Letter from the Editors
Ali Yaylali, Eastern Kentucky University, USA
Bakheet S. Almatrafi, Umm Al-Qura University, Saudi Arabia
Stefan M. Vogel, University at Albany, SUNY, USA
Dear SLWIS members,
We are very excited to share the spring issue of SLW News!
The issue features a letter from the outgoing SLWIS Chair, Dr. Svetlana Koltovskaia. In her letter, Dr. Koltovskaia provides updates on our past SLWIS activities and accomplishments, including our spring webinar and book club, two sessions we (co)hosted at the TESOL 2025 International Convention & Expo in Long Beach, California, and our recent open business meeting. Additionally, the letter introduces the new SLWIS leadership team.
In our Meet the Experts interview, Dr. Atta Gebril traces his research journey, —from doctoral work on source-based writing to award-winning studies on coherence, cohesion, and lexical diversity in integrated tasks—while addressing urgent questions about AI’s disruption of writing practices, including his ongoing work comparing AI-generated and teacher feedback. Dr. Gebril advocates for adaptive, collaborative research in second language writing, urging scholars to balance theoretical rigor with technological fluency—and to prioritize personal well-being in a rapidly evolving field.
Finally, we provide a brief overview of the main points covered in our open business meeting (including links to recordings of our 2024-25 webinars and book club talks, as well as the fall 2024 issue of SLW News), held via Zoom on May 3, 2025. This section also introduces our new interest section members! If you were not able to attend the meeting, we invite you to watch the recording.
We hope you enjoy reading the wonderful submissions to the issue and will consider contributing to the SLW community with your practitioner and/or research experiences in the future.
Warm regards,
Ali Yaylali
Bahkeet S. Almatrafi
Stefan Vogel
Ali Yaylali is an Assistant professor at Eastern Kentucky University. He is the past president of Arizona TESOL and an active member of TESOL, serving in the Awards Professional Council and SLW Interest Section. His teaching and research interests include second language writing, corpus-based language teaching, disciplinary language and literacies, transformative learning in teacher education, and mentoring doctoral writers.
Bakheet S. Almatrafi holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Memphis, USA. He currently teaches at Umm Al-Qura University in Saudi Arabia. His research centers around L2 writing, multilingualism and language ideology.
Stefan M. Vogel is a Lecturer at the University at Albany, SUNY, where he teaches in the Writing and Critical Inquiry program. He holds a PhD in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching from the University of Arizona. His primary areas of specialization are in second language writing, L2 teacher education, and program administration and leadership.