Lancaster University and Guangdong University of Foreign Studies have been successful in their joint bid for British Academy IPM Scheme, with Dr Richard Xiao from Lancaster as the PI and Prof XU Hai from GDUFS as the Co-I. Dr Luke Harding and Prof Charles Alderson are on theLancasterteam; and Prof LIU Jianda, Mr LIANG Xuehong, Dr WANG Fenglan, Dr HAO Hongyan, and Ms FANG Xiangjuan are on the GDUFS team.

The three-year initiative, entitled"The corpus-based approach to the acquisition of Mandarin Chinese as a foreign language", aims topresent a pioneering approach to Chinese language teaching and learning, and toexplore various theoretical and practical issues pertaining to the acquisition of Chinese as a foreign language. It will further develop and strengthen the recently established partnership between GDUFS and Lancaster.

TheBritishAcademy, which supports and champions excellence in the humanities and social sciences, is to grant more than £20k (non-full economic costing) to the project.