TEFL NEWS is a quarterly publication, and it will appear at the end of March, June, September, and December at URL: http://ilc2.doshisha.ac.jp/kkitao/teflnews/.

We started this newsletter mainly to inform people throughout the world about what is happening in Japan in the field of TEFL, and secondarily to inform people in Japan about what is happening in TEFL in other parts of the world. Thus this newsletter will mainly be made up of conference reports, research reports, and events or news related to TEFL in Japan by Japanese people in English. We will include similar content related to overseas events, written in either in English or in Japanese. We encourage Japanese people to write articles in English.

Conference reports need to include the date, the place, the organizer, the number of participants, the content of presentations, what were special about the conference, etc., as well as the comments or evaluations by the writer. The editors will not correct the English, though they reserve the right to accept or reject the manuscript, to request the writer to make changes, and to make minor editorial changes.

We will also include links to articles, reviews, reports, etc., on TEFL. If you have articles, reviews, reports, etc., related to TEFL on line, we would appreciate it if you would send us the URLs.

We feel that Japan is one of the major countries where active academic activities in TEFL are carried out, and it is our responsibility to provide information about what is going on here to those outside Japan.

We are hoping that TEFL NEWS will be a bridge between Japan and many countries to the north, east, west, and south. We look forward to your contributions and cooperation.

If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to contact us.

The conference opened with a welcoming address by Marc Helgeson of Miyagi Women's College in Sendai. Rather than giving the usual greeting, he posed questions intended to help guide the participants in their experience in attending the conference. The questions included "What do we as English teachers and students throughout the region have in common?" "Why are our students studying English?" "What about culture in learning English?" "Are we moving toward an Asian methodology?" and "What role does 'communicative' language teaching play?" These questions dealt with issues that were raised over and over again by the plenary speakers, featured speakers, and speakers in concurrent sessions.

The opening ceremony, which followed the welcoming speech, was presided over by H.R.H. Princess Galyani Vadhana from Luang Naradhiwas Rajanagarindra.

The first plenary session was given by Dr. Henry Widdowson of the University of Essex, who spoke on "New Perspectives: Old Problems." He discussed the relationships among linguistic competence, cultural knowledge, and lexical competence. He used examples of assumed shared knowledge and assumed shared attitudes and how they are expressed through texts in ways that are not able to be accounted for by linguistic competence or the information from a dictionary alone. The reason for this is that these are based on "local" shared knowledge, that is, knowledge of English as it is used in a particular community which may be based on residence, profession, etc. Widdowson emphasized the importance of relating the teaching of EFL to the students' reality, and of making the content accessible to students so they can interact with it and make it their own.

On the second day, the plenary was given by Diane Larsen-Freeman of the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont, USA. She spoke on "Blurring Boundaries: New Perspectives on Teaching and Learning English in Asia." She discussed the interdependence between three pairs of concepts that are generally seen in contrast: teaching and learning; grammar and communication; and the teacher and the researcher.

The third plenary speaker was Denise Murray of San Jose State University, president of TESOL. She spoke on "Cultural Transmission in Language Learning and Teaching." She began by discussion some of the problems with teaching culture, including the difficulty of deciding which culture to teach; the problem that culture is often presented to "neatly," without problems; assumptions that may be exported along with English, such as informal relations between teachers and students and learner-centered approaches; and the problem that teaching culture often looks at the world though a taken-for-granted Western democratic view. The speaker suggested solutions for these problems, including more cross-cultural studies and specifically studies of documented failures of cross-cultural communication.

