About Jiwon Hwang

Dr. Jiwon Hwang received a B.A. in Spanish/English Literature and Linguistics from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Korea and an M.A. in TESOL and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Stony Brook University. Her research interests include second language acquisition, speech adaptation, foreign language teaching and Korean linguistics.  

Her research on cross-language processing explores important factors that play a role in non-native perception and production. She has participated in research projects including Korean speakers’ production and perception of non-native sequences and categories and Japanese speakers’ perception of English contrasts. The main findings of the research show that perceptual and gestural constraints should be considered as well as grammatical differences, to fully explain second language error patterns that seem puzzling if viewed only from one perspective. Another line of her research (in collaboration with Dr. Susan Brennan and Dr. Marie Huffman), involves investigating how non-native speakers adjust their production of English when communicating with native speakers of English and with other speakers for whom English is not their first language. The results demonstrate that non-native speakers’ speech adaptation is driven both by pragmatic factors and by auditory priming by the conversational partner. She is currently investigating Korean listeners’ perceptual bias due to the knowledge of phonotactic restrictions and phonological relationship, Taiwanese speakers’ perception of English contrasts (with Dr. Yu-an Lu) and the phonetic and phonological properties of Korean [Cj] (with Dr. Yunju Suh).