Beyond Words Vol. 2, No 1, May 2014
Widya Mandala Catholic University Surabaya

Editorial

It is always satisfying when a developing author makes good use
of critique for a learning experience!

Wendy C. Kasten

This journal is peer-reviewed where every manuscript written by beginner, developing,

and senior authors, follow the same blind review system. This is to let articles come to readers in

an easy way to read, and with quality. The quote above is Wendy C. Kasten’s when she heard

that the author she reviewed appreciated her comments.

Seven articles are reaching readers in this issue. The first article concerns how learning in

the 21st century is different from what happens in the second millennium. There are changes of

work place demands, and students’ diverse backgrounds and needs, especially for the ASEAN

community to whom the realization of the APEC agreement is coming soon. Here, Andrew Lian

and Maria Victoria Pineda discuss the Personal Learning Environment (PLE), Rhizomatic

learning and technology as the solution for the ASEAN community entering the 21st Century.

In the second article, Wendy C. Kasten, Murat Dagistan, and Vildan Sarikaya narrate the

stories of conversation partnership between American students studying at the Teacher

Education department, and International students coming to Kent University taking various fields

of studies. Will this system really help the international students or the American students or

both? What could readers learn from stories of the partners attending regular meetings?

The third article is a study on English for content subjects. Patrisius Istiarto Djiwandono,

teaching English through CLIL to accounting students, conductes a series of Classroom Action

Research followed by interviewing students’ opinions. He expects not only new vocabulary be

obtained, but also the content subject. However, while the vocabulary mastery improves, the

content subject does not increase as expected.

Discourse Analysis in the classroom sounds threatening for both teachers and students.

However, Deepti Gupta and her co-authors Amir Reza Nemat Tabrizi and Mohita Saxena have

shown it possible and helpful to ESL students by giving the four steps Record-View-Transcribe-

Analyse.

Is blogging an effective way to teach writing? Silvana Devinta Sari gives her students

informal learning environment and feedback from readers. Then she finds some facts, she does

not expect before, that autonomous learning happens while students write using blogs because

they do not feel rigidly structured by deadlines, rules and theories. Probably her findings could

be in line with PLE and Rhizomatic learning.

Extensive Reading used to be practiced and it proved to yield marvelous results, in the

past. The reasons why teachers at present do not like it anymore are among others the

overwhelming tasks of reviewing students’ work. Students also find it burdening amongst other

assignments related to their major subjects. George M. Jacobs who has written articles and books

on selecting materials presents his ideas in this issue.

A book review, that was absent in the first issue, discusses the significance of the

integrated personal and professional identity. Mateus Yumarnamto reviews Janet Alsup’s book,

Teacher Identity Discourse: Negotiating Personal and Professional Spaces. Even though the

book was written six years ago, the issue is still persistent until the present.

What is new in this issue is the About the Authors. Knowledge is not “dead” after it is

presented in journals or books. Comments and discussions could be done with the authors to

benefit more readers and authors.

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We express our big thanks to the reviewers giving their valuable time and thoughts, Prof.

Dr. Andrew Lian, Prof. Dr. Anita Lie, Prof. Dr. Wendy C. Kasten, Prof. Dr. Deepti Gupta, Dr.

Rodney Jones, Dr. Willy Ardian Renandya, Dr. Lesley Harbon, Dr. Ignatius Harjanto. Without

them, this issue will not come to you.

The Editors