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Professor Ricky Chan
Associate Professor; Undergraduate Coordinator

Professor Ricky Chan

BA&BED, MPhil HKU; MPhil, PhD Cantab

Contact Information

Phone

3917-4487

Email

rickykwc@hku.hk

Profile

Prof. Ricky Chan earned his BA&BEd in English Language Education (1st Class Honours) and an MPhil in Psycholinguistics from HKU, followed by an MPhil (distinction) and a PhD in Forensic Phonetics from the University of Cambridge. He is also a Fellow of Advance HE, UK. 

As a phonetician and psycholinguist, Prof. Chan employs experimental and statistical methods in his research on experimental phonetics, forensic speaker comparison, implicit language learning, and second language speech learning. His work has appeared in leading journals such as Forensic Science International, Speech Communication, Language Learning, and Studies in Second Language Acquisition. Please visit the Speech, Language, and Cognition Laboratory for details on his research projects. 

Research Expertise  

Experimental phonetics; forensic phonetics; implicit and explicit language learning; psycholinguistics; cognitive approaches to second language acquisition.

Courses Taught 

CCGL9038 Global Englishes 

ENGL1051 English sounds 

ENGL1061 Psycholinguistics and language acquisition 

ENGL2158 Language processing and learning 

ENGL2166 English phonetics 

ENGL3041 Senior colloquium in English studies  

ENGL3042 Extended essay in English studies 

ENGL7102 Global Englishes 

ENGL7115 Analysing speech 

Publications

Refereed Journal Articles

Chan, R., Cayado, D. & Hui, B. (accepted). Covert activation of bilinguals' non-current language and implicit learning (registered report). Language Learning. 

Chan, R. & Wang, B. (2024). Do long-term acoustic-phonetic features and mel-frequency cepstral coefficients provide complementary speaker-specific information for forensic voice comparison? Forensic Science International, 363, 112199. [pdf]

Chan, R. & Wang, B. (2024). Modelling lexical tones for speaker discrimination. Language and Speech, 68(1), 229-243. [pdf] 

Cayado, D. & Chan, R. (2023) The influence of prior linguistic knowledge on L2 semantic implicit learning: Evidence from Cantonese-English bilinguals. Language Learning, 73(3), 657-682. [pdf]

Chan, R. (2023). Evidential Value of Voice Quality Acoustics in Forensic Voice Comparison. Forensic Science International, 348, 111725. [pdf]

Chan, R. (2020). Speaker discrimination: citation tones vs. coarticulated tones. Speech Communication, 117, 38-50. [pdf]

Chan, R. & Leung, J. (2020). Why are lexical tones difficult to learn? Insights from the incidental learning of tone-segment connections. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 42(1), 33-59. [pdf]

Chan, R. & Leung, J. (2018). Implicit knowledge of L2 lexical stress rules: evidence from the combined use of subjective and objective awareness measures. Applied Psycholinguistics, 39(1), 37-66. [pdf]

Chan, R. (2016). Speaker variability in the realization of lexical tones. International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law, 23(2), 195-214. [pdf]

Chan, R. & Leung, J. (2014). Implicit learning of L2 word stress regularities. Second Language Research, 30(4), 463-484. [pdf]

Refereed Book Chapters

Chan, R. (accepted, expected in 2025). Forensic phonetics. In P. Pope (Ed.), Forensic Linguistics. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Chan, R. (accepted, expected in 2025). Tone languages. In F. Nolan, K. McDougall & T. Hudson (Eds), Oxford Handbook of Forensic Phonetics. Oxford University Press.

Refereed Conference Proceedings

Chan, R. & Wang, B. (2024). Can phonetic theories predict speaker discrimination performance? Proceedings of the 38th Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation. Tokyo, Japan.

Chan, R. (2023). Speaker discriminatory power of voice quality acoustics under forensic conditions. Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Prague, Czech Republic.

Chan, R. (2019). Difficulty in learning L2 tones: Insights from the incidental learning of tone-segment mappings. Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Melbourne, Australia.

Leemann, A., Kolly, M. J., Li, Y., Chan, R., Kwek, G. & Jesperson, A. (2016). Towards a typology of prominence perception: the role of duration. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Speech Prosody (SP2016). Boston, MA.

Chan, R. (2015). Speaker variability in the production of coarticulated Tones. Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Glasgow, UK.

Chan, R. & Leung, J. (2012). Implicit learning of L2 word stress rules. In Miyake, N., Peebles, D. & Cooper, R. P. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 34th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.