Dr Alex Leung

Associate Professor

Department: Humanities

I grew up in Hong Kong where I obtained my BA (Hons) in Contemporary English studies. During my undergraduate years I've spent some time in the States at Franklin and Marshall College, Pennsylvania and also in the UK at the University of York. Upon the completion of my BA, I came to the UK to pursue my (Integrated) PhD studies at Newcastle University in English Language and Linguistics. I successfully defended my thesis on second language phonology acquisition under the influence of multiple varieties in 2012. I first joined Northumbria as a part time lecturer in TESOL at the beginning of 2012 and have been employed as a full time lecturer since the academic year of 2012-2013. In addition to my Northumbria duties, I work as an external examiner for the MA programmes of UCLAN and was the the external examiner for Leeds between 2018-2021. I’m the Publications Secretary of the British Association for Applied Linguistics (BAAL) and have previously served as the Meetings Secretary (2013-2019). I am a section editor for Open Linguistics (De Gruyter) and an editorial board member of the English Language Teaching Journal (ELTJ - Oxford) and also a regular reviewer for various journals. I am currently co-editing the second edition of the Cambridge Handbook of Second Language Acquisition alongside three colleagues.

Email Alex

Research Themes and Scholarly Interests

Second Language Acquisition
Second Language Speech & Phonology
Applied Linguistics and TESOL
Teacher Identity and Experience
Racialisation of the TESOL Profession
Language Attitudes and Variations
Lived Experience of Ethnic Minoritised Students
English Historical Linguistics

Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
“We don’t normally require that in other contexts, do we”: Interpersonal meanings of tag questions in British university seminars based on the BASE corpus, Wei, L., Leung, A., Sun, Y. 10 Jan 2023, In: Frontiers in Psychology
H. P. Widodo, M. R. Perfecto, L. V. Canh and A. Buripakdi. Situating Moral and Cultural Values in Elt Materials: The Southeast Asian Context. Springer, 2018., Leung, A. 24 Aug 2021, In: Applied Linguistics
L2 English Reading Fluency in Korean Elementary Schools: Analyses of National English Curriculum and Textbooks, Kim, J., Leung, A. 30 Sep 2021, In: Journal of Asia TEFL
(Mis) perception of consonant clusters and short vowels in English as a foreign language, Leung, A., Young-Scholten, M., Almurashi, W., Ghadanfari, S., Nash, C., Outhwaite, O. 9 Aug 2021, In: IRAL - International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching
Reality check: Identity struggle and experiences of NESTs living and teaching abroad, Leung, A., Yip, T. 22 Apr 2020, Language teacher identity in TESOL: Teacher education and practice as identity work, New York, Taylor & Francis
Anaphoric reference in Early Modern English: The case of said and same, Leung, A., Van Der Wurff, W. 14 May 2018, The Noun Phrase in English: Past and present, John Benjamins
The Noun Phrase in English: Past and present, Leung, A., van der Wurff, W. 2018
Chinese but not Chinese? A case study of identity in post-colonial Hong Kong, Leung, A., Lee, P. 2016, Language, Identity and Migration: Voices from Transnational Speakers and Communities, Oxford, Peter Lang
Deteriorating standard? A brief look into the English standard in Hong Kong, Leung, A. 27 Aug 2015, In: Asian Englishes
Input multiplicity and the robustness of phonological categories in child L2 phonology acquisition, Leung, A. Mar 2014, In: Proceedings of the International Symposium on the Acquisition of Second Language Speech (New Sounds 2013)

PGR Supervision

Ngoc Nguyen TRANSNATIONAL VIRTUAL EXCHANGE FOR GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION BEYOND WEIRD CONTEXTS: FROM DESIGNING TO EVALUATION Start Date: 01/10/2022
Fatuma Abdulkader Exploring Saudi EFL Teachers' and Learners' Perceptions regarding the Application of Communicative language Teaching (CLT) in the English Language Classroom Start Date: 09/06/2014 End Date: 06/11/2019
Qianwen Cheng Family of Chinese BA-construction - A Cognitive Approach Start Date: 29/09/2017 End Date: 24/10/2018
Andrea Canavosio Attitudes Towards the Cordobese Accent and Their Implications for the Acquisition of Spanish as a Second Language in Argentina Start Date: 01/01/2020