I am an applied linguist with a PhD from the University of Birmingham (UK), and a tenured Associate Professor on the teaching professorial track at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Singapore. I am also concurrently serving as Head within the English Language and Literature (ELL) Academic Group in NIE.

For my first degree, I read English Language, English Literature, and European Studies at the National University of Singapore, eventually graduating with a first class Honours degree in English Language. I went on to spend several wonderful years at the University of Birmingham, working on a PhD thesis that focused on analysing the construction and perception of written voice in academic writing.

The main focus of my teaching and research is in the area of academic writing (in particular Academic Literacies and English for Academic Purposes). I am also interested in discourse analysis, the nature of writing in the current digital age, and wider issues associated with effective teaching and learning in Higher Education, particularly involving the use of technology and multimodality.

Since joining NIE in 2005, I have developed and taught a range of academic writing courses. These include undergraduate-level and doctoral-level courses aimed at providing academic writing instruction to students from across different disciplinary specialisations, as well as a course in our Master of Arts (Applied Linguistics) programme that focuses on Academic Literacies and EAP as research fields. I have also developed and taught courses on text analysis, grammar, and the teaching of writing. I am a strong believer in the need for teachers in Higher Education to explore ways of teaching and meaning-making that are aligned with the technology-rich world that our students now inhabit, and I try in many of my courses to leverage on online collaborative tools, game-based learning platforms, social media, and other educational apps.

My career in NIE has seen me serving in various administrative capacities, including Programme Coordinator of NIE's Postgraduate Diploma in English Language Teaching (PGDELT) programme for university EFL lecturers from China (2007-2012), Programme Coordinator of the Bachelor of Arts (Education) English Language programme (2012-2014), Assistant Head (Pre-Service Programmes), and Deputy Head (Programmes and Teaching) within the English Language and Literature Academic Group.

More about me: http://ramonatang.wordpress.com/