In addition to the plenary sessions, there were three featured speakers each day. The featured speakers on the first day were Lance Knowles ("Multimedia and Language Teaching"), Alan Maley ("Myth, Mesmerism, and Magic"), and David Mendelsohn ("Excellence in Teaching and the Need for Excellence in Teacher Education"). On the second day, the featured speakers were Simon Greenall ("From Cultural Bump to Culture Shock") and Surai Pongtongcharoen ("EFL Implications of Semantic Aspects"). In addition, there was a colloquium on the future of English language teaching in Asia, "Agenda 2000", with Marc Helgeson and the presidents or chairs of TESOL, Thai TESOL, IATEFL, and Australia TESOL. On the final day of the conference, the featured speakers were Christopher Candlin ("Task Design and Learner Discourse"), Susan Gass and Amy Tickle ("Focus on Form, Focus on Meaning: Language and Culture in the Foreign Language Classroom"), and Chris Kennedy ("Levels of Culture: Levels of Change").

There were about almost 250 concurrent sessions and seven poster sessions which covered a wide variety of topics. Some of the topics included using computers and the Internet; activities for teaching one or more of the four skills; pronunciation problems; teaching content areas in English; business English; teaching culture; teaching English to children; learner autonomy and self-access learning; global education; teaching literature in EFL classes; using movies and television programs, storytelling and folktales; the relationship between communicative language teaching and the teaching of grammar; and classroom management.

Some of the concurrent sessions dealt with the circumstances in a particular Asian country, but others included efforts to find common threads among the situations in different Asian countries. Questions were raised about the similarities and differences in Asian countries and the influence that this has on language teaching methodology. Many of the presentations emphasized the use of technology, either as a teacher resource or in the classroom. There were also many presentations related directly or indirectly to culture. Some of these dealt directly with the teaching of culture or intercultural communication through such media as drama or simulations, while others dealt with the influence of culture on the education process or some aspect of language.

The closing address was given by Madeleine du Vivier, IATEFL Chair. She emphasized two themes which seemed to reoccur both in presentations and in personal conversations--questions related to culture and questions related to methodology. Questions related to culture include those about whose culture should be taught and what authenticity, appropriateness, and context are and what roles they have in English language teaching. In relation to methodology, she discussed the question of whether there is an Asian methodology and, if there is, what it is. She emphasized the need for more research, particularly classroom research, especially in settings where English is a foreign language.

The Second Pan-Asian Conference is scheduled to be held in Korea on October 8-10, 1999 on "Teaching English: Linking Asian Countries." The Third Pan-Asian Conference is planned for Japan in 2001.

The conference opened on March 8 with an opening plenary. Participants were welcomed by Mary McGroarty, AAAL Vice President and the chair of the conference. Two AAAL awards were presented. The Distinguished Scholarship and Service Award was presented to Courtney B. Cazden, Professor Emerita at Harvard Graduate School of Education, a researcher in the area of forms and functions in written and spoken discourse in L1 and L2 education. The Student Travel Award went to Suzanne Scott, a PhD student at Northern Arizona University, who has served as the chair of the Applied Linguistics Interest Section of TESOL.

The opening plenary speaker was Nancy H. Hornberger of the University of Pennsylvania, who spoke on "Language Policy, Language Education, and Language Rights: Indigenous, Immigrant, and International Perspectives." She discussed the plight of indigenous languages, many of which are in danger of disappearing because they are not being transmitted to the next generation. In many cases, speakers have the twin needs to learn a new language and maintain their original language. Pressures from majority languages and social, political and economic pressures make it difficult for indigenous languages to survive. And yet language policy and language education can often counter these pressures, promote the vitality and stability of these languages, and protect the rights of their speakers. Speakers should have the right, according to Hornberger, to have education in their own language and to have control over the educational process as it affects their children.

Two plenaries were held on Sunday, March 9. In the first, Peter H. Nelde of Catholic University of Brussels spoke on "How to Neutralize Language Conflict: A European Perspective." He pointed out that the European Union has 11 official languages, meaning that there are 110 language combinations. In addition, there are 48 "minority languages" or "lesser-used languages." However, Nelde maintained that there is no such thing as "symmetrical multilingualism"--one language is always stronger or has more numerous or economically better-off speakers. This inevitably creates conflicts, and solutions that have been proposed include using an artificial language, choosing one lingua franca, and choosing a small number of languages, none of which is a practical or acceptable solution. While Nelde did not propose a solution, he encouraged multilingualism, particularly the learning of surrounding languages and discouraged elitism, asserting that "Monolingualism is curable," and that multilingualism is for everyone.

