Language and literacy development in language immersion programs; special education and language acquisition; bilingualism and heritage language education; second language acquisition;

Xiaoli is a third-year doctoral student in Applied Linguistics and Language Education. She has presented at AERA 2019, 2019 STARTALK Spring Conference, and the third National Conference on Chinese immersion programs. Having taught Mandarin-English immersion programs as a certified world language educator, Xiaoli is most passionate about investigating immersion program students' language and literacy development and content learning in the context of urban schools. Xiaoli also seeks to integrate research-based language teaching practices into foreign langauge classrooms.

Xiaoli has been a Startalk summar program instructor for three years. In summer 2019, She was promoted as the instructional lead of Howard County Community College summer Startalk program. Xiaoli also worked an English educator in China before coming to the US for her MA in world language in Towson University.