John R. Baker
Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. ORCID: 0000-0003-3379-4751. Email: drjohnrbaker@tdtu.edu.vn

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 15, Issue 1, April-May, 2023. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v15n1.00
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I am delighted to present this special issue of the Rupkatha Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, titled Current and Future Directions in TESOL Studies. This issue brings together manuscripts authored by a diverse community of academics, researchers, teachers, graduate students, and TESOL professionals from across the globe to share an inclusive range of research findings, experiences, and practical and theoretical issues that celebrate the multifaceted nature of our field.

This ongoing exchange is a global imperative as it underscores the importance of language and learning in fostering understanding and cooperation, thus bridging gaps between individuals and communities. In a world often fragmented by language, culture, and politics, communication across these divides is more critical than ever. As such, I am particularly pleased to note that the articles featured in this edition resonantly contribute to the furtherance of this goal.

I-Jane Janet Weng’s International Electronic-Service-Learning (eSL) offers an insightful exploration of a pedagogical innovation spanning virtual borders between Taiwan and Cambodia. The author illustrates how this creative approach effectively united students in a shared pursuit of selfless service, resulting in a genuine sense of global understanding. Additionally, the author demonstrates that students experienced heightened intercultural competence, which fostered meaningful interaction and communication that facilitated their transformation into intercultural citizens.

Theron Muller’s How Textual Production Processes Shape English Language Teaching Research Discourse explores the importance of investigating textual production processes in academic writing within the field of language teaching. Through the lens of critical discourse and text history analysis, the article highlights the challenges two Japanese authors face in understanding reviewer comments. Additionally, the author highlights the transformation of their initial pedagogy-centered manuscripts into more research-orientated publications.

Quinta Kemende Wunseh’s A Conceptual Framework for Inclusive Pedagogy in South African Multilingual Higher Education Classrooms provides an insightful perspective of the linguistic diversity found in South African undergraduate classrooms. The author then outlines a range of strategies and factors that facilitate inclusive pedagogy in these diverse settings, including, but not limited to, translanguaging, professional development, and lecturer self-awarenesss and preparedness, which she posits contributes to a potential conceptual framework with implications for language policy, practice, and research.

Nguyen Ngoc Vu and his coauthors’ (Truong Le Hai, Tran Ngoc Ha, Bui Duc Tien) Exploring the Effect of the LearnEnglish Grammar Mobile App on English Language Learners’ Grammatical Competence investigates the impact of the LearnEnglish Grammar app on the grammatical accuracy of 10th-graders attending a gifted high school in Vietnam. The authors further suggest the comprehensive integration of mobile learning applications across various school subjects to facilitate student achievement.

Ngoc Thai Bao Pham’s The Role of Congruency in Collocation Acquisition: A Case Study of Vietnamese Students Learning English Adjective + Noun Collocations highlights that collocational competence is critical to EFL learners’ language proficiency and investigates Vietnamese students’ recognition and use of congruent and incongruent English adjective + noun collocations. The author further emphasizes the importance of explicitly teaching congruent and incongruent collocations in EFL classrooms.

Michel Riquelme-Sanderson and A. Longoria’s LGBTQ+ Language Teacher Educators’ Identities and Pedagogies: Testimonio and Duoethnography examines LGBTQ+ educators’ identities, pedagogies, and experiences during initial teacher education in Chile and the USA. The authors identify several shared themes, including pedagogies’ impact on identities, LGBTQ+ teacher visibility, the intersectionality of LGBTQ+ issues, and non-LGBTQ+ allies. The authors also emphasize the importance of LGBTQ+ language teacher educators as social justice agents.

Wisma Yunita and her coauthors’ (Syahrial and Ira Maisarah) Strategies and Reasons When Addressing Grammatical Problems in Thesis Writing explains that to write an acceptable thesis, English language learner graduate students often use strategies to address grammatical errors and have reasons for their strategy preferences. The authors further identify strategies Indonesian graduate students use to address such errors and the students’ rationales for utilizing these strategies.

Phan Thi Ngoc Le’s The Effectiveness of and Students’ Perceptions of Peer Feedback: A Vietnam Action Research Project examines the utilization and impact of peer feedback within the Vietnamese context. Through the lens of action research, the author acknowledges that although peer feedback is a well-established and growing global trend, its implementation and exploration in Vietnam have been relatively limited. The author further investigates the effectiveness of peer feedback and explores students’ perceptions of its advantages and disadvantages in a Vietnamese university context.

Ibiere Cookey and her coauthors’ (Michael O. Ukonu, Emeka S. Orekye, and Olanrewaju Mgboji) An A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Newspaper Coverage and Reader Response to Covid-19 Reports acknowledges the importance of official languages in multilingual societies but notes that it is challenging for majority and minority language speakers to identify with their sociocultural orientations when using a lingua franca. The authors further examine the themes, narrative viewpoints, and language modes in Nigerian newspaper reports on Covid-19 and readers’ responses to these reports, highlighting the link between trust in information sources and attitudes toward health risks.

Phu Si Nguyen’s review of Natasha Broodie’s Give Me Tea, Please: Practical Ingredients for Tasteful Language offers a perceptive overview of a profoundly enlightening guidebook. Nguyen illustrates how Broodie, drawing on a variety of multilingual and cross-cultural experiences, provides valuable insights into improving communication, skillfully highlights cultural differences that lead to communication breakdowns in multicultural and multilingual environments, and elucidates effective approaches for navigating even the most challenging forms of formal, informal, direct, and indirect communication.

Divya Shantha Kumari Adinarayanan and her coauthors’ (Shanthi Nambi, Raman Krishnan,^. and Rajagopalan Vijayaraghavan) Let the child take the lead: Intervention for enriching parent-child interactions during shared book reading emphasizes that parent-child conversations during shared book reading (SBR) can facilitate children’s language skill development. The authors further demonstrate how SBR intervention can support this, resulting in significantly longer parent responses, more conversational turns, and greater expressive language skills.

On behalf of the Rupkatha Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, I would like to express our gratitude to the authors, reviewers, and editorial team whose expertise and commitment have brought this TESOL Edition to fruition. Their dedication ensures that the articles presented within these pages are rigorous, relevant, and impactful. Furthermore, by bringing together various perspectives and experiences, we trust that their efforts in publishing this issue have furthered a global dialogue that transcends geographical and cultural boundaries.