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Dear SLWIS Friends,
As we celebrate our 8th year as an
interest section in TESOL, it’s a great pleasure to serve as the chair
of SLWIS during the year 2012–2013. Just like for many of you, SLWIS has
been a safe academic environment and an important intellectual resource
for me with its supportive and committed community of practitioners.
Therefore, it’s not only a great honor to work in this capacity, but
also a humbling experience to learn with you and from you. No leadership
is successful without its dedicated team of mentors. I would like to
extend special thanks to each and every member of the steering committee
as well as past chairs. I would like to give special thanks to Ditlev
Larsen and Danielle Zawodny Wetzel for their outstanding leadership
skills and mentoring. In this letter, I will provide a brief overview of
what we achieved at the 2012 TESOL International Convention; give an
update on the new proposal review process; talk about next year’s
convention in Dallas; and invite all of you to continue to make SLWIS an
active venue for intellectual collaboration, knowledge construction,
and dissemination.
This year we had many exciting sessions in Philadelphia. There
were around 70 presentations related to second language writing (42 of
them being SLWIS slots), including 1 colloquium on the methodological
complexities in second language writing research and 1 academic session
on multilingual scholars across disciplines. Our InterSections were
enriched by the collaborations done with CALLIS, ESPIS, MWIS, and
NNESTIS. While our sessions provided engaging talks, we also had a
chance to catch up with wonderful colleagues and friends and make new
ones at the Friends of Second Language Writing event. In summary, this
year was no exception in providing rigorous and quality dialogues around
many important second language writing
issues.[1]
In our business meeting, we discussed common areas of interest
for next year’s convention and talked about the new proposal review
process that TESOL has launched this year, among many other things. I’d
like to give a brief update on the new proposal process for those of you
who were unable to attend the convention in Philadelphia. This year,
TESOL asked interested proposal reviewers to fill out an online
application that involved selecting their interest areas as well as the
number of proposals they wanted to review. The potential reviewers were
also asked to take an online or on-site training on how to read and
evaluate TESOL proposals. The new system had an automated matching
system, which matched reviewers with proposals. As a result of this
matching process, each proposal was reviewed by a minimum of three
reviewers. Thanks to the assistance of the Central Office, many personal
e-mail exchanges with leaders, and your individual support in our
e-list community, we managed to successfully adjudicate proposals for
TESOL’s 2013 International Convention.
I am happy to report that SLWIS received a total of 205
proposals this year, one of the highest numbers of proposals we have
received as an IS. This year, the number of proposals received earned us
44 sessions plus 5 poster sessions for the 2013 TESOL International
Convention in Dallas. I want to send a hearty thanks to those of you who
took time to send proposals and share your work with us. Gena Bennett,
chair-elect for 2012–2013, has also been diligently working on putting
together an academic session for next year. In Dallas, it looks like we
will continue the tradition of having outstanding sessions. I would also
like to sincerely thank those of you who have taken the time to
complete the reviewer training and constructively evaluate multiple
proposals.
Let me end this letter by telling you a bit about my own
fascination with second language writing discipline, SLWIS more
specifically. I began drafting this letter while I was thousands of feet
off the ground, on my way from Istanbul, Turkey, to Normal, Illinois. I
wrote the rest at my kitchen table in the midst of preparing for a new
academic year. As I think about all the academic journeys we take and
all the different places we are engaged with scholarship while trying to
compose a meaningful academic life, I regard my engagement with SLWIS
as one of the most enriching ones. The sessions and the dialogues with
many colleagues every year provide a renewed fascination and
encouragement on various issues revolving around second language writers
and writing processes. I believe that many of you have come to share my
feelings on this. Therefore, just like our past chairs did, I would
also like to encourage each and every one of you to continue to get
involved and make your research and teaching stories heard through
multiple venues such as our e-list, the newsletter, and the TESOL
Resource Center or simply by contacting one of the leaders. I would also
like to continue to find ways to develop our understanding of the field
and continue national and international collaborations by building new
networks of communication and information exchange. So please also feel
free to put forward any recommendations you have to improve our IS in
any possible ways. The leadership team is here to address your needs as a
community of teacher-scholars and help move our collective vision
forward.
Truly,
Lisya Seloni
SLWIS Chair, 2012–2013
1 If we missed you this year, please
visit the TESOL 2012 section of our website
to get an overview of the academic sessions and other academic-related
events organized by SLWIS. I would like to thank Charles Nelson, who has
been diligently updating the SLWIS website to make sure that all
resources and information are available in a timely fashion. |
