Biography
Dr. Bich-Ngoc Turner grew up in Hanoi, Vietnam. She went to the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2000 to pursue her graduate study and earned her PhD in American Studies in 2011. Her academic interests are US-Vietnam's postwar relations, modern Vietnamese literature and culture. Before joining the Asian Languages and Literature program at the University of Washington, she worked as a lecturer of Vietnamese at Yale University, and later, as an instructor of Vietnamese language and culture at the U.S. Department of State. In addition, she also worked on a number of government and academic projects relating to Vietnamese language testing, Vietnamese proficiency assessment guidelines, and curriculum development.
Since she joined the Department of Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Washington, Bich-Ngoc's academic interests have grown into Vietnamese lexicology, literature, and material development pedagogy. She has been actively involved in numerous projects in instructional material development, proficiency guidelines, and assessment in Vietnamese. Between 2015 and 2017, she collaborated with Vietnamese colleagues in other US universities to develop content-based Vietnamese instructional materials for elementary and intermediate levels. Since 2018, she has been fully certified by ACTFL to be a Vietnamese OPI tester. In 2019-2021, Bich-Ngoc led a project to develop a US standardized Oral Proficiency Guidelines in Vietnamese. In 2022-2023, she led a team of Vietnamese instructors across the US to develop advanced reading and instructional materials and was also the co-author of a Vietnamese testing package in reading proficiency and assessment guidelines.
Bich-Ngoc has been the proud recipient of Henry Luce Foundation grant in the academic years 2016-2023.
Read about her teaching experience at UW and life in Seattle here and her recent contributions in the development of a Vietnamese studies program at UW here.