Yu Tian (Rain) is a Ph.D. candidate in Chinese Linguistics. She received her M.A. in Linguistics from the University of New Hampshire and B.A. in Teaching Chinese as a Second Language in China. Her major research interests include second language acquisition and teaching in Chinese, Chinese syntactic theory, syntax-semantics/pragmatic interface and multilingual writing& tutoring. She's currently working on her dissertation titled as "Intention reading and pattern finding: Acquisition of Nominal Compounds by Learners with Chinese as a Second Language (CSL)".