TESOL Quarterly

At the April 1963 annual conference of the National Association for Foreign Student Affairs (NAFSA), now stands for Association of International Educators, there was a suggestion about a small conference of representatives from various kinds of ESOL programs. The pilot meeting was held in D.C. on September 12, 1963. There were representatives from NAFSA, Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the Modern Language Association (MLA), the Speech Association of America (SAA), the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the state educational systems of California, Michigan, Florida, Arizona, New Mexico, the city of New York, and Canada. They decided that a national convention on the teaching of English to speakers of other languages should be held in Arizona, May 8–9, 1964. They also decided that there was a need for a professional journal associated with the conference. The first conference took place with 700 participants. At this point, TESOL organization was called The National Advisory Council on Teaching of English as a Foreign Language (NACTEFL). An ad hoc committee representing professional organizations, state educational systems, and individuals concerned with the teaching of English to speakers of other languages met on January 30, 1965. They prepared a brief for the meeting and came up with a questionnaire to enable any and all members of the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL) was established in 1966. Thus, TESOL became its own separate organization. At the third annual meeting, they also made the first steps for TESOL Quarterly and they appointed their first editor, Betty Wallace Robinett from Ball State University, Indiana.[3]

Volume 1, Issue 1 of the Quarterly was published in March 1967. In the editorial of the first issue, the emphasis is put on practical matters. Moreover, even at its initiation, TESOL had global goals. It was concerned with English as a Second Language, as well as English as a Foreign Language. The first issue raised three concerns for the field; there is a high demand for ESL or EFL overseas, there are more than 100,000 foreign students in the U.S. and Canada and there is a need to help raise the language competence of these students, and lastly, there are several millions of residents in the U.S. whose first language is not English and teachers need support.

The first issue also listed goals for the journal and the organization. Brief version of the goals is as follows;

• a central office, with a TESOL library
• development of the journal as the central organ of the profession
• a newsletter relevant to the TESOL field
• a national register of competent personnel
• a publishing program, in addition to the journal and the newsletter. which will offer pamphlets, fliers, reprints, recordings, etc.
• a speaking and consulting program for workshops and professional development
• an annual convention
• planned program of national and regional meetings
• organization cooperation with other organizations[4]

Also, there were several goals about what TESOL could achieve nationally;

• Appointment of TESL specialist in a high position of the U.S. Office of Education
• Appointment of a TESL specialist as a consultant in every state where there is a TESOL program
• Recognition of the problem by school administration about the needs of ESL students
• Establishments of national guidelines for certification and preparation of teachers
• Increased research in the pedagogy of ESL

Some of the topics from the first issue were; teaching the sounds of English, the place of dictations in the ESL classroom, teaching reading and composition, the need for materials for teaching to Southwestern Indian speakers, teaching English to Spanish-English speakers, current trends of teaching English in France, curriculum trends in TESOL, programs administered by the U.S. department of Education.

On the 50th anniversary, TESOL Quarterly titled their annual report (2016) "Reflecting Forward".[5] In this report, it is stated that, based on the 2015-2016 data, TESOL has more than 11,000 members in 160 countries. In addition, it started to provide grants and awards to its members. Each award provides up to US$2500 for applicants who are currently working on research or would like to start research projects that are aligned with the TESOL Research Agenda. TESOL received 67 grant request submissions in 2016.

In terms of publishing, articles from expanding circle countries increased dramatically around the 1990s. Also, studies in EFL countries increased in the past 20 years and most of these articles came from Asia Pacific contexts. In this report, Canagarajah summarizes the changes and the emerging trends as follows;

• from product to process and practice
• from cognitive to social and ecological
• from pre-packacged methods to situated pedagogies and language socialization
• from studying controlled classrooms and experimental settings to everyday contexts and ecologies
• from the homogeneous to variation and inclusive plurality
• from knowledge or skills to identities, beliefs, and ideologies
• from objective to personal and reflexive
• from the generalized and global to specific and local

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