The speaker in the second plenary was Guadalupe Valdes of Stanford University, who spoke on "Language-Based Discrimination." She asserted that "monolingual" nations often disregard the rights of linguistic minorities. Using the example of the United States, she then reviewed several court cases which involved what she considered language-based discrimination, including cases where sales of service station franchises in the United States were blocked based on TOEIC scores and "English only" rules in the workplace, even during employees' break time. Valdes proposed that more research be done in various areas. These included the changeability of accents, appropriate norms and procedures for evaluating job-related language ability, the ability of aging individuals to acquire or improve a second language, and the evaluation/development of different tests that are appropriate for use with speakers of different varieties of English.

In the first plenary on March 10, John Edwards of St. Francis Xavier University spoke on "Multilingualism and Identity Negotiation." He pointed out that as the world becomes smaller linguistically, local languages are threatened, but that this has also had the effect of motivating concern for and loyalty to local languages. In spite of the spread of global languages, multilingual competence remains important. However, Edwards maintained that the importance of language is not limited to instrumentality; it is a marker of group identity and as such it often requires speakers to negotiate between the desire advance and at the same time maintain social, cultural and linguistic continuity.

Plenary speaker Elana Shohamy of Tel Aviv University spoke on "Critical Language Testing and Beyond." Shohamy maintained that language tests are not neutral. They exist in a context of social, political and educational agendas. Tests are not always used for the purpose that they were developed and validated. They are often used for purposes for which they were not intended and have the effect of narrowing linguistic knowledge, suppressing creative learning, creating a harmful backwash effect on teaching and learning, among other effects.

The last plenary was delivered by Craig Chaudron of the University of Hawai'i, who spoke on "Theory and Practice in Classroom Research." He discussed the "old" model of classroom research, which focused on context and process variables and outcomes, the limitations of this model, and the need for a more dynamic model of research. With the changes of focus and the development of "collaborative research," "action research," and "teacher research," there has been a greater focus on actual classroom research and on such aspects of learning as the language in social interaction between learner autonomy and strategy use, learner-centered program types, individualized learning, and language across the curriculum.

Conference colloquia and concurrent presentations were divided into twelve strands: Assessment, Discourse Analysis, Language Acquisition/Socialization, Literacy, Language for Specific Purposes, Language Policy and Planning, Second/Foreign Language Pedagogy, Psycholinguistics/SLA, Rhetoric and Stylistics, and Sociolinguistics. Colloquia were arranged around these topics, and concurrent sessions were often scheduled so that related sessions were held one after another in the same room.

Over the course of the conference, there were seven invited colloquia, organized by scholars in various areas of applied linguistics and bringing together four or five papers related to the subject. The topics of their subjects included "Incorporating a Sociolinguistic Perspective int o SLA Theory" (organized by Elaine Tarone and Leslie Beebe), "Creole Linguistics and Social Responsibility" (organized by Lise Winer and dedicated to Charlene Sato), "Foreign Language Acquisition in the Classroom Context" (organized by Carol A. Klee) and "Learning to Read in L2: A View from L1 Research" (organized by Rose-Marie Weber).

There were various opportunities for participants to make contact with each other and with presenters. "Meet the Speakers" was held on the evenings of the 9th and 10th. There was also an "Institutional Information Session," which was an opportunity for participants to share information about their programs, and three Professional Networking Sessions, where participants could meet others with similar interests. Finally, there were two receptions, one after the opening session, and the President's Reception on Monday evening.

A Publishers' Exhibit was held on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Almost twenty publishers displayed books related to various areas of applied linguistics, language teaching, and related subjects.

Next year's AAAL conference will be held in Seattle March 14-17.