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Editorial
Josephine Taylor*

This issue, GiST continues its bi-annual publication schedule. We are also pleased as well with our growing international recognition, and widening network of scholars, researchers, 
editors and contributors. In this semester’s issue, GiST features articles 
from Asia, Africa and the Americas, from a wide range of countries. It 
is exciting to share this breadth of experiences and knowledge, to offer 
insights into the local and particular, and at the same time to take note 
of the commonalities of our inquiry. 

Research shared in this issue ranges from topics featured in 
previous issues, from linguistic intraference in Nigerian English to the 
incorporation of media and technology into language learning, and the 
effects of this on learners’ attitudes and performance. We also offer 
several studies probing teachers and students’ constructed and perceived 
identities as learners, and towards the content studied. The issue also 
highlights important subjects in language policy and the growth and 
acceptance (or not) of the dominant role of English in contemporary 
society. 

In this issue’s only article from Colombia, Letty Hazbleidy 
Contreras Ospitia, Sandra Milena Charry Garzón, and Angela 
Yicely Castro Garcés describe how multimedia speaking tasks such as 
podcast and video recordings, as well as oral presentations contribute to 
building students’ speaking skills, and positively affect learners’ attitudes 
towards such tasks and English class in general. Findings strongly 
indicate that teachers interested in improving students’ speaking skills 
should provide opportunities for challenging, meaningful performance 
tasks, and that the inclusion of technology and multimedia enhances 
student motivation. 

In a related article from Turkey, Turgay Han and Fırat Keskin 
describe how the use of the mobile application WhatsApp for speaking 
tasks helps lower learners’ foreign language speaking anxiety. Many 
teachers may opt out of using speaking tasks with their students, as so 
many learners are unwilling or unable to complete them due to their 
reluctance to take risks, and general anxiety when speaking in English. 

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Instead of assuming that learners will never speak, teachers should be 
heartened that such applications may provide students the protection 
and face-saving context necessary to be more willing to communicate. 

In terms of vocabulary recall, Alireza Karbalaei, Ali Sattari and 
Ziba Nezami describe how audio-picture annotations improve second 
language vocabulary recall over simple text-picture annotations. This 
study from Iran argues the need for aural as well as written input as an 
aid to vocabulary learning. 

This issue, GiST offers several narrative explorations into a range 
of issues related to teacher identity. In Elsie L. Olan and Paula Belló’s 
article on the relationship between language, culture and society, they 
use positioning theory and narrative research to describe teachers’ 
positions of agency, authority and empowerment. In a related article, 
María Cristina Sarasa carries out narrative inquiry to explore pre-
service English teachers’ imagined identities. This study from Argentina 
offers four accounts, demonstrating how participants co-author their 
imagined (future) identities as teachers. 

GiST Number 12 also features the work of frequent contributor and 
recognized expert Omowumi Bode Steve Ekundayo on the phonemic 
realizations of the letter <Ii> and <Yy> in standard Nigerian English, 
and its implications for the teaching and learning of English as a second 
language in the country. This study is interesting in a global context 
as the existence of new varieties of English come to gain increased 
importance in many countries, and certainly penetrate and influence the 
teaching of whatever standard of English currently adopted in those 
countries. 

Finally, from the US, Rachel Kraut, Tara Chandler, and 
Kathleen Hertenstein explore the very compelling construct of teacher 
self-efficacy, a complex set of elements and conditions that work 
together to describe and explain teachers’ work where other theoretical 
frameworks fall short. In their study, the authors trace how important 
issues such as teacher training, access to resources, years of experience 
and professional development work together in the construction of ESL 
reading teachers’ perceived effectiveness. Taken together, the results of 
this study underscore the need for ESL teacher training programs and 
IEP institutes to devote greater effort in preparing faculty to teach ESL 
reading skills effectively.

Finally, GiST is pleased to share an important critique from Costa 
Rica by Cristhian Fallas Escobar, Johanna Ennser-Kananen, and 
Martha Bigelow on the hegemony of monetary and career-based 
justifications for learning English as a foreign language. In Colombia, 

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many professionals struggle with this hegemony daily as we confront 
the restricting discourses limiting students’ motivations for learning 
English to “getting a better job.” GiST is keenly interested in seeking 
out and disseminating recent scholarship on deeper considerations of 
the benefits of language learning for learners, institutions and society. 

Editor

*Josephine Taylor earned her BA in English and French from 
Emory University and an MS in Teaching English as a Second 
Language from Georgia State University, both in Atlanta, 
Georgia. She has been a teacher and teacher trainer for 30 
years in the US, Germany and Colombia. She has also worked 
extensively in publishing, consulting, curricular innovation, 
and educational improvement projects. She is currently Editor 
of GiST Education and Learning Research Journal as well as 
Professor/Consultant at the Institución Universitaria Colombo 
Americana, ÚNICA. 

                No. 12 (January - June 2016)     No. 12 (January - June 2016)