Another fine collection of papers, covering a wide range of topics and from a wide range of Asia TESL countries! All are carefully planned and executed, pursuing hypotheses derived from the current literature of the field and applied to specifically Asian settings.
We are back to World Cup time, but this time in South Africa - how exciting the last Cup was in Asia and what a wonderful boost to Asian co-operation! It is too early to see how Asian teams are doing, but by the time you read this, you will know.
The summer 2010 issue of the Journal, when Asia TEFL is preparing for its first annual conference in Vietnam, opens with a discussion by Yusun Kang, Haejin Hwang, Kyoungoak Nam, and Yunjeong Choi of Korean and Native English-speaking teachers teaching other subjects, showing that the Korean teachers are more effective in encouraging thought and interaction. It confirms that immersion may be linguistically valuable but that students are not usually sufficiently competent in a second language to handle content areas as effectively as in their first. The second paper, by Shahid Abrar-ul-Hassan, shows how Indian English plays a significant role in the identity of its speakers. In the third paper on the level of anxiety felt by Chinese undergraduates learning two different foreign languages, Guo Yan suggests that the pairings may make a difference. Stella Kong and Philip Hoare go further into the question of immersion teaching, finding strategies that appear to work in making the learning more successful. In the fifth paper, Hamid Reza Haghverdi, Reza Biria and Lotfollah Karimi report that instruction in note-taking had beneficial effects for both men and women students. In the next, Min-hsun Maggie Su & Pey-chewn Duo found that knowledge of language learning strategies are a useful predictor of self-directed reading proficiency. In the paper that follows, Nugrahenny T. Zacharias summarizes a dissertation in which she/he analyzes the formation and modification of identity in a dozen foreign students in graduate programs in the USA. The eighth paper by Hamzah Md. Omar and Miko Umehara discuss the techniques used by four retired Japanese adults learning English pronunciation in Malaysia. In the next paper, Cheryl Wei-yu Chen deal with the local manifestation of a growing world-wide problem, the need to provide professional support for part-time tertiary level English teachers. In the tenth paper, Yahya Gordani applies Bloom¡¯s fifty-year old taxonomy (still popular in many schools of education, but now clearly outdated with developments in cognitive psychology) to Iranian English textbooks, and has the expected difficulty in identifying so-called higher and lower skills. In the next paper, Chamaipak Tayjasanant and Roger Barnard study two groups of teachers in a public and a private school in Thailand, and present evidence of the wide gap between official policy and the teachers¡¯ beliefs about their task. Finally, Sharif Moghaddam analyzes literacy practices in a formal IELTS preparation course in Tehran, looking at development of academic argumentative writing.
The national range continues to be wide: three papers from Iran (one co-authored with an Australian), two from Taiwan, and one each from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mona, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand (co-authored with a New Zealander). One paper has four authors, another one has three, and nine have two authors. Again, we have a wide range of useful if small studies, representing awareness of significant topics and suggesting guidelines for application and further study. The volume thus shows the continued contribution of the journal to the field of English language teaching.
Let us hope that the World Cup encourages continued competition and collaboration among Asian nations in this field too.
Jerusalem, June 2010 Bernard Spolsky, Editor-in-chief and Asia TEFL Publications Executive Director
Angel M. Y. Lin (Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong) Anne Burns (Macquarie University, Australia) Asruddin Tou (Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta, Indonesia) David Nunan (Anaheim University, Hong Kong) Farhat Khan (Aligarh Muslim University, India) Fatma Alwan (UAE Ministry of Education, UAE) Hemamala Vajira Madawala Ratwatte (Open University of Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka) Hyacinth Gaudart (University of Malaya, Malaysia) Jun Liu (University of Arizona, USA) Kensaku Yoshida (Sophia University, Japan) Qiufang Wen (Beijing Foreign Studies University, China) Oryang Kwon (Seoul National University, Korea) Leo VanLier (Monterey Institute of International Studies, Thailand) Lubna Alsagoff (Nanyang Techological University, Singapore) Marlu Vilches (Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines) Mehdi Riazi (Shiraz University, Iran) Michael McCarthy (University of Nottingham, UK) Mick Randall (British University in Dubai, UAE) Mike Levy (Griffith University, Australia) Nasreen Mujahida Ahsan (Aga Khan University, Pakistan) Neil Anderson (Brigham Young University, USA) Richard Baldauf (The University of Queensland, Austrailia) Roger Barnard (University of Waikato, New Zealand) Ronald Carter (University of Nottingham, UK) Saran Kaur Gill (University Kebangsaan Malaysia, Malaysia) Shahid Siddiqui (Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan) Stephen Andrews (Hong Kong University, Hong Kong) Thomas Farrell (Brock University, Canada) William Littlewood (Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong) Won-Key Lee (Seoul National University of Education, Korea) Yasuo Nakatni (Japan, Tokyo University of Science, Japan) Yuko Butler (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
