Hello Fellow SPLISers!

It seems like the Dallas conference has just finished, but we are already gearing up for 2014. In fact, the lineup for TESOL 2013 presentations will be almost finalized by the time you read this! Proposals have already been submitted and adjudicated. First, I want to say “thank you” to those of you who wrote proposals. It takes knowledge, organization, creativity, and courage to write a good proposal, and we got many, many great ones. In fact, SPLIS received 130 proposals this year. We were only allotted 28 sessions, so tough decisions had to be made. This is where our wonderful reviewers stepped up to the plate. I need to extend my gratitude to all of you who generously took time from your busy lives to read the proposals and rate them. The system was a bit buggy this year, so I really appreciated all of your patience as TESOL worked out the kinks. In the end, each proposal was blind reviewed by three reviewers, and when choosing whether or not to accept the submissions, I relied on their evaluations. SPLIS offerings at the conference next year, just as in past years, has been determined by the volunteers who reviewed proposals. Because I see all the proposals, I can tell you that we had a lot of fantastic submissions, and even though I was restricted to the 28 spaces designated by TESOL, it was hard to “reject” the others that were rated mere decimal places below those we accepted. If your proposal wasn’t selected this year, I strongly encourage you to submit again next year. At any rate, for conference attendees, this stiff competition simply means that there promises to be some excellent sessions in Portland in 2014!

But, we haven’t just been focusing on next year’s conference. In the past few weeks, we have hammered out details for collaboration between TESOL’s SPLIS and the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language’s (IATEFL’s) Pronunciation Special Interest Group (Pron Sig). For several years, the leadership of SPLIS and Pron Sig have sought ways to work together, and we have decided to offer two virtual seminars and two online fielded discussions. Our collaboration will kick off with a virtual seminar, which will be on 29 January 2014, when our very own Char Heitman will present to the world (or at least interested SPLIS and Pron Sig members) about 15 Content-Based Activities for Incorporating Pronunciation Instruction Across the Curriculum. This will be followed by a fielded discussion organized by a Pron Sig member. We are very excited about this initiative! Not only will our members who can’t make it to the annual conference benefit from an opportunity for professional development, but we will also get a chance to find out what our colleagues from across the pond are doing and thinking. I will keep you posted with more details as they become available.

There is a lot to look forward to in 2014, but, in the meantime, I hope you have/had a great “back to school” (for those of you who have had the luxury of time off over the summer). Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns, especially if you are interested in becoming more involved in SPLIS and impacting the way our TESOL community develops.

Tamara Jones

SPLIS Chair

Tamara Jones has been an ESL instructor for 17 years. She has taught in Russia, Korea, England, the United States, and Belgium. She is currently an instructor at the British School of Brussels. Tamara holds a PhD in Education from the University of Sheffield in the UK.