From the editor:

Welcome to this issue of the MEXTESOL Journal. We have seven contributions and they come from Colombia, Costa Rica, Iran and Mexico. The first article is titled 'Creating a Culture of Faculty Empowerment through Professional Development' by Mónica Rodrí­guez-Bonces and Carlo Granados Beltrán.

This refereed article presents the design and evaluation of a five-stage model for teacher development in a teachers' college in Colombia. The model includes needs analysis, action plan, teacher development, creation of academic community, and evaluation.

Next Nuria Villalobos Ulate has contributed the refereed article 'Notions of Non-native Teachers in Costa Rican Language Schools'. The native speaker fallacy is examined through an analysis of perceptions of native and non-native teachers of coordinators, teachers, and students in Costa Rican language schools offering Spanish, English, French, Portuguese, and Italian.

The third article, 'Email and its Effects on Iranian EFL Learners' Writing Ability', is written by two authors (A. Majid Hayati and Mozhgan Gooran) of the Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz in Iran. This refereed article investigates the effect of email as a communication tool on EFL learners writing ability.

Karim Sadeghi and Elmira Taghav from Urmia University (Iran) provide our readers with the refereed article 'The Relationship between Semantic Mapping Instruction, Reading Comprehension and Recall of Iranian Undergraduates Reading English Texts'. This article deals with the interactive reading strategy of semantic mapping and it examines the strategy's effectiveness in relationship to reading comprehension and recall of Iranian undergraduates.

To continue we offer our second vintage article from twenty years ago. Jack C. Richards wrote the article 'Teacher Thinking and Foreign Language Teaching' which addresses a number of terms such as teacher thinking, teacher cognition, decision making, expert teachers, novice teachers, and reflection.

Dixie Dixit: New Trends with Technology is a new column that the MEXTESOL Journal offers for readers. Josefina C. Santana V., or better known as Dixie (Universidad Panamericana in Guadalajara), has written 'Six Standards for Including Technology in the Language Classroom' which brings up interesting advice on how, when, and how much technology teachers should use in their foreign language classes. Based on the standards given by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), the author gives examples on how she has used different websites and what the benefits have been to take into consideration these standards to make her teaching practice more interactive and meaningful.

Last but not least, Benjamin Stewart of the Universidad de Aguascalientes in Mexico submitted 'Book Review of Big Questions in ELT' (Thornbury, 2013). Thornbury's book uses a Socratic method 'hence the chapters are introduced by questions. Stewart points out the benefits of the method as an invitation to reflective teaching and critical thinking development for both novice and experienced teachers. An interesting feature is the interactive nature of its chapters which combine text and technology by introducing blog entries as an integral part of the chapters.

We hope you enjoy reading this issue and our new columns. Please send in your articles to us!
...   [+ read more]


    Vol. 38 No. 1, 2014



    Editor-in-Chief:
    M. Martha Lengeling,
    Universidad de Guanajuato


    Associate Editor for Refereed Articles:
    JoAnn Miller,
    Free Lance Consultant


    Associate Editor for Non-refereed Articles:
    Ma. Guadalupe Rodrí­guez Bulnes,
    Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León


    Past Editor-in-Chief:
    Ulrich Schrader,
    Free Lance Consultant


    Published: May, 2014

    ISSN: 2395-9908

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MEXTESOL Journal, vol 38, núm. 1, 2014, es una Publicación cuadrimestral editada por la Asociación Mexicana de Maestros de Inglés, MEXTESOL, A.C., Versalles 15, Int. 301, Col. Juárez, Delegación Cuauhtémoc, C.P. 06600 Mexico, D.F., Mexico, Tel. (55) 55 66 87 49, journal@mextesol.org.mx. Editor responsable: M. Martha Lengeling. Reserva de Derechos al uso Exclusivo No. 04-2015-092112295900-203, ISSN: 2395-9908, ambos otorgados por el Instituto Nacional de Derecho del Autor. Responsable de la última actualización de este número: Asociación Mexicana de Maestros de Inglés, MEXTESOL, A.C. JoAnn Miller, Versalles 15, Int. 301, Col. Juárez, Delegación Cuauhtémoc, C.P. 06600 Mexico, D.F., Mexico. Fecha de última modificación: 31/08/2015. Las opiniones expresadas por los autores no necesariamente reflejan la postura del editor de la publicación. Se autoriza la reproducción total o parcial de los textos aquí­ publicados siempre y cuando se cite la fuente completa y la dirección electrónica de la publicación.

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