Greetings, Applied Linguistics IS Members!

We are a diverse group, in terms of geography, research interests and teaching contexts, but we all cohere around an interest in the ways that research informs our approaches to teaching and learning, and we have many riches in terms of the expertise and perspectives we can share, so I am very glad to be serving the group as chair this year. With so many changes going on under the new U.S. administration and the effects felt across the country and around the world, your involvement with TESOL and what you bring from research and practice as language educators is more important than ever. It seems a good time to try to generate more engagement among us as an online community, and we are hoping to push forward with that in the coming months, at the convention and online.

Let me say a few words about events planned for Seattle, and then I want to focus on organizational changes underway that will affect our IS. For the convention, there is a very strong and richly diverse slate of refereed presentations, so please be sure to search the program for ALIS events. The academic session, organized by our Chair-Elect, Olga Griswold, will address the role of linguistics in teacher preparation—please see her piece in this newsletter for details. We are also cosponsoring two exciting InterSection panels. Working with the English for Specific Purposes IS, we have organized a panel on “Authentic English for Business, Medical, and Legal Purposes,” that looks at uses of sociolinguistic research to inform language teaching materials and curriculum in the professions. This panel (23 March, 9:30 am–11:15 am) features Margaret van Naerssen, Kevin Knight, and Felicia Roberts. We have also teamed up with the Adult Education and Refugee Concerns Interest Sections to organize a panel, “Connecting Research to Practice: Serving Adult Emergent Readers,” which will bring a rich collection of research insights into serving very low-level adult language learners in our teaching practice. This panel (22 March, 9:30 am–11:15 am) features Jenna Altherr Flores, Patsy Egan Vinogradov, Martha Bigelow, and Raichle Farrelly.

Finally, I wanted to say a few words about changes underway with TESOL that affect our IS community. The recently launched myTESOL online community spaces and discussions for each IS (replacing the former email lists) are part of a larger interest in cultivating engagement with the organization that includes not just the annual convention, but year-round and online exchanges and involvement. Some of you are already seeking advice and sharing expertise on our ALIS discussion board, and we hope to make better use of this going forward. Another change has to do with a rethinking of the organization of ISs, changing their functions to have less involvement with vetting proposals and encouraging more year-round activities, such as webinars. These changes are still under discussion, but we hope the result will be stronger community among our IS membership, and we will keep you posted on the progress. We also hope to consult you with an online survey sometime soon to learn more about how we can serve our members and bring people together and help to support effective language education that serves our learners in challenging times.

Wishing you a very productive and resilient spring, and I hope to see you in Seattle or in our online myTESOL community space.

David Olsher