About

Jiwon Hwang is an Assistant Professor and the Director of Asian Languages in the Department of Asian & Asian American Studies at Stony Brook University. She earned her Ph.D. in linguistics from Stony Brook University, specializing in second language acquisition, phonetics, phonology, and psycholinguistics. Her research focuses on investigating the characteristics of second language speech, understanding the underlying mechanisms of speech production and perception, and examining sociocultural and cognitive factors associated with language learning and intercultural communication. Since joining the department in 2013, she has taught courses in Korean language and linguistics, and her research has expanded to include intercultural communicative language teaching, which aligns with her teaching interests. Currently, she is leading a research project funded by the US Department of Education on intercultural engagement and language learning.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Political Science
• Natural Language Processing
• Artificial Intelligence
• Linguistics
• Computer Science
• Social psychology
• Neuroscience
• Cognitive psychology
• Speech recognition
• Pedagogy

Selected publications

• Perception-production link mediated by position in the imitation of Korean nasal stops

  JASA Express Letters · 2025-03-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This study explores how perceptual cues in two positions influence imitation of Korean nasal stops. As a result of initial denasalization, nasality cues are secondary in the initial position but primary in the medial position. Categorization and imitation tasks using CV (consonant-vowel) and VCV (vowel-consonant-vowel) items on a continuum from voiced oral to nasal stops were completed by 32 Korean speakers. Results revealed categorical imitation of nasality medially, whereas imitation was gradient or minimal initially. Furthermore, individuals requiring stronger nasality cues to categorize a nasal sound produced greater nasality in imitation. These findings highlight a perception-production link mediated by positional cue reliance.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Hangul as a Sound Representation System: Efficacy and Innovation

  2025-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• From intercultural engagement to intercultural communicative competence: The case of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean

  Foreign Language Annals · 2023 · 8 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Psychology
  • Pedagogy

  Abstract As the objective of language teaching is shifting from producing so‐called “native‐like” speakers to fostering speakers competent in intercultural communication, it has become necessary to identify the kinds of learning resources that may be related to the learner's development of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) in today's context of globalization and technological innovation. Employing a mixed‐method approach with focus group interviews ( n = 46) and a survey ( n = 342), this study examines Chinese, Japanese, and Korean language learners' out‐of‐class intercultural experience and examines how interpersonal engagement and media usage are associated with the three dimensions of ICC: approach , analyze , and act . The study found that while both interpersonal interactions and media usage related to target language were positively associated with self‐reported gains in all three dimensions of ICC, media use consistently had a greater effect on ICC than interpersonal interactions. The implications of these findings for language educators are discussed.

  PublisherDOI

• Interactional Competence Instruction for Beginner KFL Learners

  The Korean Language in America · 2023-02-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT Interactional competence (IC) refers to the ability to use interactional resources, such as turn-taking, sequencing, overall structuring, and repair during actual interaction (Wong & Waring, 2021). Language learners must develop IC to engage in conversation using the target language (TL) in culturally appropriate and interactive ways. However, teaching IC is often overlooked, especially for beginner learners. In response to this need, this article presents an interaction-oriented project called the “Conversation Project” recently implemented in a first semester Korean as a foreign language (KFL) college course. In this project, KFL learners are explicitly taught a set of interactional features of Korean through authentic learning material and then given opportunities to apply them in a social and immersive learning environment with Korean speakers. The project aims to foster IC development and enhance learners’ conversational skills in real-life intercultural situations.

  PublisherDOI

• Differences between Monolinguals and Bilinguals in Phonetic and Phonological Learning and the Connection with Auditory Sensory Memory

  Brain Sciences · 2023 · 7 citations

  • Psychology
  • Cognitive psychology
  • Linguistics

  Bilingualism has been linked with improved function regarding certain aspects of linguistic processing, e.g., novel word acquisition and learning unfamiliar sound patterns. Two non mutually-exclusive approaches might explain these results. One is related to executive function, speculating that more effective learning is achieved through actively choosing relevant information while inhibiting potentially interfering information. While still controversial, executive function enhancements attributed to bilingual experience have been reported for decades. The other approach, understudied to date, emphasizes the role of sensory mechanisms, specifically auditory sensory memory. Bilinguals outperformed monolinguals in tasks involving auditory processing and episodic memory recall, but the questions whether (1) bilinguals' auditory sensory memory skills are also enhanced, and (2) phonetic skill and auditory sensory memory are correlated, remain open, however. Our study is innovative in investigating phonetic learning skills and auditory sensory memory in the same speakers from two groups: monolinguals and early bilinguals. The participants were trained and tested on an artificial accent of English and their auditory sensory memory was assessed based on a digit span task. The results demonstrated that, compared to monolinguals, bilinguals exhibit enhanced auditory sensory memory and phonetic and phonological learning skill, and a correlation exists between them.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Wav2nerf: Audio-Driven Realistic Talking Head Generation Via Wavelet-Based Nerf

