- Associate Professor of Chinese
- Email: mubing@uri.edu
- Office Location: Swan Hall 157
Biography
Bing Mu is Associate Professor of Chinese and Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) Coordinator in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures. She teaches regular-track Chinese courses and department-wide content courses at URI. She is an Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) Certified Tester in Chinese and Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) Qualified Administrator and Interpreter.
Research
Bing Mu’s research interests include intercultural communication and competence, study abroad, and pedagogical material development. In particular, she is interested in implementing intercultural pedagogical approaches to enhance learners’ intercultural competence in study abroad contexts. To this end, she co-authored Action! China: A Field Guide to Using Chinese in the Community, a task-based field guide designed specifically to connect classroom learning with real-life communication in the local community in Chinese study abroad contexts. Her current research focuses on examining factors that affect students’ development of intercultural competence in study abroad and domestic contexts. Her work has appeared in The Modern Language Journal, International Journal of Intercultural Relations, Languages, and several edited volumes.
Education
Ph.D. in Chinese Language Pedagogy, The Ohio State University, 2018
Selected Publications
Mu, B., & Spino, L. (2025). Charting the development of second language proficiency and intercultural competence in postsecondary education. The Modern Language Journal, 109(1), 194–215. http://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12986
Jun, H. R., & Mu, B. (2024). An ecological perspective on agency: L2 learners’ sociopragmatic interpretations and strategies in a study abroad context. Languages, 9(5), 174. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages9050174
Mu, B., Berka, S., Erickson, L., & Pérez-Ibáñez, I. (2022). Individual experiences that affect students’ development of intercultural competence in study abroad. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 89, 30–41. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2022.05.004
Mu, B., Ma, C., & Tian Y. (2022). Reconfiguration of L2 Chinese learners’ ecologies of resources during the COVID-19 pandemic in China and the US. In S. Liu (Ed.), Teaching the Chinese language remotely: Global cases and perspectives (pp. 325–347). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87055-3_14
Mu, B. (2022). Designing a performance-based curriculum for beginning business Chinese to enhance students’ intercultural competence. In J. Wang & J. Jia (Eds.), Performed culture in action to teach Chinese as a foreign language: Integrating PCA into curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment (pp. 135–145). London/New York: Routledge.
Berka, S., Mu, B., Erickson, L., & Pérez-Ibáñez, I. (2021). The role of study abroad curricular interventions in engineering students’ intercultural competence development. In 2021 American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference Proceedings. https://peer.asee.org/37893
Mu, B. (2021). Negotiating intentions in intercultural conversational interactions: Excusing oneself from a family gathering. In X. Zhang & X. Jian (Eds.), The third space and Chinese language pedagogy: Negotiating intentions and expectations in another culture (pp. 45–67). London/New York: Routledge.
Chai, D., & Mu, B. (2020). Connecting language learning in the classroom with the local community: Using Field Performance Tasks in Chinese study abroad contexts. Journal of the National Council of Less Commonly Taught Languages, 27, 33–73.
Chai, D., Cornelius, C., & Mu, B. (2018). Action! China: A field guide to using Chinese in the community. London/New York: Routledge.