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The Dallas convention is over, and we are moving onward to the
2014 TESOL convention in Portland, Oregon, USA. The King is dead, long
live the King. My name is Eli Hinkel, and I am the current ALIS chair,
due to hand over my position in March, 2014.
Our thank you and thank you again to Kara Hunter, currently the
past ALIS chair. Kara worked with almost a thousand proposals for TESOL
2013 and dozens of reviewers. Kara's proposal reading skills are
legendary, and, luckily for ALIS, her experience and acumen will
continue to benefit the membership.
Scott Phillabaum, who has been the ALIS community manager for
many years, has surprisingly found other things to do. ALIS is grateful
to Scott for many years of service and dedication. Thank you! I am the
new community manager, so please send me new announcements, discussion
topics, communications, communiqués, e-mails, letters, telegrams, post
cards, and secret messages. During the coming year, I will wear two hats
as the chair and the community manager, and after my chairing is done,
only the managerial one.
The Dallas convention was well-attended, and the convention
center allowed all attendees to get a great deal of exercise walking
from one hallway to the next. Me, I budgeted around 15–20 minutes to
traverse the vast space and to travel from one room to another. If, in
addition, one would per chance encounter old acquaintances and
colleagues en route, then the journey could take about a half an hour,
more or less.
The ALIS academic session gathered a large audience of about
400-plus. The session was devoted to "Practicalities of Teaching
Academic Reading and Writing," with the presentations by Marianne
Celce-Murcia, University of California, Los Angeles; Neil Anderson,
Brigham Young University; and Anne Burns, Macquarie University. If you
missed the convention and the academic session, my sincere condolences
for your loss.
The ALIS Open Meeting entailed a spirited debate about the
virtues and demerits of chopping all IS academic sessions beginning in
2014 (most have been chopped) and 2015 when all will be chopped from 2
hours and 24 minutes to 1 hour and 45 minutes. Since there are 21 ISs in
TESOL, the remaining 21 hours will be devoted to new types of sessions
designated by TESOL Central Office and the Convention Committee.
The plan is to get the keynote and invited speakers who present
earlier in the day or on the previous day to each conduct what is
currently called "the deep-dive" 3-hour workshops to follow on their
initial presentations. Many have expressed a hope that these workshops
will turn out to be useful, practical, productive, applicable to a great
variety of the convention attendees, insightful, educational, engaging
(not a trivial task for 3 hours), engrossing, and excellent. If my math
works correctly, there should be seven of these.
Other news bites:
ALIS will turn 40 next year, in 2014! This is major benchmark
that deserves a big celebration. ALIS dates back to 1974, and its
original early members included Bernard Spolsky and Robert Kaplan. At
the time, ALIS served as the only applied linguistics venue for
pedagogical and research activities in the United States. During the
Open Meeting, some have advanced a hypothesis that ALIS should host a
reception to mark this important event. It goes without saying that all
receptions cost money, and we'll see if a bit of funding can in fact
materialize for the occasion. If not, please attend the Open Meeting on
Thursday evening in any case and bring your own sandwich, apple, or a
drink that can include soda, juice, water, tea, coffee, or even
something stronger, such as beer. We will clank our plastic containers
and celebrate in earnest.
TESOL proposal reviewers who submitted their application forms
last year had to submit them again this year because now there is a new
piece of software to process them. One aspect of the new online form
that has caused a lot of headaches is that it allowed checking off only
two to four boxes for the reviewers' areas of expertise. Of course, in
the ESL/EFL world where most teachers and researchers typically work
with a number of L2 skills, such a small number of areas proved to be
very limiting. The current design of the software simply refused to
accept the completed form if one checked more expertise boxes. On the
bright side, potential reviewers who worked their way through the
45-minute training video last year did not have to repeat it.
Portland, Oregon, is definitely not Dallas, Texas. I live in
Seattle, 200 miles from Portland, and my car can practically drive
itself there: It has had a lot of practice. Locally, Portland is famous
for three things: excellent food and countless breweries (there are
probably millions of them), Powell's book store—the largest independent
book store in the United States that takes up an entire city block (and
where you need a map to get around—trust me, you really do need a map),
and being the most tattooed city in the country. If you like to eat,
read books, and watch tattoos as they walk by, you have to come to
Portland. The Oregon Convention Center does not require as much hiking
as the one in Dallas. TESOL Central Office has already announced that
because the Portland site is smaller, the rate of proposal acceptance
will also be smaller, something along the lines of 28%. On the bright
side, Oregon has no sales tax, and the price you see stickered on
something is the price you pay at the register.
Eternally yours,
Eli Hinkel |
