Boping Yuan became a worker in a carpentry workshop in China after his secondary school, and was among those first groups of people who entered universities when universities re-opened in China after the ten-year Cultural Revolution. He read English language and literature as an undergraduate at Yantai Normal University (now Ludong University), China, from 1978 to 1982. Then he taught English as a foreign language at universities in China and on the China Central Television. In 1986, he entered Shanghai Jiaotong University, China, and did postgraduate studies in Applied Linguistics. In 1988, he got a scholarship from the British Council to study at Edinburgh University, where he first studied for an M.Sc. in Applied Linguistics and then for a Ph.D. in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics. In 1992, he came to Cambridge, where he taught and did research in Chinese language and linguistics for 29 years before he retired from the University in September 2021.
Boping Yuan’s research interests are in linguistic approaches to second/third language acquisition, particularly in non-native language acquisition of Chinese in the framework of formal linguistics, with particular attention paid to initial, developmental and final stages in non-native language acquisition of Chinese and taking into account important factors involved such as language transfer, linguistic complexity involved, availability and salience of positive evidence, quality and quantity of input, etc.
He was Vice President of the International Society of Chinese Language Teaching in 2005-2009, and has been serving as a member of its executive committee since 2010. He is also an executive committee member of the International Association of Chinese Linguistics. He is the General Editor of Journal of Second Language Studies (John Benjamins), and has been serving as a member of editorial boards of a number of international journals, such as Second Language Research, International Review of Applied Linguistics, Journal of Chinese Linguistics, Chinese Teaching in the World, etc. He is also an advisor to Second Language, British Chinese Language Teaching Society, Singapore Centre for Chinese as a Second Language.
Dr Yuan taught and directed the modern Chinese language programme at the undergraduate level. He also supervised graduate students in linguistic approaches to bilingualism and multilignualism in Chinese contexts.
Dr Yuan supervised research students in linguistic approaches to second language acquisition of Chinese and bi/multi-lingualism.
Empirical studies of developmental and synchronic aspects of second language acquisition, bilingualism and multilingualism; linguistic approaches to non-native Chinese grammars; second language acquisition theory; formal linguistics; syntax and semantics.
Current PhD students
| Mr Tongkun Liu: Interfaces in the Chinese ba Construction and Their Representations in Second Language Learners' L2 Chinese Mental Grammars |
| Miss Manyun Liu: Chinese Reflexive 'ziji' in Second Language Acquisition, Heritage Language, and First Language Attrition |
| Ms Hsiaoching Wang: L2 Acquisition of Wh-indeterminants in Mandarin by English and Korean Speakers. |
| Miss Jingting Xiang: Definiteness and Specificity in L2/L3 Mandarin Grammars |
| Mr Fei Yuan: The Third Language Acquisition of English Negative Polarity Items by Ethnic Koreans in China |
| Chenyang Zhang: L2 acquisition of empty verbs in Mandarin Chinese by English-speaking learners |