Letter from the Editors
Patricia Moon, English Language Institute, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA
Irene Purushottam, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA
Dear ICIS Community,
This edition of the Intercultural Communication Interest Section Newsletter is packed with interesting updates and articles! Our community left the 2025 TESOL Convention in Long Beach, CA excited and recharged to share our experiences with everyone here.
Please welcome our new co-editor, Irene Purushottam, to the team! We are working closely on this issue and the next when Irene will take over the reigns. Irene comes from India through Hawaii and is now at Brigham Young University. Irene is so excited to be with us, and we look forward to her contributions to our community and this newsletter.
Leslie Bohon, incoming co-chair elect, shares her reflection and some wonderful pictures. Her reflection and photos speak to the vibrancy of this group. Many of the visitors said our group was the best to visit, and we totally agree!
We are featuring five very different pieces, from varying corners of the world: Turkey, Mexico, Brazil and Pakistan. I hope you enjoy them all. Thank you to the authors for sharing your thoughts and experiences!
- COGNITIVE LINGUISTICS AND CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION
- INSIGHTS FROM PAKISTAN
- INTERCULTURAL ONLINE CONVERSATION PARTNERS
- TEACHING BEYOND BORDERS
- THE UNEXPECTED LESSON OF THE LISTENING SILENCE
We look forward to our October issue which will feature lesson plans related to intercultural communication. If you have any lesson plans you would like to share, we invite you to submit something by October 1 to be featured in our October newsletter.
If you are not involved with our interest section, please check out the letter from our current chair, Nichole McVeigh and our social media for upcoming events. We would love for you to be part of our group! This is a great community to be involved in!
Since our last newsletter, we have had many webinars and lightning talks. They included Dr. Sávio Siqueira on Critical Language Pedagogy (CLP) and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF): Exploring the Potential of this Dialogue to Decolonize ELT, Dr. Hamza R’boul led presentations from esteemed authors in two of his newly released edited volumes: Teaching and Researching Interculturality in the Middle East and North Africa and Intercultural Communication Education and Research in the Middle East and North Africa. One presenter was our own incoming co-chair Melanie Vanderhoven. Other esteemed authors/presenters were Afaf Rabehi, Faher Bin Rashed, Mona Aljanaji, Reema AlQenai, Abdelhadi Fouad, Lana Hiasat, Christine Coombe, Fadhila Hadjeris, and Sarah Hopkyns. This month in May, we had Dr. Alison Phipps and Tawona Sitholé present on Language Education in Palestinian Universities in Gaza.
We are looking forward to our June webinar titled “Eco-Critical Awareness & Intercultural Communication” by Dr. Jepri Ali Saiful. Please look for an announcement to register for this hour.
You can find other events posted on our social media channels on LinkedIn, Facebook and X. Please subscribe to our channels!
Remember another way to connect with ICIS is to submit a piece to this newsletter. In October we are looking for lesson plans regarding intercultural communication, intercultural competence or cultural exchange in your educational setting. Please see our Call for Submissions for links to the author guidelines and call. The next deadline is October 1, 2025. Please email your submissions to [email protected].
We hope to see many of you in our upcoming events! Have a wonderful season!
Patricia Moon, English Language Institute, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
ICIS Newsletter Co-Editor
Irene Purushottam, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA
ICIS Newsletter Co-Editor
Patricia Moon, MA, is an administrator/instructor at the English Language Institute (ELI) at the University of Florida. Her work since 1994 has focused on scheduling and curriculum for students studying intensive academic English at the University of Florida.
Irene Purushottam is a graduate student pursuing her MA in TESOL from Brigham Young University. She is originally from New Delhi, India and has over 13 years of professional experience across administration, customer service, training, and English language instruction. She has taught adults and aspiring teachers at BYU (Provo and Hawaii), PACE International Academy, US Ling Institute, and Inlingua.