ABSTRACT
It is increasingly important, even critical, for those in language education to write for scholarly publication, and not only for the obvious purpose of securing or keeping an academic position. Researching and writing about teaching and related topics also allows educators to grow professionally and intellectually, to share their ideas with peers, and to become better teachers through the reflective and critical processes of writing for a public readership. Yet many language educators, particularly but not only newcomers, resist the challenge of preparing work for possible publication, feeling intimidated by an activity that seems fraught with obstacles. These obstacles include the sense that getting into print is an accomplishment that only a few insiders with insider knowledge manage to achieve, that the process threatens egos and individual voice, and that people who get published somehow find it easier to write than those who do not. Our major aim in this book is to help demystify the activity of writing for publication, demonstrating that the obstacles are surmountable. We do not claim that such writing is easy, or that we have any easy shortcuts to doing such writing. But we do believe that by gathering and sharing the stories of well-published scholars in language education and English as
a second language (ESL) in a book like this, we can begin to make the process of scholarly writing, in all of its aspects, more transparent, more accessible, less overwhelming, less intimidating.
