Ying Zhou received her Ph.D. in Chinese Linguistics and M.A. in Second Language Studies from the University of Hawaii, Manoa. She earned her B.A. in English from the Beijing Language and Culture Univeristy, China. She grew up in China and came to the United States for graduate school. Before joining St. Olaf College in 2014, she tuaght for five years at the Defense Language Institute at Monterey. Her main area of research is in second language acquisition and pedagogy. She is particularly interested in affective factors in second language learning and second language assessment. She has published papers on individual differences and affective factors in learning Chinese as a second language. Her recent research interests include willingness to communicate and ethinic identty in second language acquistion.