The Managing editor and the associate editors have once again put together a strong issue of the Journal selected from the continuing pool of papers that have been submitted. The 10 articles cover a wide range of countries and topics, but generally agree in reporting on continuing efforts to improve the teaching of English in Asia.
Joyes and Chen report on the evaluation of innovative on-line learning at Beijing Normal University, a program being conducted in cooperation with the University of Nottingham. Han analyses the underlying reasons for the failure of a project at a northern Chinese University. Nikitina and Furuoka described the problems of introducing communicative language teaching in Russian classes in a university in Malaysia where students favour some aspects of traditional teaching. Walker discusses how contrastive rhetoric can be used to improve student writing in Korea. Park sketches overview of the state of English language teaching in Korea, focusing on professionalisation and teacher education. Ma presents experimental evidence of the role of prosody for Korean students learning English in Hawaii. Huang reports on a study of the factors influencing (positively and negatively) teachers in a Chinese middle school wanting to introduce communicative activities to their language teaching. Ishikawa presents evidence of the relationship between task complexity and language proficiency accounting for the English writing of Japanese high school students.
It will be clear from the summary that the editors have selected papers which show both professional relevance and academic sophistication. While some of the studies may be small, they all show good research techniques and solid empirical evidence for their conclusions.
Editor-in-Chief
Bernard Spolsky
Managing Editor's Note
We have had the most fantastic end to the year thanks to the growing number of contributors to the Journal. There have been quite a number of articles submitted since summer 2006. Editors have spent a great deal of time and effort reviewing and selecting the highest quality papers for December issue of the Journal. I would like to express my deepest appreciation for their contributions.
The articles in this issue address different areas of the profession: Teacher education (Gordon Joyes and Zehang Chen; Jiuhan Huang), L2 curriculum (Han Han), L2 teaching method (Larisa Nikitina), Contrastive rhetoric (Deron Walker), L2 Professional development (Joo-Kyung Park), L2 processing (Jee Hyun Ma), L2 performance (Tomohito Ishikawa). I greatly appreciate all of the authors for their great contributions.
We expect to invite a few new members to the Editorial Board to strengthen the review process from the next issue. The editorial board members are energized by the challenges that lay ahead of us to make the Journal the best quality. With your ongoing contribution, I am confident the Journal will continue to grow.
Richard R. Day (University of Hawaii, USA) Nobuo Okada (Osaka University, Japan) Yonglin Yang (Tsinghua University, China) Amy B. M. Tsui (University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong) Phyllis G. L. Chew (Nanyang Technology University, Singapore) Christine Coombe (Dubai Men's College, UAE) Ganakumaran Subramaniam (University Kebangsaan Malaysia, Malaysia) Mi Jeong Song (Seoul National University, Korea) Zoya Proshina (Far Eastern National University, Russia) AliAukah (State U of Malang, Indonesia)
Editorial Board (Editors)
Hitoshi Muranoi (Tohokugakuin University, Japan) Masanori Terauchi (Hosei University, Japan) Hajime Terauchi (Takachiho University, Japan) Malachi Edwin Vethamani (University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia) Jianzhong Yu (Fudan University, China) Yongjie Chen (Shanghai Jiaotong University, China) Young-in Moon (University of Seoul, Korea) Soyoung Lee (Inha University, Korea) Sung-Yeon Kim (Hanyang University, Korea) Sun-Young Oh (Seoul National University, Korea) Kuldip Kaur (Open University Malaysia, Malaysia) Susann Checketts (Center for British Teachers, Malaysia) Sabiha Mansoor (Aga Khan University, Pakistan) Sichyova Olga (Amur State University, Russia) Hoa Hiep Pham (University of Hue, Vietnam) Kazem Lotfipour-Saedi (Ottawa University, Canada) Lawrence Zhang (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) Yong Suk Kim (Korea University of Technology and Science, Korea) Chul Joo Uhm (Chonnam University, Korea) Jong Bai Hwang (Konkuk University, Korea) Maha Sripathey (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) Neden Sri Lengkanawati (Indonesian Education University, Indonesia) Anchalee Chayanuvat (Walailak University, Thailand) Michiko Nakano (Waseda University, Japan)
