Dear NNEST IS members,
It is a great honor and privilege for me to serve as Chair of the NNEST Interest Section for 2011-2012. My heartfelt gratitude goes to my predecessors, Ana Wu as Past-chair and Aiden Yeh as Chair in 2010-2011, as well as outgoing Steering Committee members Aya Matsuda and Ryuko Kuobta, Web Manager Lifen Lin, and Editorial Volunteer Lisya Seloni for their wonderful work in the past year!
I would also like to take this opportunity to welcome our new IS team: Lawrence Zhang as Chair-elect, Ali Faud Selvi and Enric Llurda as Members-at-large, Maribel Fernandez who continues to be our Listserv Manager and Rashi Jain our Newsletter Editor, Sunyung Song and Naashia Mohamed as our new Editorial Volunteers, and Ogie (Udambor) Bumandalai as our new Web Manager. Let’s not forget our new blog team - Ana, Davi, Isabela, Terry, Todd and Shu-chun, as well as the great work of our previous chair Ana Wu in setting up the blog and mentoring the new members. I look forward to working with this great team and will try my best to make sure that we do our work well.
At the 2011 TESOL Convention in New Orleans, there was a total of 17 NNEST paper presentations and 6 poster sessions. I myself attended the very last session of the Convention, which was a very interesting discussion session on NNEST issues. Our Academic session and Intersection sessions were well received. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of those who presented at these sessions, as well as those who attended.
The NNEST IS business meeting in New Orleans was well attended too, and so was the social dinner in Mulates Restaurant. I would like to extend a warm welcome to new members, especially those who attended the business meeting and/or the social dinner in New Orleans.
Many thanks to those who brought candies and flags to our booth, and especially those who helped out at the booth, including Leslie Barratt, Davi Reis, Hayat Messekher, Ogie Bumandalai, and Alex Garrido. This year, we had a new system and were given only two time slots for the booth. Our candies were able to attract quite a few people, who stopped by and had a chat. I think we should do the same next year.
At the NNEST IS business meeting in New Orleans, I shared with members my plan for the coming year. Below I would like to summarize my plan. I hope to get your support and your ideas as to how I can serve the IS better.
- Increasing membership
Let’s work hard to invite colleagues and friends to join our IS. One piece of good news is that Jennifer Jenkins, plenary speaker of the 2011 Convention, came to our business meeting, joined our social dinner, and told me that she would join our IS! She might have done so already.
- Maintaining active online discussion
I will invite six discussion leaders to lead an online discussion in April, June, August, October and December 2011 and February 2012. The online discussions will be done on a blog (so that the discussions will be more focused and organized). The discussion leaders will think of a topic, write up something first to provide a springboard for discussion, and invite members to respond. I have already found three discussion leaders, and hopefully I can get three more volunteers in due course. We will still continue to use the listserv to post requests, questions, comments, etc.
- Mentoring – in preparation for the 2012 Convention
A mentoring team will be set up to help members who need help with their proposals for the 2012 Convention. Remember the deadline of submission is 1 June. If you would like to help out as a mentor, email to let me know. If you want to be a mentee, also email me with your draft proposal, preferably before 18 May 2011, and I will assign you to a mentor. The mentor will work with you to help you improve the proposal. While the mentoring process can enhance the quality of the proposal, whether the proposal will be accepted in the end depends on a number of factors. As you know, the rejection rate is high for the TESOL Convention. Anyway, let’s keep our fingers crossed that with mentoring, more proposals will get accepted!
- New sections for the newsletter
I propose adding some new sections to the newsletter - brief research reports (600-900 words) / research-notice-board (up to 300 words), and innovative practice (up to 500 words). I have written a short piece for ‘Research-notice-board’ and one for ‘Innovative Practice’ and hope to share with members soon. These are not intended as models but mainly to give members an idea about what you could include in those sections.
- Training for reviewers of 2012 Convention proposals
To improve the quality of the proposal reviews, I will conduct moderation with the reviewers. This will give us less time to do the actual review, but this is one way to ensure that the proposal review is done in a fair, consistent and professional manner (also a concern raised by Aiden at the business meeting in New Orleans).
In addition to my plan in the above, Robert Griffin and Ali Fuad Salvi will be
conducting a webinar on writing good conference proposals. Many thanks to Robert Griffin and Karen Newman for doing a similar webinar for us last year. The NNEST-IS Electronic Village Online (EVO) Session 2011 was cancelled; however, Aiden will be offering an EVO session in 2012.
To increase our visibility, we need more proposals submitted and accepted for the next TESOL Convention. Last year, we received only 60 proposals. I strongly encourage members to submit proposals to the 2012 Convention and make use of the mentoring service, if needed. The 2012 call for proposals is online now: http://www.tesolmedia.com/convention2011/docs/2012TESOLCall.pdf
The deadline for proposal submission is 1 June 2011. So act SOON!
Thank you for reading this long message. I look forward to a fruitful year of work with you all!
Sincerely,
Icy
NNEST IS Chair 2011-2012
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