Kathy MinHye Kim

Dr. Kathy MinHye Kim is a clinical assistant professor and program director of language education at BU Wheelock College of Education & Human Development. Her work specializes in understanding how adult learners encode and retain second language (L2) knowledge. In particular, she examines how L2 learners develop implicit and explicit knowledge and factors that mediate their development; these factors include situational features (e.g., input modality), sleep conditions, and individual differences in cognitive (e.g., intelligence, working memory capacity) and biographical (e.g., education level and reading experiences) variables.

Dr. Kim is highly engaged in longitudinal research; in her recent work, she examined the longitudinal associations between linguistic knowledge types (e.g., explicit and implicit L2 knowledge) and how language engagement in a study aboard context impacts the knowledge interface. Currently, she is also working on exploring the development and evaluation of web-based linguistic measures and examining the construct validities of these measures.

Dr. Kim has received grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the International Research Foundation for English Language Education (TIRF), and the National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations/Modern Language Journal (NFMLTA/MLJ). She holds a PhD in second language studies from Michigan State University with an interdepartmental graduate specialization in cognitive science.

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