ETAS Journal Collection
Top image credit: courtesy of Patricia Daniels
Editor’s Notes: Welcome to the ETAS Journal homepage. Assembling every issue is a constant reminder of one of the never-ending challenges of editing ETAS Journal – maintaining the many different kinds of balance we always try to strike. Our goal is to find the delicate balance between the varying academic backgrounds, individual expertise and interests, and professional needs of our readers while also not neglecting their divergent aesthetic tastes. Hence, selecting pieces for publication that will appeal to every reader is often a difficult, even agonizing, task. To this end, we publish articles addressed to specialists interested in innovative work within as well as outside their own subject expertise while offering non-specialists examples of recent pedagogical approaches and new ways of conceiving and engaging the field of ELT. Rather than finding a common ground, we prefer to celebrate diversity. In most editions, we try to combine a Special Supplement as well as our usual Journal rubrics.
Over the past few years, I have spent a fair bit of time thinking about the direction and future of ETAS Journal, in particular, the prospect of mining the creative opportunities of the internet to give our publication a more robust, more vital online presence. This prospect is about to become a reality as we look forward to the launching of the new ETAS website on 12th September 2015. For ETAS Journal, this is a promising start, offering us yet another stride into the future to explore possibilities for developing other electronic initiatives designed to give our printed edition a much larger audience while ensuring its sustainability and preservation. It is our hope that in the foreseeable future, ETAS J will be available in a variety of formats and multiple media for our readers’ reading pleasure.
If we have succeeded in meeting most if not all the needs of our readership, then some of our goals have been achieved.
Spring 2017
In this issue: Thirty four years on... As it has always done, ETAS Journal remains attentive to teaching and learning issues, and continues to question assumptions and thinking about teaching while exploring effective ways to improve learning and teaching in the various professional contexts of our readers.
Winter 2016
Special Supplement: Testing the waters – Issues in English language assessment
This year-end edition of ETAS Journal Winter 2016 has been anticipated with such high hopes. Featuring the introduction of our new layout design – thanks to Ron! – and an excellent Special Supplement on Testing the waters: Issues in English language assessment, it comes our way gift-wrapped in Ingrid Christen van-Luling’s festive watercolour depiction of Christmas and the magic of winter in Zürich.
Summer 2016
Special Supplement: Creativity in the Language Classroom
It is a given that creativity, that unique ability to harness thoughts and ideas, drives us forward as a species. It is the single factor that has enabled humanity to produce everything from the first sharpened tool, to the wheel, the lightbulb, the Fifth Symphony, The Starry Night, War and Peace, the space shuttle, the smartphone – the list is endless. One thing is certain though – creativity is a habit, a way of working, a way of thinking, and a way of seeing the world. And for the way it helps us discover and enjoy, question and explore, build, tinker, and really live, creativity can help us understand ourselves. But it requires that we first imagine and step into the unknown to begin with, as the actor Alan Alda reminds us: “The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.”
Spring 2016
Special Feature: ETAS CROSSING BORDERS – Voices from the Belgian English Language Teachers Association
After an amazing journey to a variety of geographic locations, ETAS Journal is back to entrance us with the gifts of its travels – articles covering a pretty wide range of some of the most pertinent issues worthy of notice in the field of English Language Teaching, this time by fellow English teachers at BELTA, the Belgian English Language Teachers Association.
Winter 2015
Special Supplement: Cross-Cultural Communication and ELT
For those of us in the business of English Language Teaching, teaching and representing a foreign culture is almost as tremendous a job responsibility as actually teaching English. Language and culture are inextricably intertwined and awareness of the myriad issues in cross-cultural communication has become increasingly paramount. For these reasons and more, we are delighted to draw our readers’ attention to this issue’s Special Supplement on Cross-Cultural Communication and ELT
Spring 2014
Special Feature: ETAS Crossing Border: Voices from France
We invite our readers to enjoy another exciting issue, with articles about pronunciation in English as a lingua franca, how to teach reading if you are a new teacher, how to recycle newspapers into classroom materials, how to make use of songs in the language classroom, how to use improvisational theater activities in Business English training, and deciding whether to ban or embrace smartphones in the class – these and more breathe life into this issue.