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Editorial to Issue 11

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Papers
Date

Martin Ward and Jeanne Godfrey 

Welcome to Issue 11 of the Language Scholar. 

The Language Scholar is currently undergoing an exciting transformation as we further develop the journal to draw on the valuable expertise of the advisory board more intentionally. This issue is the final one with the present constitution of the board. We would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank all advisory board members who are moving on to new adventures, as well as those who are continuing to serve in this capacity. Please look out for further details on the newly constituted advisory board in our next issue. 

Reflecting the diversity of submission categories for the Language Scholar, we begin this issue with a discursive duoethnography by Chiara Bruzzano and Marc Jones on listening pedagogy and how it relates to authentic listening courses. Recalling and analysing experiences from their teaching experience in Italy and Japan, the authors bring particular insights into authenticity, purposes for listening, formative experiences, impostor syndrome, and implications. They conclude with firm agreement regarding the benefits of using authentic texts in their teaching and assisting learners in overcoming the difficulties associated with understanding ‘natural’ language, whilst raising lingering doubts regarding how helpful process-based teaching is for listening development. 

Next, Matthew Ketteringham presents his research into a needs analysis of assessed writing genres of a transnational education (TNE) undergraduate engineering programme at the Leeds-partnered South-West Jiaotong University (SWJTU) based in Chengdu, China. Through the collection of institutional artefacts, and qualitative data from interviews with faculty and a student questionnaire, he identifies possible areas for development including increased cooperation between EAP specialists and subject specialists to further develop students' academic literacy. 

Continuing on the theme of TNE and disseminating further research fruit from the above-mentioned Leeds-SWJTU partnership, Alister Drury, Rachel Perkins, and Warren Sheard present their creation of a pedagogic corpus and wordlist from a series of maths lectures. Setting out to help students with the high vocabulary load of their mathematics lectures, the authors conclude that combining the New General Service List (NGSL) with their own composed wordlist can provide the coverage needed to enable learners to understand the lectures. 

Debora Catavello concludes this issue by exploring teachers’ beliefs and practices associated with written feedback on EAP student writing. She finds that most teachers in her study adopt a ‘contextualised’ view of feedback and that teachers conceptualise feedback as a dialogue. This type of dialogic feedback, however, was not always visible. She also notes the influence of teachers’ prior teaching and learning experiences on their views surrounding feedback. 

One clear theme which stands out from the above articles is the value of collaborative pedagogy and collaborative scholarship, as well as open dialogue and exploration. The editors hope that a close reading of the research presented here will inspire colleagues to new scholarship and collaborative practice.