To ALIS members:

My name is Eli Hinkel, and I am the current chair-elect and will continue in this capacity for another minute. Maybe two. During the Dallas convention, I will miraculously turn into the ALIS chair, like a caterpillar into a butterfly. IS chairs are far more likely to be pinned to a piece of cardboard than chair-elects, goes without saying.

I hope that many ALIS members are planning to attend the TESOL convention in Dallas. TESOL conventions represent wonderful—and perhaps unique—opportunities to expand one's professional horizons, meet new fellow professionals, and in general gauge the pulse of the business. I wouldn't miss it for the world, and I haven't in the past 24 years (no one is getting any younger around here). But in March, the weather in Dallas may be warmer and nicer than in probably half of the country, and this is definitely an additional benefit for someone like me, from Seattle. I teach at Seattle University and have been here for the past 17 years, rain and all.

ALIS membership includes many diverse language professionals who work in a large number of countries and geographical and teaching contexts, and as an outcome, we similarly have a broad range of interests and concerns. For the TESOL convention, the job of the chair-elect is to organize the ALIS Academic Session, the crown jewel of each IS in terms of quality, currency, and appeal, as well as InterSections—joint presentations with other ISs.

In March in Dallas, two such sessions will be presented for your professional and intellectual titillation. I hope you'll find them stimulating, useful, productive, practical, enlightening, and beyond compare. The ALIS Academic Session seeks to address the much-discussed gap between current research and the practice of language teaching and demonstrate direct applications of research findings to the classroom. The session is titled "Practicalities of Teaching Academic Reading and Writing." It goes without saying that a great deal of language teaching is devoted to the teaching of reading and writing at practically any level of learner proficiency and in a broad range of teaching contexts.

To this end, the ALIS Academic Session would like to be as appealing as possible to as many language professionals as possible. The speakers at the Academic Session are famous and well-established experts who will present a realistic groundwork for teaching academic reading and writing: Marianne Celce-Murcia, University of California, Los Angeles; Neil Anderson, Brigham Young University; and Anne Burns, Macquarie University. These authorities will discuss discourse-based grammar for teaching reading and writing, expectations of academic reading and writing at the university, a pedagogical models for genre and grammar in academic writing, and research findings on grammar essential in for academic writing. The ALIS Academic Session will run on Thursday afternoon.

The second session is a joint undertaking that includes both ALIS and the Intensive English Programs IS, with the title "Applied Linguistics and IEP Teaching Essentials of Academic Skills." This InterSection will work with research findings in applied linguistics useful in intensive English instruction and explore their practical applications in the teaching of academic listening, grammar, and academic writing. The speakers at the session are similarly well-known researchers and methodologists: Jim Bame, Utah State University; Gena Bennett, Independent Scholar; and Jan Frodesen, University of California, Santa Barbara. The session will focus on the essentials of instruction, based on the analyses of academic corpora, combined with practical suggestions for grammar "noticing" and production activities to develop writing accuracy and fluency. This InterSection is scheduled on Saturday morning.

Come one, come all! I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible in Dallas. I'm the one with the carrot top, a gorgeous Russian accent, and cigarettes in my pocket. My email address is elihinkel@yahoo.com.

Please do not forget to come to the ALIS Business Meeting on Thursday evening. We need your presence, participation, and wisdom to figure out what to plan for the 2014 TESOL convention in Portland, Oregon. Which will happen soon enough, mark my words. And please don't forget to sharpen your pencils.

Eternally yours,

Eli Hinkel