Editorial Board (Editors)
Arifa Rahman (University of Dhaka, Bangladesh) Christine Coombe (Dubai Men's College, UAE) Chul Joo Uhm (Chonnam Univ., Korea) David C.S. Li (Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong) Dongwan Cho (Pohang University of Science and Technology, Korea) Elinor Saiegh Haddad (Bar Ilan University, Israel) Fuad Abdul Hamied (Indonesia University of Education, Indonesia) He Lianzhen (Zhejiang University, China) Heyoung Kim (Chung Ang University, Korea) Hee-Kyung Lee (Yonsei University, Korea) Jungmin Ko (Sungshin University, Korea) Kazem Lotfipour-Saedi (Akita International University, Japan) Leslie Barratt (Indiana State University, USA) Mardziah Hayati Abdullah (Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia) Marianne Perfecto (Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines) Mei Lin Caroline Ho (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) Nobuo Okada (Osaka University, Japan) Olga Sichyova (Amur State University, Russia) Pragasit Sitthitikul (Walailak University, Thailand) Punchalee Wasanasomsithi (Chulalongkorn University, Thailand) RS Gupta (Jawaharlal Nehru University, India) Samina Qadir (Fatima Jinnah University, Pakistan) Soyoung Lee (Inha Univ., Korea) Sung-Mook Choi (Dong-A Univ., Korea) Toshihiko Suzuki (Waseda University, Japan) Yonglin Yang (Tsinghua University, China) Young-Sook Shim (Catholic Univ. Of Korea, Korea) Yusun Kang (Korea University, Korea) Zoya Profshina (Far Eastern University, Russia)
Editorial Board (Readers)
Duqin Wang (Beijing Institute of Petro-chemical Technology, China) Zhichang Xu (The Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong) Tomohito Ishikawa (Soka Women's College, Japan) Wataru Suzuki (University of Toronto, Canada) Honggang Liu (Peking University, China) Lixin Xiao (Tianjin Polytechnic University, P. R. China) Marie J. Guilloteaux (Gyeongsang National University, Korea) Natalia Prosh'yants (Far Eastern National University, Russia) Bee Hoon Tan (Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia) Ju Zhan (Jilin University, China) Dil Afroze Quader (Dhaka University, Bangladesh) Tae-Young Kim (Chung-Ang University, Korea) Saovapa Wichadee (Bangkok University, Thailand) Hongjun Fu (Xinjiang University, China) Faizah A Majid (Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia) Rieko Matsuoka (National College of Nursing, Japan) Phuc Cao Nguyen (Khanh Hoa Department of Education and Training, Vietnam) An E He (Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong) Xuesong Gao (Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong SAR, China) Ed Nicholson (Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, China) Meihua Liu (Tsinghua University, China) Eunice Tang (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong) Masdinah Alauyah Md. Yusof (Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia) Nematullah Shomoossi (Sabzevar University of Medical Sciences, Iran) Kamisah Ariffin (University Teknologi MARA, Malaysia) Justin Shewell (United Arab Emirates University, UAE) Hua Chen (Nanjing University, China) Deron Walker (California Baptist University, USA) Younghwa Lee (Sun Moon University, Korea) Junju Wang (Shandong University, China) Li Li (Queen's University, Belfast, UK) Thu Dinh Nguyen (HochiMinh City University of Technical Education, Vietnam) Helena Agustien (SEAMEO-RELC, Singapore) Sayeedur Rahman (University of Dhaka, Bangladesh) Md. Maniruzzaman (Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh) Svetlana Suchkova (Samara State Aerospace University, Russia) Chayanika Hazarika (The English and Foreign Languages University, India) SungSoo Jang (Inje University, Korea) Hasan Ansary (Islamic Azad University, Iran) Nasrin Shokrpour (Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Iran) Yan Yan Zhang (Wuhan University, China) Arna Peretz (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel) Abbas Zare-ee (University of Kashan, Iran) Awad Ahmed (An-Najah National University, Palestine) Esmat Babaii (University for Teacher Education, Iran) Francis Xavier (Universiti Teknologi MARA Kedah, Malaysia) Trudy Zuckermann (Hebrew University, Israel; Achva Academic College of Education, Israel) Kishwar Khan (Haraganga college, Bangladesh) Mohammed Jasim Betti (University of Thi-Qar, Iraq) Tzu-chia Chao (Ming Hsin University of Science and Technology, Taiwan) N.D.R. Chandra (Nagaland University, India) Huw Jarvis (University of Salford, UK) Tan Bee Tin (The University of Auckland, New Zealand) Abdorreza Tahriri (Shiraz University, Iran)
