Letter from the Editor
Patricia Moon, English Language Institute, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
Dear TESOL and ICIS Community,
Our interest section has been doing some exciting things since our last issue! Please check out the letter from our Chair to see all we are doing and what we have coming up soon.
In this issue of our newsletter, we are featuring three excellent articles:
- APPLYING THE INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION NEEDS (ICN) MODEL AND TRIPLE NEEDS THEORY (TNT FRAMEWORK) IN IRANIAN CLASSROOMS: FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE
- HOFSTEDE’S CULTURAL DIMENSIONS IN INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION
- USING THE NATURALIZATION CIVICS TEST FOR ACADEMIC DEVELOPMENT AND CULTURAL EXCHANGE
These articles show the diversity of work that our interest section is encouraging in submissions. This issue is an example of how we encourage submissions on lesson plans involving intercultural communication, personal stories illustrating communication theories, and studies in intercultural communication.
The first article focuses on a study to evaluate the outcomes of applying the ICN Model and TNT Framework. They show the value of the language, emotion, and culture triad of needs in communicating across cultures and how they can be prompted by external factors. The second article highlights how understanding Hofstede’s cultural dimensions can be applied to make changes in how one interacts with others. The author's perspective as an administrator and a teacher in a language program changed with this understanding and she adjusted her interactions based on a less hierarchical perspective. Finally, the article on using the naturalization civics test is a practical application of using the US citizenship test to teach a diverse group of students academic vocabulary. It also gives them a greater understanding of the government and history of the US where they are learning English. While this course is situated in an intensive English program in the United States, it can easily be adapted to other countries where students are learning English. The students love this activity and it gives them an opportunity to engage in a topic that can rarely be discussed in their personal settings.
I hope you enjoy this issue and we look forward to our next issue! That issue will get you excited to attend the TESOL Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, in March 2026! If you are presenting at the conference and have an intercultural communication article that you are excited to share, please send us something! The deadline to be featured in our pre-conference newsletter is January 29. Please see our Call for Submissions for links to the author guidelines and call. The next deadline is January 29, 2026. Please email your submissions to [email protected].
In any case, please check out the letter from our current chair, Nichole McVeigh. It gives an overview on how active this interest section is. Please subscribe to our social media channels and keep an eye out for upcoming events!They will be posted on LinkedIn, Facebook and X.
If you made it this far, thank you! We are looking for a new newsletter editor to replace me. I completed my year of service this past July and will be on board until the publication of the pre-conference TESOL 2026 newsletter. If this is something you are interested in doing, please do not hesitate to reach out to me, and I can answer any questions. In all the years I have been in TESOL, I can sincerely say that this interest section has the most welcoming, dedicated, creative, and energetic group of individuals. You will love working with everyone in the ICIS leadership.
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 Editor
Patricia Moon, MA, is an administrator/instructor at the English Language Institute (ELI) at the University of Florida. She has been at the intensive English program at the University of Florida since 1994, and has taught a variety of levels and courses in the IEP and in the ITA program. For the past 20 years, most of her time had been dedicated to service to the program in teacher-training and administration.