Hello friends and neighbours,

I’d like to begin with my sincere thanks for the warm welcome you have given me. I am thrilled with this opportunity to serve you as the new editor of InterCom.

TESOL’s ICIS is a timely and relevant interest group, situated as it is at the intersection of language and culture. I find it unique amongst the interest groups because, in addition to being of intellectual and professional interest, it is applicable to the everyday experiences of so many TESOL members as they live and work in intercultural environments.

I tried to capture that unique character of ICIS in this, my first issue of InterCom. Amongst the articles published here you will find a wide range of settings and players on the intercultural stage: from Andy Curtis’s discussion of the complex and contradictory status of English in contemporary India, to Elena Shvidko’s synthesis of research on the experiences of international students in U.S. university freshman composition courses and Xueying Wu’s advice to visiting scholars who cross borders to study and teach.

Many thanks to these colleagues for sharing their work and experiences with us, and especially for working with me to get this newsletter out so quickly.

I look forward to meeting many of you in Portland and Shantou at the upcoming conferences. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this issue of the ICIS newsletter.

Cheers,

Kris

Kris Acheson-Clair (PhD in Intercultural Communication, Arizona State University, 2008) is Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Applied Linguistics & ESL at Georgia State University. She teaches courses in intercultural communication, sociolinguistics, and teaching methods, and her research interests include silence, motivation for FL study, and teaching and assessing intercultural competence.