Academic Staff
- HHB731e, Hung Hom Bay Campus
- +852 2766 7439
- angel.ws.chan@polyu.edu.hk
- Personal Website
ORCID ID
SCOPUS IDBiography
I am a developmental psycholinguist and speech therapist with 25 years of post-qualification experience and expertise in child language development and disorders. I study child first and second language acquisition in cross-linguistic and multi-lingual contexts, so far involving Cantonese, Mandarin, English, German, Urdu, Hindi, and Kam.
My interests include cognitive linguistic, typological-functional and processing approaches to the study of language acquisition and disorders, clinical linguistics, developing language assessment and intervention approaches for children in a Chinese and multilingual context, promoting child language research on Chinese languages, and the use of technology (e.g. AI and robotics) to enhance support for children with communication disorders and for speech therapists.
I am collaborating with researchers from the European biSLI community and the Global TALES consortium to study multilingual children in Hong Kong, Mainland China, Pakistan, and India, and my team members have adapted some language assessment tools from the COST Action LITMUS (Language Impairment Testing in Multilingual Settings) initiative and the Global TALES consortium into Cantonese, Mandarin, Hindi, Kam and Urdu.
Education and Academic Qualifications
- PhD in Developmental Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig & University of Leipzig, Germany
- MPhil in Linguistics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
- BSc in Speech & Hearing Sciences, The University of Hong Kong
Academic and Professional Experience
- Registered Speech Therapist, Member of Register of Speech Therapists accredited by Department of Health of the HKSAR government
Teaching Areas
- Child Language Development and Disorders
- Clinical Linguistics
Research Interests
Selected Publications
- *Fu, N.C., #Chan, A., Chen, S, Polišenská, K., Kan, R. & Chiat S. (2024). Revisiting nonword repetition as a clinical marker of Developmental Language Disorder: Evidence from monolingual and bilingual L2 Cantonese. Special issue on “Developmental Language Disorder in Chinese – Status of the Research Landscape and New Frontiers.” Brain and Language, 257, Article 105450. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2024.105450
- @Lai, J., #Chan, A. & Kidd, E. (2024). Production of relative clauses in Cantonese-speaking children with and without Developmental Language Disorder. Special issue on “Developmental Language Disorder in Chinese – Status of the Research Landscape and New Frontiers.” Brain and Language, 254, Article 105425. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2024.105425
- *Hamdani, S., #Chan, A., @Kan, R., Chiat, S., Gagarina, N., Haman, E., Łuniewska, M., Polišenská, K., & Armon-Lotem, S. (2024). Identifying Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) in multilingual children: A case study tutorial. International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 27(2), 157-171. https://doi.org/10.1080/17549507.2024.2326095
- *Fu, N.C., Chen, S, Polišenská, K., #Chan, A., Kan, R. & Chiat S. (2024). Nonword Repetition in Children with Developmental Language Disorder: Revisiting the Case of Cantonese. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 67(6), 1772-1784. https://doi.org/10.1044/2024_JSLHR-22-00397
- *Lai, J., #Chan, A. & Kidd, E. (2023). Relative clause comprehension in Cantonese-speaking children with and without Developmental Language Disorder. PLOS ONE, 18(11), Article e0288021. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0288021
#corresponding author; * student author, @ postdoc
- 2026 - 2028
Principal Investigator, Advancing the Identification of Developmental Language Disorder in Mandarin-Cantonese Bilingual Children: a Reference Standard and Novel Assessment Measures. RGC GRF (Project No.15315525) - 2021 - 2023
Principal Investigator, Revisiting Nonword Repetition as a Diagnostic Tool in Cantonese-speaking Children with Developmental Language Disorder. RGC GRF (Project No.15609420) - 2018 - 2021
Principal Investigator, Asymmetries in Cantonese Children's Comprehension and Production of Relative Clauses: Structure, Typology and Processing. RGC GRF (Project No. 15607217)
- 2025 - 2028
Co-Principal Investigator, Integrating Machine Learning, Behavioral Analysis and Multimodal Neuroimaging Techniques to Investigate the Comorbidity of Specific Learning Disabilities in Hong Kong. RGC CRF (Project No. C5033-24G)
- A representative for Child Language, TalkBank Advisory Board
- Committee Member, Multilingual and Multicultural Affairs Committee (MMAC), International Association of Communication Sciences and Disorders (IALP)
- Editorial Board Member, First Language
- Editor, Child Language Bulletin, International Association for the Study of Child Language (IASCL)
- The International Association for the Study of Child Language (IASCL)
- International Association of Communication Sciences and Disorders (IALP)
- Asia Pacific Society of Speech, Language, and Hearing (APSSLH)
- American Speech–Language–Hearing Association (ASHA)
- Australian Linguistic Society (ALS)
- Languages and Cultures Network for Australian Universities (LCNAU)
- International Association of Chinese Linguistics (IACL)
- The Hong Kong Association of Speech Therapists (HKAST)
- The Hong Kong Institute of Speech Therapists (HKIST)
