Letter From the Editors: Assuring That What We Count Counts

Assuring That What We Count Counts

Being co-editors of Applied Linguistics Forum provides us with the privilege of reading, gatekeeping, and shaping the submissions we receive. As the first readers, we are always grateful for the opportunity to keep ourselves abreast of pedagogical and research inspirations from colleagues worldwide. However, we are increasingly facing dilemmas regarding which submissions should be included when the submission numbers increase. For one, we are a small team constrained by full-time commitments to teaching, research, and other service duties at our respective institutions. To ensure the quality of manuscripts, we can only handle a limited number of articles (around six to eight, based on experience). For another, we have begun to receive multiple submissions on similar topics (especially Generative AI); something all editors are encountering that Hu (2026) powerfully captures in his recent editorial concerning Generative AI for the Journal of English for Academic Purposes. To ensure the diversity of topics covered in each issue, we must make the hard decision of whose voice should be heard and what topics to showcase. Our work, beyond editorial, is inevitably political.

The political dimension makes it essential for us to be ethical and open-minded throughout the process. As human beings, we bring our own perspectives, experiences, and, more importantly, biases when we make decisions, provide feedback, and plan publications. That said, we are fully aware of the politics of listening that can center some voices and marginalize others, and we strive for the neutral position. We approach what we receive and read from our authors with great care, regardless of our training in academic writing, research methodologies, paradigms, and/or pedagogical and intellectual inquiries. This approach of care harkens back to Blackwood’s (2014) point that editing is a form of carework. As she explains, editing-as-carework entails the editors “[nurture] talent and [create] common spaces in which individuals can thrive” (p. 2) while at the same time serve the commons—you, our readers. This care can take many forms. One such example is the message in our decision letters: “Please treat our feedback critically, and feel free to contact us with questions and/or concerns about our feedback.” More crucially, we need to make responsive decisions for you, our readers. A guiding question to our editorial work, as Freeman et al. (2007) eloquently wrote (though it speaks originally for qualitative research), is: “How can we best listen to, work with, and represent the people our work is intended to serve?” (p. 30). In asking these questions to ourselves, we attempt to engage in care so that, as Blackwood (2014) further explains, our contributors may shine so, “unless [they] call attention to it, a reader should never know [editing/the editor] was there” (p. 3). To assure what we count counts, we remain intellectually open not only to submissions and ideas from authors but also to feedback and suggestions from readers. We hope that the diverse topics covered in this issue offer a well-positioned response to our long-standing intellectual and editorial commitment. 

In This Issue

In the following paragraphs, we briefly introduce this collection of articles, including three leadership letters, one Keywords in Applied Linguistics article, and seven feature articles. They collectively cover topics that demonstrate the breadth of our field and our ongoing pursuit of knowledge, from computational linguistics, generative AI in listening and speaking, translingual personal narrative of identity and literacy, linguistic justice in community colleges, translanguaging, situated pedagogy, ESL learners with dyslexia, to the intersection of multiliteracies and systemic functional linguistics. We hope you will enjoy reading this issue as much as we did, readers!

In their leadership updates, ALIS Chair Andreea Cervatiuc and Past Chair Miriam Moore review ALIS activities (including two intersection sessions, one academic session, and an open business meeting) at the TESOL 2026 International Convention & Expo in Salt Lake City, express their appreciation to ALIS steering committee members, and highlight upcoming events. We encourage you to read their letters and explore ways that you can better engage with ALIS to share your expertise and experiences. In particular, we warmly invite you to attend the planned ALIS Research Network launch meeting in May, where our past authors, Kurt Sebnem and her colleagues, will share the publication stories behind their article, (How) Can I Tell If ChatGPT Wrote My Students’ Assignments?. We also extend our warm welcome to the new Chair-Elect, Zahra Safdarian. In her letter, she shares her personal background and future aspirations for ALIS. 

Detail-oriented readers may notice that we have launched a new section entitled Keywords in Applied Linguistics. This section is dedicated to introducing important concepts in applied linguistics to help our practitioner readers and newcomers to the field (particularly graduate students) develop a general understanding and expand their research interests. We are pleased to present the first article, Dependency Parsing in Computational Linguistics, by Quy Huynh Phu Pham, Chi Cuong Chau, and Duong Nguyen. With multiple examples, they demystify the working mechanisms behind dependency parsing, a common technique used to identify and analyze the grammatical structure of human language. Specifically, they illustrate the applications of dependency parsing in collocation extraction, sentiment analysis, and entity recognition, underscore its three key limitations, and propose key considerations for future practices. Pham and colleagues conclude by arguing that “future advances in dependency parsing will definitely further deepen our understanding of how machines process, analyze, and model human language.” In editing this section, we pay special attention to the accessibility of language so as to make it easy and interesting for readers to follow. Though current articles are by invitation, we are open to inquiries from interested readers, especially early-career scholars, in partnership with Ph.D. candidates and students. 

In the first feature article, Critical Digital Applications of Generative AI in L2 Classrooms: Listening and Speaking, Harriet Dentaa and Okim Kang conceptualize AI as a listener and pedagogical interlocutor. They argue for a critical, sociolinguistically grounded approach when using AI in listening and speaking instruction and developing AI literacy. Dentaa and Kang call for reframed pedagogical attention to “How and for whom does AI listen, judge, or misjudge?” during the instruction process. This pedagogical shift features intelligibility, listener responsibility, and fairness as core constructs of instruction; four relevant classroom pedagogical activities are shared. 

