Letter from the Chair-Elect

Miriam Moore, University of North Georgia, Gainesville, Georgia, USA

Dear ALIS Colleagues,

After serving as our social media coordinator since 2023, I am delighted and grateful to step into the role of Chair-Elect for the Applied Linguistics Interest Section (ALIS). I have come to know many of you through our social media pages and feeds, and while we have seen our Facebook participation grow over the year, there is still more we can do to leverage the power of social media to support our members as teachers, researchers, and colleagues. As I transition into the chair-elect position, I encourage you to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or X (formerly Twitter)—@TesolALIS. Our various pages will keep you up to date with publications, conference announcements, and opportunities to connect. We also welcome your suggestions for webinars or other online events, and if you would like to see us active on other platforms, please let me know.

Of course, I also hope to meet you at the interest section meeting or our academic session at TESOL 2025 in Long Beach, California. If circumstances do not allow you to travel at that time, I look forward to seeing you online at the Virtual TESOL Conference to be held later in 2025.

I have been impressed over the past year with the dynamic ALIS leadership team, particularly the work of past chair Rashad Ahmed and our newsletter editors, Andy Jiahao Liu and Raj Khatri. Please consider getting involved with our community through a submission to the newsletter; our editors would be delighted to work with you to plan and review the submission. In addition to these team members, I am looking forward to working with chair Muhammad Alasmari, member-at-large Mimi Li, and community manager Shima Farhesh in 2024 and 2025.

Our profession continues to innovate and meet the challenges of the moment, whether those arise from world-wide pandemics or the explosion of generative AI. When I began teaching in the 1990s, I could not have imagined the material conditions and perils that face my students and colleagues in 2024, nor could I have envisioned the possibilities afforded through online and digital technologies. Of course, insights from decades of research across the range of ELT contexts support and anchor our work moving forward. I am grateful to be involved in ALIS at this point in our history, and I am excited to see what we can accomplish over the next few years.

Regards,

Dr. Miriam Moore
University of North Georgia, Gainesville

Miriam Moore is an Associate Professor of English at the University of North Georgia in Gainesville, Georgia, where she teaches undergraduate courses in writing, linguistics, and ESOL pedagogy. Her research interests include multilingual writing across the curriculum, metalinguistic awareness, online pedagogy, and written feedback.