-Pacific Conference on Corpus Linguistics (APCLC). 

Zhao, H. (2024). Corpus Analysis on Vocabulary in Old and New Secondary English Textbooks in China. The First National Conference on Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Foreign Language Teaching Materials, China.

Zhao, H. (2024). Corpus Analysis on Polysemy in Academic Written Logistics. The 57th British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) Conference.

Zhao, H. and Cao, Z. (2024). Vocabulary in Hui-style Architecture Academic Articles - What can Corpus Tell us. TeLLT and CoLLT 2024 Conference, Hong Kong, China. 

Zhao, H. (2023). Using VocabProfile to select texts. Workshop at Centre of Language Education, University of Leeds. 

Research interests

My research interests lie within the area of English language vocabulary learning, teaching and assessment for L2 learners. I am particularly interested in academic and specialised vocabulary, by employing corpus methods for analysis. I am now addressing key questions related to corpus and vocabulary research, for example:

• What words and multi-word units do L2 learners need to know for communication in a specialised discourse (e.g., specific disciplines or trades)?
• What senses of words do L2 learners need to know for communication in a specialised discourse? To what extent are the senses different from those in everyday language or in general academic language?
• To what extent do the teachers realise the issue of polysemy? How do teachers and popular teaching materials help L2 learners develop such vocabulary knowledge?

My current research focuses on corpus-derived specialised word list development and polysemy analysis. I am also interested on lexical analysis in textbooks and assessment, vocabulary or collocation learning strategies, word part teaching and learning for L2 learners, and lexicography.

Qualifications

• 2019-2020 MA TESOL Studies, School of Education, University of Leeds, the UK
• 2015-2019 BA English Education, School of Foreign Languages, Chuzhou University, China
• Cambridge Academy of Translating UK TESOL Certificate (CAT-UK TESOL)