Natalia Dolgova, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
Heather Weger, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, DC, USA

Welcome to the pre-convention issue of AL Forum, newsletter for the Applied Linguistics Interest Section! TESOL 2020 is fast approaching. To preview some of the contributions that ALIS is making to this year’s convention, we have invited four presenters to share what they have been working on and what they will be presenting in Denver.

We are excited to feature a preview of Diane Larsen-Freeman’s presentation as our first article. In the article, Larsen-Freeman calls on researchers and educators to embrace learner agency and the role it plays in driving student learning. Our other three articles report the results of studies examining a variety of issues that impact the daily realities of classroom instruction. In the second article, Nicholas Rhea details results from his study examining students’ perceptions of native speaker instructor ideal in the Afghani-EFL context. The third article, authored by Dakota Thomas-Wilhelm, reports on his study that explored the effects of using theories of GenSLA to inform instruction of the article system (e.g, “a” and “the”) in the context of L1-Mandarian learners of English studying in the US. Finally, Robert Taferner shares findings from his study that examined the use of image schema to inform the instruction of spatial prepositions (i.e., “in” and “on”) in the Japanese-EFL context.

In leadership updates, in their letter, our co-chairs-elect Bahiyyih Hardacre and Polina Vinogradova introduce themselves and share information about the upcoming Academic Session they are organizing at TESOL 2020. In his letter, our chair Ben White provides details on the two Intersection panels that ALIS co-organized with the Social Justice and Teacher Education Interest Sections and invites readers to stay tuned for the upcoming ALIS webinar.

We hope you enjoy this issue and hope to see many of you in Denver!

Cheers,

Natalia and Heather