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Sun-Young Shin
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Rashad Ahmed
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Dear ALISers,
We hope that your Fall semester has been productive and enjoyable so far. We would like to share some exciting news about our ALIS activities this academic year!
First, we plan to co-host a series of webinars about Aviation English with English for Specific Purposes (ESPIS). We have invited five leading scholars in Aviation English, and our first webinar talk took place on September 23. This webinar is also representing the International Civil Aviation English Association (ICAEA) as a collaborator with TESOL. The invited speakers introduced Aviation English, talked about the policies which drive assessment practices, and described the current state of assessment in Aviation English. The second webinar of this series took place on Oct. 21, 2022. Stay tuned for the info on the third webinar coming soon!
Secondly, in late May, we had a meeting with the TESOL Quarterly (TQ) editorial team to start an informal webinar series to invite authors of popular TQ articles to share their research stories and interact with readers. We identified 10 most downloaded articles; then we had a poll among ALIS leaders and based on the results of that poll, invited authors of TQ articles that we found most interesting to ALISers and TQ readers. This will be an excellent opportunity to learn more about what is really going on in conducting thought-provoking research in the field of TESOL. Our first talk with an influential TESOL author will start in November 2022.
Thirdly, for TESOL 2023, we are co-hosting two academic intersessions: first is with ESP-IS, and second is with International Teaching Assistants (ITA)-IS. With ESP-IS, we have invited four speakers to our panel Using Linguistic Data in ESP Assessment and Curriculum Design to inform ESP curriculum and assessment contributions to language programs and testing instruments with increased efficacy, authenticity, and validity. This panel will discuss the use of data to support aviation, medical, and legal English curriculum and assessment tools for both professionals and students. In the intersession with ITA-IS, we have three speakers to discuss topics on intelligibility, particularly on intelligibility-focused instruction relevant to ITA instruction.
We are also ready for the Academic Session for TESOL 2023, which will be on artificial intelligence and the metaverse in language education. The widespread use of technology in language education, especially in the last few years, has raised many questions about the future of language teaching and learning. In ALIS’s 2023 academic session, we will address an important question that is relevant to all TESOLers and applied linguists: To what extent and in what ways will Artificial Intelligence and the Metaverse shape the future of language education? Three sessions have been confirmed, and more details will be shared later with the community.
If you have any questions about our program for this year or if you have ideas for events and webinars, please do not hesitate to reach out to us. We look forward to working with you.
All the best,
Sun and Rashad
Sun-Young Shin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Second Language Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. His research interests include integrated language assessments, pragmatics assessment, and classroom-based language assessment.
Rashad Ahmed is an Assistant Professor of TESOL and Linguistics at Jacksonville State University, AL. He has a wide range of research interests that involve Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL), language assessment, digital Literacy, TESOL methods, and sociolinguistics. |
