Overview
Joy Kwon received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) in English Language and Linguistics. Her dissertation, entitled “Defining perceptual similarity with phonological levels of representations: Feature (mis)match in Korean and English,” explores levels of phonological representation and how they delineate perceptual similarity between the two languages. Simply put, her research focuses on how we can better explain what “similar sounds” mean for a language learner and aims to provide implications for second language acquisition.
She first started her language-teacher career as an ESL instructor after receiving a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) certificate at UW-Madison. In 2018, she joined the STARTALK Korean Language and Culture Academy as an instructor and has been enjoying teaching Korean. Prior to joining the Korean program at Cornell, she worked as a Postdoctoral Teaching Associate in the Writing Program at Northeastern University.
