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Staff Profile

Dr Sujeewa Hettiarachchi

Senior Lecturer in Second Language Acquisition

  • Address: School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, Percy Building, Newcastle University, Newcastle, NE1 7RU, UK.
Background

Role in the School


Senior Lecturer in Second Language Acquisition

Degree Programme Director - MA in Linguistics and iPhD in Linguistics (Taught Phase)


Biography

PhD in Linguistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA

MA in Linguistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA

MA in TESOL, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI, USA

BA (Hons) in English, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka



Research


My research is broadly concerned with how adult learners acquire and process a second language, with a particular focus on syntax and the interfaces between syntactic knowledge and other linguistic domains, including semantics, pragmatics and phonology. A recurring question in my work concerns ultimate attainment in L2 acquisition: what is the upper boundary of adult L2 development, and what factors determine it?


I approach these questions from a psycholinguistic perspective. Rather than treating competence as an abstract end-state, I am interested in how learners deploy their developing linguistic knowledge in real time, during both comprehension and production, and what experimental methods can reveal about the cognitive mechanisms that support this process.


My work therefore sits at the intersection of theoretical linguistics and cognitive science. I draw on a range of experimental paradigms to investigate L2 competence and processing, with particular attention to how cognitive and affective factors, including working memory, attention and motivational profiles, modulate acquisition outcomes and language-processing behaviour. These learner-internal variables are central to understanding how formal linguistic knowledge is acquired, accessed and deployed in real-time L2 processing.


Finally, I am interested in what psycholinguistic and interface research can tell us about the design and effectiveness of L2 instruction. In particular, I ask how insights into real-time language processing, interface sensitivity and learner-internal variables might inform broader instructional practices in second/foreign language learning contexts.


Taken together, my research agenda bridges theoretical linguistics, experimental psycholinguistics and applied language pedagogy, and I welcome PhD students who share interests across any of these areas.


Current and Recent PhD Supervision


(1) Language Learning Motivation among Young Adults in the North-East of England: A Mixed-Methods Exploration (Deanna Dawson). Joint supervision with Dr Rebecca Woods


(2) The Acquisition of N–N Compounds and Resultative Constructions by Arabic and Turkish Speakers (Samer Hannafiyeh). Joint supervision with Dr William van der Wurff and Professor

Martha Young-Scholten.


(3) The Second Language Acquisition of English Phrasal Verbs by Arabic, Chinese and German Speakers (Faisal Alharbi). Joint supervision with Dr William van der Wurff and Professor

Martha Young-Scholten


Recent Conference Presentations


Hettiarachchi, S., Kelly, N., & Pushpakumara, S. (2026, April 16–18). Re-testing the Interface Hypothesis: Phonology-pragmatics interface in L2 tag questions [Conference poster]. The 18th Meeting of Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition, University of Cambridge, U.K


Hettiarachchi, S., Indrarathne, B., Vanek, N., & Matějka, Š. (2024, November 9). Online application of Binding Principle-A in L1 and L2 sentence processing [Conference poster]. 49th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, Boston, MA, United States.


Indrarathne, B., Vanek, N., Hettiarachchi, S., & Matějka, Š. (2024, August 11). He broke the coconut but the coconut didn't break: Event realisation and its processing in Sinhala learners of English [Conference paper]. AILA World Congress of the International Association of Applied Linguistics, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.


Vanek, N., Indrarathne, B., Hettiarachchi, S., & Matějka, Š. (2024, March 19). Learners can outperform native speakers in probabilistic computations: Evidence from eye-fixations when processing unrealized events [Conference paper]. American Association of Applied Linguistics (AAAL) Conference, Houston, TX, United States.




Teaching


SEL2237- Introduction to Second Language Learning and Teaching

SEL8701- Foundations in Second Language Learning and Teaching

SEL3430 - Advanced Second Language Acquisition

SEL8690 - Advanced Topics in Second Language Acquisition

SEL8500 - Research Methods in Language and Linguistics


Publications