Letter From the Past Chair: Recap, Appreciation, and Farewell

Andy Jiahao Liu, University of Iowa, USA

Dear Second Language Writing Interest Section (SLWIS) friends and colleagues, 

I hope this semester and the conference season have been treating you well so far! 

It is hard to believe that I have stepped down from my tenure as the SLWIS Chair, as I can still vividly recall the lingering anxiety when I took the helm from Svetlana Koltovskaia one year ago. How time flies! I am wholeheartedly grateful for all the kind support, assistance, mentorship, and encouragement I have received throughout the process. In this letter, I review the SLWIS activities that have happened since December 2025, provide leadership updates, and reflect on the journey. 

Our Spring community activities focused primarily on the inaugural SLWIS Research Symposium for Aspiring Scholars and the just-happened TESOL 2026 International Convention & Expo in Salt Lake City. I sincerely appreciate the amazing work of our members-at-large, James J. Riley and Fatemeh Bordbarjavidi; they accepted my invitation to plan and organize the SLWIS Research Symposium in May 2025 and have brought it to fruition on March 15, 2026. Our very first virtual symposium, featuring a fantastic line-up of presentations across various time zones, was well received by the community, with 85 registrants. In this half-day event, we (re)connected with SLWIS members and learned from the following presentations: 

• Writing Anxiety Across Academic Achievement Levels: Vietnamese English-Major Students’ Experiences | Tran Thanh Tan & Tran Quoc Thao

• Patterns and Experiences: Multi-Clause Sentences in Academic Writing by English-Majored Freshmen | Tran Bao Tran

• Investigating Authority Projection Through Written Argument in Academic Writing | Dalia Cohen

• Tech-Mediated Instruction and L2 Writing Anxiety: Insights From Empirical Research | Alex Agyena Duah

• Designing for Multilingual Repertoires: Early Instructor Conceptions of Multimodal Writing | Othniel Williams

• Frequency and Consistency of Discourse-Level Feedback Among Experienced L2 Instructors | Mark Sullivan

We envision this symposium event to be a regular SLWIS activity, and we are deeply committed to supporting graduate students and emerging scholars through similar initiatives. Please stay tuned for the call for proposals of our 2027 SLWIS Research Symposium for Aspiring Scholars in the coming months! 

In Salt Lake City, we organized multiple events and met many SLWIS friends. It was more than a pleasure meeting and talking with our friends and colleagues. We, in collaboration with the Applied Linguistics Interest Section, held the Intersection Session titled Supporting Multilingual Writers in Process-Oriented Pedagogies, featuring Andreea Cervatiuc, Davy Tran, Julie Lake, and Heather Weger. Our Chair-Elect and now Chair, Ali Yaylali, coordinated the Academic Session, Self-Regulation and Autonomy in Second Language Writing, where Jung-Hsien Lin, Linh Phung, Lin Sophie Teng, Peijian Paul Sun, Christina Ortmeier-Hooper, Rose O’Connor, and Olesia Pavlenko shared diverse perspectives with engaging discussions. We also held our open business meeting, two networking sessions, and an informal SLWIS Dinner gathering event. Additionally, in celebration of the 60th anniversary of TESOL, we organized a SLWIS Mini Expo to showcase our history, artifacts, and activities. In this regard, I would like to thank our Past Chairs for sharing with me testimonials and photos. It is always great to look back, and it is through the preparation of this Expo that I learned more about SLWIS, especially its foundation in 2004. Not surprisingly, we left the Salt Lake Convention Center with collaboration opportunities and wonderful memories. 

With all these fantastic activities in mind, I am now pleased to introduce the SLWIS Steering Committee (2026–2027):

• Chair: Ali Yaylali 

• Chair-Elect: Bakheet S. Almatrafi

• Past Chair: Andy Jiahao Liu

• Members-at-Large: Katie Hibner, Stefan Vogel, James J. Riley, Fatemeh Bordbajavidi, Elizabeth Marnell

• SLW News Managing Editor: Ryan Good 

• Community Manager: Ryan Good

• Board of Liaison: Jorge Torres Almazan

In particular, please join me in welcoming Bakheet S. Almatrafi and Elizabeth Marnell. Bakheet is a long-term member-at-large and newsletter editor at SLWIS, and I am excited about his continued contributions to SLWIS as the Chair-Elect. Elizabeth Marnell is new to the community as a member-at-large; we are grateful for her willingness to contribute. I would also like to thank the outgoing Past Chair, Svetlana Koltovskaia, for her amazing SLWIS leadership. I am confident that our SLWIS team, under the leadership of Ali Yaylali, will continue to make SLWIS a vibrant and engaging community. 

Looking back, being elected Chair-Elect of SLWIS is undoubtedly one of the professional and personal highlights in my life. I remain grateful for the trust from the Past Chairs, Steering Committee members, and our community members. I cherish these memorable moments and will carry them with me when I embark on new journeys. SLWIS was, is, and will be my professional home. 

I look forward to supporting SLWIS initiatives and regular activities as the Past Chair. I strongly encourage fellow graduate students to connect with us. By taking a step forward, you will make a difference in your professional career and SLWIS! 

With appreciation and very best wishes,

Andy Jiahao Liu

Past Chair, Second Language Writing Interest Section (2026–2027)

TESOL International Association

Andy Jiahao Liu is currently a first-year 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 critical language testing. His recent projects include the Journal of Second Language Writing 2025/26 Special Issue on Emotions in Teaching L2 Writing and a contracted volume, Emotions in Teaching Writing in Multilingual and Multicultural Contexts, with Multilingual Matters. He co-authored Teaching Social Studies to Multilingual Learners of English (TESOL Press, 2026).