Irene Jieun Ahn joined the Second Language Studies (SLS) program at MSU in Fall 2013. Before joining the program, she received a B.A. in English Language and Literature and a M.A. in Teaching Korean as a Foreign Language, both from Ewha Womans University in Korea. During the course of her master’s degree, she worked as a research assistant for a granted research project studying Korean as a second language learners’ individual differences. In the SLS program, she was awarded a full research assistantship for her Ph.D. studies and has been working as a research assistant for Dr. Susan Gass and Dr. Paula Winke.
Her primary research interests revolve around psycholinguistic and cognitive approaches to second language acquisition, interactionist approaches to instructed second language learning, and the use of eye-tracking methodology to investigate a wide range of L2-related issues.
- Explicit/implicit knowledge and learning
- Attention, awareness, and the Noticing Hypothesis
- Bilingual language processing
- Corrective feedback and individual difference factors (e.g., working memory)