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Dear ICIS members,
I have always thought of the Fall as a time when things come to their fruition. It is indeed a time for harvesting the seeds that were planted earlier in the year, a time for reflection, and a time to celebrate one’s accomplishments. To remember all the good things that have happened is important as we set our goals for the next year.
ICIS has been busy since September. With a growing membership across all platforms — MyTESOL, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter — we are able to connect more and more colleagues across the globe. An exemplary event that showcased our membership diversity was our September Lightning Talks Webinar “Emerging Trends in Intercultural Research” that hosted six doctoral students:
- Nino Chachanidze (Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia),
- Soyoung Sarah Han (The Pennsylvania State University),
- Hamza R'boul (Public University of Navarre),
- Amanda Swearingen (University of Minnesota),
- Vu Ngoc Tung (Vnu University Of Languages And International Studies, Hanoi, Vietnam & University At Albany, State University Of New York) and
- Michael D. Winans (Arizona State University).
The dialogue with doctoral students who logged in from different countries, at different stages of their academic careers, with different research interests was quite dynamic! The Lightning Talk format is growing in popularity across all disciplines (as argued in this Nature article) and many large organizations are paying attention. We are so grateful to all the presenters and attendees who took a chance and joined us for the event.
Our next Lightning Talk — “Stories from the classroom”: Practitioners share their work — will take place in January, but the Call for Proposals is already out. Please submit your talk or share this information with a colleague who might be interested. We would love to hear more about what happens in your classrooms!
On November 17th we welcomed Dr. Joshua Gordon in an academic webinar “Tensions with Teaching Pronunciation: Intelligibility vs First-Language Accents in Intercultural Communication”. Dr. Gordon explored tensions with teaching pronunciation as a form of intercultural communicative competence for nonnative-speaking (NNS) teachers. He discussed the cognition behind the implementation of pronunciation-teaching techniques, and the positive benefits NNS models can bring to the class to enhance oral communication – a key element at present in the context of World Englishes where interactions among speakers of different cultures are more in demand every day.
As always, thank you for being a part of the ICIS community. If you have any ideas for events or want to be involved in any way, let us know!
All the best,
Dr. Natalia Balyasnikova |
