Journal of Southeast Asian Language Teaching
Volume 12, No. 1, Spring 2006

Editor's Page

We welcome you to our first online issue of the Journal of Southeast Language Teaching, the refereed journal of the Council of Teachers of Southeast Asian Languages.  There are many colleagues and friends who have contributed to this newest expansion and development for JSEALT.  I would particularly like to recognize here the foresight of two COTSEAL Presidents, Prawet Jantharat and Bac Hoai Tran, in generating and pursuing the idea of an e-journal for our organization.

Once the idea was supported by the COTSEAL membership and an editor appointed, the next task was to find an appropriate e-home for JSEALT.  We were particularly fortunate that John Hartmann, George (Jim) Henry, and Robert Zerwekh of Northern Illinois University’s SEAsite saw this as an important step forward for the field of Southeast Asian language teaching and thus offered us a home on SEAsite.

The next step was to design the basic elements of the online journal; with the help and guidance of Kip Thammavongsa, a graduate of Northern Illinois University’s master’s program in computer science, we were able to do that.

An Editorial Board was appointed in the fall of 2005, and the support of this group has been important in the development of this first issue.  Members of the Board are Erlin Barnard of the University of Wisconsin; Rhodalyne Gallo-Crail of Northern Illinois University; Yuphaphann Hoonchamlong of the University of Hawaii; Mariam B. Lam of the University of California, Riverside; and Frank Smith of the University of Wisconsin.  Rhodalyne Gallo-Crail is the editor of the Book Review section of JSEALT, and Frank Smith edits the Multimedia Reviews.

We will be holding an Editorial Board meeting in Madison this summer in conjunction with our Conference on Southeast Asian Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics; before that meeting, do provide your ideas and suggestions for JSEALT to any one of the Board members or to the editor so that we can consider them at the meeting.

We look forward to receiving your articles, book reviews, multimedia reviews, language reports, and other items about the Southeast Asian languages you teach and about new research, methodology and technology that supports or affects our field.

Carol J. Compton
jsealt@charter.net