Sun-Young Shin, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA

Dear ALISers,

As the 2023 TESOL convention is fast approaching and my term as chair of the Applied Linguistics Interest Section (ALIS) is winding down, I would first like to thank the leadership team of ALIS for their work and the entire ALIS community for their support for us. We have achieved many accomplishments over the past year, through the TESOL academic session and multiple ALIS webinars.

The ALIS Academic Session at the 2022 TESOL Convention entitled "Development and Validation of Aviation and Medical English Assessments” with Angela Garcia, Jennifer Roberts, Brigita Seguis, and Jirada Wudthayagorn was well-attended and demonstrated how English proficiency tests can be constructed and validated for aviation and medical purposes. We also coordinated several webinars on Aviation English with English for Specific Purposes (ESP)-interest section (IS). We invited five excellent experts in Aviation English. They discussed multiple aspects of Aviation English including how language proficiency requirements (LPRs) for pilots, cabin crews, air traffic controllers, and maintenance technicians can be identified and implemented into curricula and assessments. If you missed their talks, you could still access the recordings of their webinars on TESOL's YouTube channel.

In addition to academic sessions and webinars on ESP assessments, I had a great opportunity to host another webinar series called “Meet TESOL Quarterly (TQ) Authors.” We invited authors whose TQ articles were found to be the most interesting and relevant to ALISers and TQ readers. Dr. Kazuya Saito, Dr. Lisbeth Brevik, and Dr. Ulrikke Rindal were invited to talk about their TQ articles and respond to questions from readers and the audience. These webinars are also available on TESOL’s YouTube channel, and Saito’s discussion of his TQ paper is summarized in a feature article published in this newsletter.

In this coming TESOL convention, we are going to jointly organize two Academic Intersections, one with ESP-IS and the other with International Teaching Assistant (ITA)-IS. The first intersection with ESP-IS is about using linguistic data in ESP assessment and curriculum design; the four invited panelists will discuss the use of data to support aviation, medical, and legal English curricula and assessments in both workplace and academic settings. In the second intersection, three invited panelists will discuss which specific pronunciation factors influence intelligibility and will explain how ITA trainers can use this information for more effective language instruction.

I am also very excited to be welcoming our current chair-elect, Rashad Ahmed, as chair. I am confident his knowledge and experience will be of great benefit to our ALIS community. He will continue to build a strong network of TESOL teachers and experts, which will be demonstrated by his successful hosting of an Academic Session at the 2023 TESOL convention.

Thank you again for allowing me to have an opportunity to serve as ALIS chair. I learned a lot from other TESOL scholars and professionals in our field. I’m looking forward to seeing many of you at the TESOL convention in March.

Sincerely,

Sun