Jainab Tabassum Banu’s feature article, Finding Voice Before AI: A Translingual Personal Narrative of Identity and Literacy Assignment for Multilingual College Writers,  complements Dentaa and Kang by pointing to another perspective regarding AI use from writing classrooms. Drawing on her reflective teaching practices, Banu emphasizes the importance of maintaining students’ voices in writing. Her No-AI assignment design demonstrates pedagogical effectiveness in developing students’ independent critical thinking abilities and invites flexible policy regarding AI use when resources are limited. Besides, the translingual approach embedded in the assignment design provides a responsive response to the diverse linguistic, cultural, and educational experiences that multilingual writers bring to the writing classrooms.  

Antonella Pappolla reports on the translingual teaching strategies employed by three first-year composition instructors at a two-year college. Her article, Translingualism in First-Year Writing: Insights from the Two-year College, highlights the use of a translingual approach to stimulate writers’ agency, the potential of linguistic diversity as a research tool, and the need to invite explicit conversations on discussing language ideologies. Her pedagogical recommendations call for critical inquiry, exposure to diverse English varieties, and linguistic diversity (especially non-English languages) in the writing process. 

Gayoung Choi’s article, Native-like Models or Translingual Practitioners? Re-Evaluating the Pedagogical Roles of NESTs Through Translanguaging, provides a much-needed addition to translanguaging research from the perspectives of native English-speaking teachers and elementary classrooms. Her findings showcase the use of a multimodal and translingual approach in alphabet learning, the co-learning of different languages in multilingual classrooms, and the embrace of diverse English varieties. Importantly, Choi underscores the necessity to reimagine native English-speaking teachers as “localized pedagogical practitioners” and calls for the incorporation of local resources into instruction to better bridge language learning and support students’ identities. 

In Breaking the Fourth Wall in Chinese EFL: Stakeholder Perceptions of Situated Learning “in the wild” With Young Learners, April Jiawei Zhang and Zhuohan Chen, through a mixed-methods study, examine the effectiveness of a situated pedagogical intervention for three young English learners. Findings reveal the positive affect experienced by young learners, the development of lexical knowledge through authentic environment involvement, and the educational ideology shift from exam-oriented learning to valuing English as “a functional social tool.” They argue for the conceptualization of “instructional environment as an active co-teacher” and the prioritization of functional agency. 

Anna Rzepecka-Karwowska’s article, When Input is not Enough: Cognitive Load, Dyslexia, and Instructional Architecture in ESL Contexts, touches upon an underrepresented population in the field, ESL learners with dyslexia. Drawing on a classroom-based randomized controlled study, Rzepecka-Karwowska exemplifies the diverse learning challenges that dyslexic learners face and advocates for a structured instructional sequencing pedagogical approach to better support dyslexic learners. As she powerfully ends, “instructional architecture is not secondary, but fundamental.” Rzepecka-Karwowska’s work comes just as Cornell and Randez (2026) published their powerful commentary on the field’s understanding of second language learners with disabilities and a need for more work to center and work with these learners.

In the last feature article, Purpose of Language: Using Systemic Functional Linguistics to Advance Multiliteracy, Olivia Orichiella puts forward how systemic functional linguistics can be applied in the increasingly multilingual classrooms to advance structured multiliteracies. Using the common core standard—“Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons and information”—as an example, Orichiella showcases the preparatory procedures and the deconstruction of grammar in contexts. She also includes a protocol highlighting the analytical procedures and necessary considerations. 

Future Contents

The conclusion of this issue also marks that we are now working with authors to prepare for the extra issue to be published during the Summer. We are excited for the positive responses from the field and look forward to introducing and sharing another fantastic line-up of articles in the coming months. 

In particular, we invite you to contribute your work to Applied Linguistics Forum. You can read submission details through our Call for Submissions article featured in this issue, or email us with inquiries. We also look for ideas for special issues to feature graduate programs, courses, and emerging research ideas in the field. Feel free to contact us to discuss whatever you have in mind. We look forward to editing your work with care so you may shine.

In closing, we warmly encourage you to share our articles with your colleagues, students, and on social media platforms. We believe these short articles will fit perfectly as reading materials for advanced undergraduates and graduate students across different courses. These readings can also serve as useful space for TESOL teacher educators training in-service teachers over a summer session due to their brevity. All articles are open access, and your students do not need to log in as a TESOL member to access and read them. 

Happy reading,

Andy and Curtis

Andy Jiahao Liu, Past Chair of the Second Language Writing Interest Section at TESOL International Association, is a Ph.D. student in Language, Literacy, and Social Studies Education at the University of Iowa. His research interests center around second language writing, English for research publication purposes, and language testing and assessment

Curtis Green-Eneix is an assistant professor in the School of Education and English at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. He is the book review editor for the Journal of Education, Language, and Ideology. His work on critical teacher education has been featured in prominent journals, such as TESOL Quarterly.

References

Blackwood, S. (2014, June 6). Editing as carework: The gendered labor of public intellectuals. Avidly. https://avidly.org/2014/06/06/editing-as-carework-the-gendered-labor-of-public-intellectuals/ 

Cornell, C., & Randez, R. A. (2026). Disability and second language learning: Implications for interdisciplinary research in applied linguistics. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 48(1), 4–18. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263126101594 

Freeman, M., deMarrais, K., Preissle, J., Roulston, K., & St. Pierre, E. A. (2007). Standards of evidence in qualitative research: An incitement to discourse. Educational Researcher, 36(1), 25–32. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X06298009 

Hu, G. (2026). GenAI! GenAI? GenAI…. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 80, Article 101650. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2026.101650