Chén Shěn
沈 晨
ABOUT ME
I am an open-minded person with interests and experiences in a wide range of fields, especially in phonetic and speech sciences, languages teaching, public outreach and engagement, and cross-cultural communication.
Currently, I am working as a PhD candidate at Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, under the supervision of Esther Janse and Mirjam Ernestus. I am investigating the potential interactions between speakers' cognitive abilities and speech motor skills, and how these influence speakers' abilities to speak clearly. Speakers' individual differences in speech clarification strategies, and how intelligible those speech samples are judged by normal- and impaired-hearing listeners will also be evaluated.
As part of ENRICH, a European Training Network, my research is funded by the European Commission under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie programme.
EDUCATION
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Sociophonetics
Study selected phonetic and prosodic features of non-native varieties of Englishes (e.g. Mandarin-accented English).
2017 – Present
Radboud University (Nijmegen, Netherlands)
PhD candidate researching speakers' individual differences in speech clarification.
Speech Perception
Evaluate (accented) speech perceptual abilities of listeners with different linguistic backgrounds (native-speaker vs. 'native-speaker' of a non-native variety).
Speech Prosody
Investigate the prosodic realisation of one variety of Mandarin - Lan-Yin Mandarin.
2013 - 2014
University of York (York, United Kingdom)
Master of Science in Forensic Speech Science, thesis on Accent Identification: Which Type of ‘Native Ear’ Works Better?
2008 - 2012
Hangzhou Normal University (Hangzhou, China)
Bachelor’s degree in Social Work, thesis on Preliminary Lingual Sociology Study of Buzzwords in CCTV Spring Festival Gala
Individual Differences in Speech
Explore talkers' individual differences in terms of their speech enrichment strategies, the effectiveness of these different strategies as evaluated by (hearing- impaired) listeners, and how difficult speakers find it (in terms of cognitive effort) to keep this clear or enriched speech.