Letter from the Editors

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

Reconsidering Applied Linguistics in Changing Times

Welcome to the latest issue of TESOL Applied Linguistics Forum! Though it is still at the very beginning, 2025 has been a year of uncertainty and change, with a flurry of sociopolitical events influencing our field. In the States, administrative orders have further shrunk the job market and even the recruitment of Ph.D. students. In the UK, Cardiff’s closure of modern languages has provoked worrying concern. Plus, the emerging development of GenAI technologies these days has intensified the career crises worldwide, especially for writing instructors. It is thus simplistic to state that our applied linguistics field is and will be experiencing changing times. As such, we see a strong need to reconsider applied linguistics to survive and thrive in our profession. This latest issue shares some valuable insights in this regard, and we hope you enjoy reading this issue as much as we did. The following paragraphs briefly introduce this collection—a letter from the Chair, three feature articles, and a book review.

Miriam Moore, ALIS Chair, introduces the ALIS leadership team (2025–2026) and recaps the two successful sessions at the TESOL 2025 Convention. Informed by many thought-provoking voices at the Convention, Miriam shares potential ALIS initiatives to build member value and engagement and expand opportunities to co-construct a supportive community of practice with TESOL professionals.

Inspired by a personal conversation with her Ph.D. advisee, Dina Mehmedbegovic-Smith introduces two concepts—Imported Bilingualism and Academic Monolingualism—to open a new window for the existing deficit models of bilingualism. Drawing on her extensive research experiences and practitioner insights, Dina presents these two innovative concepts to advance the field, challenge linguistic hierarchies, and promote social justice.

Timely and welcomingly, Sebnem Kurt and colleagues from Iowa State University share winning strategies to help language teachers distinguish AI-generated texts and human-written texts. Instead of encouraging a deficit-based approach to identify human writers, Sebnem and colleagues, through a mixed-methods study, provide linguistic clues at the levels of meaning and lexicogrammar and highlight instructors’ familiarity with students and assignments, to help language teachers develop GenAI literacy.

Recognizing the significant impacts of assessments on learners, Davy Tran reviews 35 studies on washback and offers practical research-based suggestions for language teachers to promote positive washback in language classrooms. Emphasizing contextual factors and personal characteristics, Davy also shares personal teaching practices to help TESOL practitioners reconsider their assessment practices and philosophies.

In her reflective and insightful book review of Making the Most of Graduate School: A Practical Guidebook for Students in Applied Linguistics, Education, and TESOL, Monica Martinelli applauds the hidden strategies for thriving in graduate schools shared in the reviewed book. Reflecting on her journey as an international student pursuing a Ph.D. degree in the States, Monica highlights the unique dilemmas international students experience.

We close by noting that, our very own Raj, who had been co-editor of Applied Linguistics Forum since 2023, stepped down from his editor position with the conclusion of this issue. We send him wholehearted gratitude for his service and wish him the best in his future personal and professional endeavors. Curtis Green-Eneix has joined as the new co-editor and will work with Andy to continue to bring high-quality research- and/or teaching-oriented articles to our ALIS members and the TESOL community. Please stay tuned for new initiatives and articles in the coming months.

As always, please feel welcome to reach out with questions or interesting research/teaching ideas.

With appreciation for your continued readership and support,

Andy and Raj

Andy Jiahao Liu is an award-winning Global Professor of English at the University of Arizona, where he delivers Foundations Writing courses to multilingual students in the International Foundations Writing Program. His research interests center around 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.