Dear Readers,

Welcome to AL Forum, newsletter for the Applied Linguistics Interest Section (ALIS)! We are happy to announce that Dr. Heather Weger, who served as guest co-editor for the Fall 2018 issue of AL Forum, has agreed to join the editor team on a permanent basis! Heather holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from Georgetown University and has most recently joined the Legal English faculty at Georgetown University Law Center. She has over 15 years of experience in the field as classroom educator, teacher-trainer, and international consultant. Her research focuses on effective teaching strategies as well as the social and co-constructed nature of language learning and language teaching. We are very excited to collaborate with Heather on preparing this and future AL Forum issues!

In this issue, we are sharing four articles that capture the breadth of the field and present various angles of current research foci and themes in applied linguistics. In the first article, Dustin Crowther, Peter De Costa, and Jeffrey Maloney provide a succinct synthesis of current themes in research literature on English as an International Language. In the second article, authors Linh Phung, Sachiko Nakamura, and Hayo Reinders report results of their study testing the effects of different pedagogic task types on student engagement. The third article, co-authored by Hoa Nguyen, Anna Ciriani-Dean, Ying Jia, and Hector Gonzalez, illustrates how advanced L2 learners in a first-year college writing course engage with and utilize peer review feedback. Lastly, Yu Tian and Marino Fernandes share a step-by-step corpus-assisted procedure for teaching reporting verbs and general practices for appropriate textual borrowing to international students. Presentations on all four of these articles will be part of the TESOL 2019 Convention program, so we encourage our readers to attend these sessions and connect with the respective authors for further details regarding their research.

Speaking of the TESOL Convention, our Chair-Elect Benjamin White shared the details of the ALIS academic session, which features presentations by two members of the ALIS leadership team.

Verbing Out with Cognitive Linguistics and Sociocultural Theory

This academic session explores the promise that cognitive linguistics and sociocultural theory hold for effective L2 English instruction. Andrea Tyler, Natalia Dolgova, James Lantolf, and Benjamin White share techniques and materials for teaching traditionally challenging areas of English—including phrasal verbs; conditionals; make, take, do, get, and have; and tense-aspect.

Please join the ALIS academic session on 14 March 2019, 11:30 am–1:15 pm in the GWCC, room A412.

Also in this issue our Chair Kathryn Howard highlights information about key ALIS sessions at TESOL 2019 and shares a call for volunteers interested in being nominated to ALIS chair-elect position. Details regarding the election of new officers will be sent this Spring through direct communication from ALIS.

We hope you enjoy the issue and look forward to seeing many of you in Atlanta!

Best,
Natalia & Heather