With a Ph.D. in literature, Xiao is an associate professor, a master supervisor and a national Mandarin tester. She is currently the Chairman of the Labor Union and the Party Secretary of the Department of Chinese Language of the School of International Chinese Studies at ECNU. She previously worked as the Deputy Head of the Department of Chinese Language and Director of the Chinese Language Teacher Training Center. After graduating from the Department of TCFL at ECNU in 1994, she stayed on as a teacher in the same year. From 1998 to 1999, she went on an inter-university exchange to ISUGA, France. From 2008 to 2009, she visited the University of Washington in the US. She offers language courses for both degree and non-degree international students, methodology courses for master's thesis writing in humanities and social sciences, and professional courses for academic master's degree in TCSOL. She has published dozens of papers, two monographs, two translations, and multiple textbooks. She was granted the Shanghai Academic Publication Fund in 2008, and has assumed projects at the provincial, ministerial and other levels.
