Faculty & Staff

Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition, University of Hawai‘i
M.A. in Linguistics & Applied Linguistics, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, China
M.A. in Educational Innovation, Technology, & Entrepreneurship, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Zhijun (David) Wen joined the Department of Classical and Modern Languages at Truman State University as an Assistant Professor of Chinese in August 2019. He received his Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition from the University of Hawai‘i. He has an M.A. in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics from the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies in China and an M.A. in Educational Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Zhijun has researched second language (L2) acquisition from a psycholinguistic perspective. He is interested in Chinese linguistics, Chinese sentence processing, creativity in language teaching, L2 pedagogy, L2 sentence processing, and learning sciences. He is teaching and developing courses on the Chinese language, Chinese culture, and Chinese linguistics. He taught Chinese in Hawaii for nearly 5 years. He recently proposed a creativity-based language methodology, which incorporates the latest research findings from second language studies and learning sciences. This method allows students to learn and use the language simultaneously. It uses advanced technologies such as augmented reality and virtual reality to create contextualized, immersive, interactive, and project-based language learning environments. He hopes to offer a whole new experience to learners of Chinese to ensure they build strong skills in Chinese at the fastest possible speed.