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• The Effect of Distributional Restrictions in Speech Perception: A Case Study From Korean and Taiwanese Southern Min

  Language and Speech · 2023-09-15 · 1 citations

  article1st author

  u] "all"). However, neither [ŋ] nor [ɡ] (the denasalized variant of the velar nasal) is allowed in the initial position due to the phonotactic restriction against initial [ŋ] in Korean. Given the distribution of nasal and voiced stops in Korean, this study draws on the idea of cue informativeness, exploring (a) whether Korean listeners' attention to nasality and voicing cues is based on the distributional characteristics of nasal and voiced stops, and (b) whether their attention can be generalized across different places of articulation without such linguistic experience. In a forced-choice identification experiment, Korean listeners were more likely than Taiwanese listeners to perceive items on the voiced oral-to-nasal stop continua as nasal when they occurred in the initial position than in the intervocalic position, with the exception of velar stops. The results demonstrate that the Korean listeners attended to the nasality cue more reliably in the medial position than in the initial position, since the nasality cue in this position is less informative due to initial denasalization. Two additional forced-choice identification experiments suggested that upon hearing initial velar nasal [ŋ], Korean listeners variably employed different perceptual strategies (i.e., vowel insertion and place change) to repair the phonotactic illegality. These findings provide support for exemplar models of speech perception in which cue attention is specific to the position of a word, and to segments rather than to features.

  PublisherDOI

• Do L1 tone language speakers enjoy a perceptual advantage in processing English contrastive prosody?*

  Bilingualism Language and Cognition · 2022-03-23 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This study compared the ability of English monolinguals and Mandarin–English bilinguals to make use of English contrastive prosody not only in natural speech but also in masked speech, in which the only available information was prosodic. In contrast to earlier studies (Choi et al., 2019; Choi, 2021; Tong et al., 2015) which found that L1 tone language speakers outperformed native speakers in tasks involving the use of pitch to identify stress position in English, we did not find a similar advantage for Mandarin–English bilinguals in the interpretation of English contrastive prosody, even under conditions that enforced reliance on pitch contours. These findings are consistent with other studies suggesting that the integration of prosodic information into discourse is an area of particular difficulty for L2 speakers.

  PublisherDOI

• Too little, too late: A longitudinal study of English corrective focus by Mandarin speakers

  Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America · 2020-03-23

  articleOpen access

  This study tracks the production of English corrective focus by Mandarin speakers (MS) living in the US over a two-year period. We show that the MS differed from English speakers (ES) in the alignment of the corrective focus pitch accent: while ES productions typically showed a pitch peak on the stressed syllable, followed by an abrupt fall, the pitch rise and fall for MS was later and less steep. While the MS productions became more English-like over time in some respects, the failure to correctly align pitch accent persisted over time. We argue that this misalignment of pitch peak cannot be attributed to a lack of sensitivity to English stress, but rather represents a common failure to master the complex timing patterns involved in synchronizing pitch, intensity, and duration cues with segmental structure in a second language.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Exploring the Use of an Artificial Accent of English to Assess Phonetic Learning in Monolingual and Bilingual Speakers

  Interspeech 2022 · 2020 · 8 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Artificial Intelligence
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• IBSS: Communication in the Global University: A Longitudinal Study of Language Adaptation at Multiple Timescales in Native and Non-Native Speakers

  NSF · $1000k · 2015–2020

Frequent coauthors

• Ellen Broselow

  12 shared

• Chikako Takahashi

  Columbia University

  9 shared

• Hyunah Baek

  9 shared

• Marie K. Huffman

  Stony Brook University

  5 shared

• Laura Spinu

  City University of New York

  5 shared

• Alex Hong-Lun Yeung

  Stony Brook University

  5 shared

• Sophia Kao

  5 shared

• Yunju Suh

  Dong-A University

  5 shared