Sook Hee Lee

I have written two books which are aimed at helping students to learn, and teachers to teach, the real colloquial English that is spoken by native English speakers. These are:

Evaluating Words Ending with 'Y': Mastering 'Real' Everyday English (student book)

Principles and Practices of Oral Communication: Appraisal Theory and Its Application to Casual Conversation (teacher book)

Here are some reviews of these books:

"This is a quirky, interesting, playful book that provides a very interesting and distinctive approach to understanding how the English language can be used to evaluate our experiences, the people we meet and the things and phenomena we encounter. It expresses the exceptional talent that Dr Susan Lee has for introducing her passion for systemic functional linguistics into very practical, very amusing language learning activities for those learning English as a second or foreign language – and also for speakers of English learning more about how we evaluate based on our feelings, our judgements of truthfulness and morality and our appreciation of events, performances, creations and natural phenomena. Principles and Practices of Oral Communication shows how a powerful linguistic theory can be used to produce effective and enjoyable language learning experiences. This is an important book by a truly scholarly teacher who has drawn on her own experience as an English language learner to empower all who read this work."

Dr Len Unsworth

Professor in English and Literacies Education

Australian Catholic University, Sydney

"This book embodies a unique approach to describing aspects of the English language which learners often do not get taught but which are essential to function effectively in an English-speaking environment. The application of the appraisal model of evaluative language in resources for language learners is novel, and the focus on words ending in –y allows a surprisingly wide range of commonly-used evaluative terms to be introduced and exemplified."

Professor Geoff Thompson

Honorary Senior Fellow, School of English, University of Liverpool, UK

Visiting Professor, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou

Guest Professor, University of Science and Technology, Beijing

"This book will be very useful for teachers and learners alike. The author has identified a very interesting area of language that will make users sound more natural and takes their vocabulary to places most coursebooks have previously ignored."

Richard Pincus

Head of teaching at the Embassy Language Centre, Sydney, Australia

"This book is well written and fun to read. I strongly recommend it to those who want to develop a critical ability in English speaking and writing."

Dr Xinghua Liu

PhD (Reading, UK)

Lecturer of Applied Linguistics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China

"Evaluating Words Ending with 'Y' is really interesting and provides essential and crucial knowledge for those who are studying English."

Haneul Lee

An international university student from South Korea

My unique background and the circumstances in which I learnt English have motivated me to produce the practice side of these books. I myself am from an ESL background, having learned English from scratch and have since become an English teacher at a university in Australia. I was born in South Korea but have lived in Australia for almost 20 years. In South Korea, I obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry Education, co-majoring in English literature, and then a Master’s degree in Educational Psychology. Although English was not my major, I had a strong passion for it. My deep interest in learning English enabled me to attain a high standard of English grammar with an extensive vocabulary range. Despite that, like many EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners, when I first arrived in Sydney Australia in 1991 at the age of 35, I could barely speak a word of English. I accompanied my husband who intended to pursue his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Wollongong in N.S.W., Australia. Wollongong is a small city, about two hours drive from Sydney. I had three little children. Due to the stress caused both by financial constraints and my inability to express myself, I contracted Lymphoid Tuberculosis. I thought I was going to die when I was diagnosed with the disease and subsequently underwent two major operations. I took a variety of medications for one and half years every day until I finally recovered from the illness.

My intensive English learning was made possible when I was granted PR (permanent residency) from the Australian government in 1995. I enrolled in an English preparation course for six months to learn how to speak English but my speaking ability was still unsatisfactory. This led me to enrol in a Master’s course in TESOL (Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages) at the University of Wollongong in the hope of improving my speaking skills. It was during this course that I was exposed to Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) theory. I was so fascinated by the theory because the Functional Grammar approach was very different from the traditional grammar and cognitive process approaches through which we learned English back in my country. SFL theory was formulated by M.A.K. Halliday, one of the most prominent scholars in the field of linguistics. He currently holds an honorary position in the Linguistics Department at the University of Sydney. The theory is based on a socio-linguistic orientation in contrast to Chomsky’s psycho-linguistic orientation. After I completed my Masters in TESOL at the University of Wollongong in 2000, I was offered a scholarship at the University of Sydney to do a PhD degree in TESOL.

My PhD was about writing academic essays critically from a linguistic perspective. During this period, a new theory called ‘Appraisal’, which is concerned with evaluative language, was developed from interpersonal meaning within a SFL framework (see details in Sections 1 and 2). Based on Halliday’s (1994) broad notion of interpersonal resources such as speech functions, modality, and attitudinal lexis, the appraisal theory has been further refined by his followers such as Jim Martin and Peter White, who were involved in the Write it Right project sponsored by the NSW Department of Education (Write it Right, 1996). That is, appraisal theory is an extension and a further refinement of existing interpersonal resources. The theory has been initially developed in the contexts of history studies and mass media studies mostly at high schools in NSW (see details, Macken-Horarik & Martin, 2003; Martin & White, 2005/2007; Martin & Rose, 2003/2007, Hood, 2006; 2010; White, 1998, 2004).

My PhD was basically about applying this new theory in an academic writing context in order to address university students’ lack of critical voice in their writing. As a result of this, the theory has been extended a great deal to accommodate it in academic writing. As far as I know, I was the first scholar from South Korea who completed a PhD using the SFL framework and I am one of the few scholars who have used the Appraisal system in academic writing. After completing my PhD in 2005, I have published 9 papers by myself in internationally renowned journals and a book relating to academic writing (see the reference list at the back). I now have a substantial amount of expertise in the field of academic literacy. The ideas and philosophies underpinning the theoretical frameworks used in this book are drawn from the SFL and Appraisal theories used in my PhD. After my PhD, I taught IELTS and EAP courses at several colleges. I am currently employed by Study Group Australia as the Study Support Coordinator for students enrolled at the Charles Sturt University Study Centre in Sydney and am an adjunct lecturer at the university. My main role is to teach how to write academic essays to both local Australian students and international students from 60 nationalities both at undergraduate and postgraduate level. I am a reviewer of the Journal of US-China Foreign Language and Sino-US English Teaching and am on the Editorial Board of the TESOL Journal, a sister journal to the Asian EFL Journal. I am also a member of the Association for Academic Language and Learning (AALL) and the Australian Systemic Functional Linguistics Association (ASFLA). I am a regular columnist in the Korean Top Weekly Newspaper, which has been published in Sydney since 2008.