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Dear SPLIS Members and Readers,
I hope you all have kept safe and healthy in the last six
months while we have been dealing with COVID-19. It has tremendously
changed how things are done globally. Large-scale conferences like
TESOL, AAAL, and IATEFL had to be canceled for 2020 and even some for
2021. So, it has been a challenging year so far for TESOL as well as
other organizations. Although it is sad that we could not meet in Denver
for the annual Convention this year, it is wonderful that TESOL was
able to put a Virtual
Convention together in such a short time.
On 2 April, we had an online open business meeting for Speech,
Pronunciation, and Listening Interest Section (SPLIS) members in which
we said goodbye to some of our former steering committee members,
including Veronica Sardegna, Holly Hubbard, and Suzanne Franks. On
behalf of SPLIS members, I would like to thank them for the great
service they provided for SPLIS. Our steering committee members for
2020–2021 include Catherine Showalter (chair-elect), Matthias Maunsell
(As We Speak coeditor), Shannon McCrocklin
(As We Speak coeditor), Pelin Irgin (community
manager), Sezgi Acar (secretary), and Nancy Elliot (member-at-large). I
am grateful to them all for their contributions so far this year. Last
but not least, I would like to give a heartfelt thank you to Susan
Spezzini (past chair, 2020–2021) and Veronica Sardegna (past chair,
2019–2020) for continually sharing their experiences with me and guiding
me through my new role as the SPLIS chair. I really appreciate their
support!
In our open business meeting, we set several goals for SPLIS in
2020–2021, and two of those important goals were to increase the
visibility of our group and to organize webinars. I am happy to announce
that we are making progress on these goals. Now we have a Facebook page
for SPLIS in addition to our MyTESOL
community page. Please follow us on both platforms and feel free to
invite any of your colleagues who might be interested in speech,
pronunciation, and listening to follow us on Facebook.
We had the first SPLIS webinar on 20 May. Okim Kang, Ron
Thomson, and Meghan Moron presented their research on “Empirical
approaches to measuring intelligibility of different varieties of
English.” It was a wonderful first webinar with 142 attendees. Those of
you who could not attend can view the archived
recording. Our second webinar was on 30 July. Mark Hancock,
who is the author of many well-known pronunciation teaching books, such
as English Pronunciation in Use, Pronunciation Games, and PronPack, talked about how
pronunciation teaching can be approached from four angles: muscle, mind,
meaning, and memory. It was another great webinar with 104 attendees.
Many teachers who used Mark Hancock’s materials in their pronunciation
teaching joined the session. If you could not join us for the talk, see
the archived
recording. Please remember that interest section webinars are
free for both SPLIS members and nonmembers. So, if you think your
colleagues might be interested in a topic, feel free to invite them to
one of our webinars. Additionally, please remember that interest section
webinars are recorded and shared on TESOL International Association’s YouTube
channel.
Another goal we have is to inform you about the events and
conferences that are organized by TESOL or other fellow organizations or
scholars. So, I am also happy to announce that a fellow interest
section of IATEFL, PronSIG, will be organizing an online pronunciation conference on 4
October 2020. Please follow them to learn more about the proposal
submission and registration. To read the proceedings from the
11th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching (PSLLT)
Conference, please click here.
Lastly, click here for the
latest issue of Journal of Second Language
Pronunciation.
And finally, I would like to thank those who contributed to
this issue of our newsletter: Teresa Cusumano, Rita DiFiore, Kayla
Landers, Mary Newbegin, Elena Reiss, Juli Sarris, Ashley Fifer, Kim
Edmunds, Carolyn Saylor-Loof, and Tristan Thorne. I would also like to
thank our newsletter coeditor Shannon McCrocklin for interviewing Marnie
Reed, a prominent practitioner and researcher in second language
pronunciation. I would especially like to give a shout-out to our
newsletter coeditor, Matthias Maunsell, who was the leading editor for
this issue.
On behalf of our SPLIS members, I would like to thank all our
members and followers who support us and make our events more meaningful
with their participation. I hope that we can meet you SPLISers at the
next TESOL in Houston, Texas.
Stay safe and happy!
Sinem Sonsaat-Hegelheimer
SPLIS Chair, 2020–2021 |
