Letter from the Editors

Andy Jiahao Liu, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
Raj Khatri, George Brown College, Toronto, ON, Canada

An Issue of Turns, Diversity, and Dialogues

This Letter comes with leadership turns in the air and an overview of the latest issue of AL Forum in the new year. In the ALIS (Applied Linguistics Interest Section) leadership community, Natalia Dolgova and Heather Weger stepped down from their positions as Co-Editor of AL Forum after years of service and commitment. We, Andy Jiahao Liu and Raj Khatri, have taken on this role with kind and generous mentoring under the outgoing Co-Editors last year. We are grateful for the trust and support and are excited to continue the tradition of making the AL Forum a popular venue for disseminating excellent work with meaningful pedagogical implications to our broad TESOL readers.

Also, Rashad Ahmed rotated off as Chair of the ALIS and transitioned to the supporting role of Past Chair, and Muhammad Alasmari has now taken over the Chair role. In his leadership letter, Rashad shares and celebrates the ALIS initiatives and accomplishments in 2023 and welcomes the TESOL 2024 Convention as an opportunity for us to connect, collaborate, and engage in innovative practices.

In reference to this latest issue, we particularly want to highlight the two feature articles and two book reviews from the Global North and South. These four manuscripts cover diversified topics ranging from the trending generative AI to social justice in applied linguistics; we hope you will find them to foster an enriching disciplinary dialogue for your teaching and research. In the next paragraphs, we introduce the said manuscripts in a concise manner.

Drawing on years of expertise in corpus linguistics, Malila Prado showcases an interesting corpus-based classroom practice to prepare EFL students to grow as culturally responsible writers. In that feature article, Malila also shares how to involve student engagement in their own writing and their subsequent uncovering and learning of language patterns inductively, which collectively helps students participate in their language learning as both learners and language investigators.

As a meaningful continuum of the discussions on the impact of generative AI in the September 2023 issue, Ryan Morrison examines and touches on the potential impacts of reading AI-generated texts. He continues with discussions on the ethical and educational implications and shares valuable insights for teachers and teacher-researchers to explore and consider when facilitating writing classrooms or investigating issues on auto-generated texts.

Of particular attention is that we have included two book reviews and welcome continued reviews of recent books in the broad applied linguistics field. Instead of chapter-by-chapter summaries, we value and view the book review as a venue for the reviewer to connect their personal expression/connection with the referred book for meaningful arguments and discussions. In line with this turn, Newton Paulo Monteiro and Alex Alves Egido gift us with great samples to mirror our publishing philosophy. Newton, in his review of Local Language Testing: Design, Implementation, and Development, emphasizes the role of community of practice when developing local tests and the essence of collaborative work involved in the process. In addition to that, he artfully connects personal research on language assessment literacy to further showcase the importance of collaborative work in local language testing.

In a different vein, Alex thoughtfully attempts to create opportunities for readers to consider the long-standing justice issue in the Global North and South and invite readers to think beyond the content of the book. Further to the call presented in the reviewed book Social Justice, Decoloniality, and Southern Epistemologies Within Language Education: Theories, Knowledges, and Practices on TESOL from Brazil, Alex meaningfully helps readers to reflect on and understand issues on social justice and decoloniality from the Global South, especially Brazilian, epistemological perspectives. An interesting coincidence is that three contributors to this issue are originally from Brazil!

We would like to take this opportunity to wish you a healthy and safe new year. We hope that you, as usual, will enjoy reading and sharing this issue with interested colleagues, and we look forward to meeting up with ALIS leadership team members and readers at TESOL 2024 in-person or virtually. If you have any questions or something valuable to contribute, please feel welcome to get in touch with us.

There will also be a few changes in the AL Forum to be announced in the coming months, such as the call for guest editors and the more transparent submission and review process statement. Please stay tuned!

With thanks for your continued readership and support,

Andy and Raj

Andy Jiahao Liu is a Global Professor of English at the University of Arizona, where he delivers Foundations Writing courses to multilingual students in the International Foundations Writing Program. As a multilingual writer, Andy centers his research on second language writing, English for research publication purposes, and language testing and assessment.

 

EAP-SoTL Professor at George Brown College’s School of ESL and Immigrant Education in Canada, Raj Khatri has facilitated EAP classes and mentored EL teachers for over two decades in Canada and abroad. His research interests include L2 reading strategy use, reading comprehension, universal design for learning (UDL), and SoTL.