I started to learn French after watching an interview with Stacy Martin, a French actress, as I was attracted to her beautiful speech. This was not the first time I was interested in a human speech. In the first year in my Chinese university, some lecturers and classmates mistakenly thought that I had lived or studied in an English-speaking country after they watching my English presentation. But, in fact, it was just my pronunciation too good to believe otherwise. I did spend 2 years training my English pronunciation before, by focusing on the manner of articulation and the position of the tongue, to overcome the negative transfer of my first language Chinese. It definitely helps. Now I’m practising my French combining this training method with IPA Chart. So, my journey of second languages learning shows me the power of speech production and inspires me to research on how people perceive and produce speech and explore the relationship between speech prosody and attractive emotional communication.

Human voice and music are both powerful approaches to emotional communication. Attractive sound is a stimulus for learners to participate because it directly expresses emotions or generates emotional resonance. It arouses learners’ curiosity. But what kind of acoustic characteristics make human voice and music sometimes have such fascinating effects? Under this question, I made speech perception the topic of my undergraduate dissertation. Currently, this is descriptive research, and I hope to carry out a depth experimental research in the future, with the help of acoustic analysis, behavioural experiments EEG and other advanced research methods.

Artificial Intelligence is developing rapidly nowadays, but its speech system still been criticized for lack of emotions, which makes people hard to empathise with it. AI machines learn language by computer and Python, while a human has the gift of first language acquisition. I learned from the process of human first language speech perception, especially the articulatory and acoustic characters of attractive voices, perhaps AI will be more natural. Not only for AI, but these theories can also be applied to second language learning to help learners better master the characteristics of the target language and reduce the negative transfer of the native language. In short, research on human speech perception is the significance of technology and mankind. The modules Development of Speech Perception and Production and Second-Language Speech Learning perfectly cover these contents, which examine the development of speech perception and speech production during first and second language acquisition.

While speech acquisition research can improve technology, technology also has and will play a great role in language teaching, especially after this unexpected pandemic. How to use technology to improve the efficiency of teaching is a matter now and in the future. I have ever received professional new media training when I was working in a technological organization in China. Our instructor taught us video and audio production, software development and operation of social media. Eventually, my team held a themed gala to promote the campus multiculturalism, displaying excellent audio-visual products, which attracted more than 1,000 audiences. This journey inspired me that there is a lot of space to combine visual art and VR technology with education, so as to enhance the fun and effectiveness of online teaching. But for language teaching, still, the first step is to understand how humans learn languages. By studying the human brain and psychological features engaging in language learning, we will bridge technology and motivation. In this field, I am interested in Professor Yi Xu’s research on computer synthese of speech prosody and Professor Paul Ivanson’s research on new training techniques to improve second-language phoneme perception, particularly using mobile devices. An excellent language teacher, in the age of technology, should be also an innovative and independent researcher. Positive paedology is based on the practical realization of language learning theories.

Besides the exposure to the combination of language and technology, interdisciplinary learning has played an important role in my life. I am a language student in a technology university, where I have studied calculus and western economics, computer science and even engineering training, beyond my English class. Proudly, I once made a metal gyro model myself in the engineering workshop. These diverse courses open a window in every field in my academic life. Mathematics and computer taught me to use numbers and symbols simplify complicated syntax rules, and economics taught me to visualize time and view language history from a developmental perspective. All the courses helped me adapt to the multidisciplinary nature of language research. Language is closely related to linguistics, psychology, sociology, neurosciences, discourse analysis and education. I believe interdisciplinary thinking is guiding better life and leading to breakthroughs in academic research. [University Name] is the top interdisciplinary research academic institution in the world. There is no apartment that combines language science and psychology that well than the Division of Psychology and Language Science. It is the best place for me to study the psychological factors within language learning. From theoretical courses to clinical trials, this can undoubtedly enable me to achieve the best conversion between theoretical classes and experimental research.

One year ago, I came to London. I felt the countless warmth of the city since the Krispy Kreme’s cashier gave me free lucky doughnuts when I was hungry but forget to bring the money. As a true polyglot city with over 250 languages spoken, London is one of the world's most linguistically diverse cities. From the multilingual university workshop to authentic Chinese restaurants in Bloomsbury, London is intertwined with novelty and familiarity for me. I hope to study and live in the most diverse campus within this most international city, and to explore more possibilities about speech science and communication.