Editorial to Issue 10
Welcome to Issue 10 of the Language Scholar. I’d also like to say hello on behalf of the new members of the editorial team – myself as a new Co-Editor, our new Journal Manager Alba del Pozo García, and Roya Alimalayeri and James Moore, our two new Web Editors.
The articles in this latest issue play their part in achieving the central aims of the Language Scholar Manifesto published in Issue 3; to further our understanding and knowledge by critically considering multiple perspectives, and in doing so to have an impact on our identities and beliefs as practitioners (Ding et al. 2018). Each piece in this current issue furthers these aims, offering interesting and important pedagogic insights - the result of structured, contextualised, critical and honest reflection and discussion.
The first article is a research paper by Paula Villegas. Villegas examines the theoretical foundations of Flipped Learning (FL) from a socio-constructivist language perspective. She examines the parallels between this framework and that of the ‘four pillars’ of FL, demonstrating how the latter are based in educational theory before moving on to examine how EAP practitioners can use these understandings to fully exploit the pedagogic potential of FL.
Our first Scholarbit in Issue 10 is written by Vicky Collins, who describes a real-time reflective enquiry into a novel aspect of pedagogic practice, comparing the efficacy of pre-planned tasks and spontaneous, contingent teaching interactions in enhancing student criticality. Collins’ article discusses the implications of their enquiry for curriculum and delivery that enhances student critical thinking behaviours, for understanding their own role in the classroom and for how future investigations might be conducted on short, intensive, teaching programmes. The second Scholarbit piece comes from Charlie Taylor, a Senior High School teacher in Taiwan. Taylor contextualises and critically discusses the impact of his decision to use extensive reading within the challenging context of large EFL classes in which the students hold a range of English language profiles. In our third Scholarbit, Denise de Pauw and Jane Heath reflect on practitioners’ experiences of managing the multiple and new spaces involved in fully online delivery at the start of the Covid pandemic, using the two frameworks of Mediated Discourse Analysis and Computer-Mediated Communication as platforms from which to analyse practitioner experiences.
Our book review in this issue is written by Rob Playfair, who discusses ‘Pedagogies in English for academic purposes: Teaching and learning in international Contexts’ edited by Carole MacDiarmid and Jennifer MacDonald. Rather than use the book’s chronology to structure his review, Playfair presents us with an order that reflects the degree of emphasis each chapter places on social, linguistic, and institutional contexts, using this analysis to critically reflect on the contributions and on his own practice.
We hope that the questions, research and discussion in this issue of the Language Scholar challenge and inspire you as a practitioner in your own professional context. As a final note, we would like to thank those who take on the role of reviewing submissions, giving their time to provide thoughtful and constructive feedback to the contributing authors.
REFERENCE
Ding, A., Bodin-Galvez, J., Bond, B., Morimoto, K., Ragni, V., Rust, N. and Soliman, R., 2018. Manifesto for the scholarship of language teaching and learning. The Language Scholar. 3, pp.58-60.