I just came back from Kusatsu Onsen, a famous spa resort in Gunma Prefecture. There, I attended Japan Association of College English Teachers (JACET) Summer Seminar as one of the invited speakers along with Alister Cumming and Razika Sanaoui.

I had a great time at the four-day event. It was great to see some familiar faces--people who have been involved in the field of L2 writing for quite a while--and some people I had not previously met. Many of them said they were also coming to the Symposium on Second Language Writing in September. I was really excited to see that L2 writing has become a viable topic in Japan.

At the end of each day, we enjoyed various activities, including a concert, barbecue, outdoor foot baths and, of course, onsen. Some of us also stayed up late, enjoying ourselves in the lobby until 3 a.m.

More pictures are available at: http://picasaweb.google.co.jp/pmatsuda/Kusatsu

All in all, it was a great event--well organized and executed. I highly recommend it!

The dates for the 2008 Symposium has been set. It will be on June 5-7, 2008 at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA. More information will be available here.

Sharon Crowley, my new colleague at Arizona State University, is the recipient of 2007 David H. Russell Award for her recent book, Toward a Civil Discourse: Rhetoric and Fundamentalism (2006). Congratulations, Sharon!

Abstracts for concurrent sessions are now available online. Since the schedule of sessions is still tentative, abstracts are arranged in alphabetical order by title.

http://sslw.jslw.org/2007/abstracts.html

最近仕事でも、プライベートでも、多言語社会の到来について考えることが多かったが、考えてみると自分の仕事はほとんど英語オンリー。

今までに日本語でやったのはずいぶん前にあった白百合大学での講演ぐらいだろうか？ところが数日前に小池生夫先生のご招待で明海大学で講演したのだけれど、観客が日本人ばかりだったので、日本語でということになった。

日本語でしゃべる準備は全していなかったので、英語のパワーポイントを見ながら日本語でしゃべる、自分の講演を自分で同時通訳しているような状態になってしまった（笑）。

最近日本での活動も増えてきたので、そろそろ自分のウェブサイトやブログも日本語を導入してみよう、ということになり、日本語ブログの登場と相成ったわけ。同時に日本語の略歴も書いてみました。

I'm happy to report that Gail Shuck of Boise State University is the winner of the 2005-2006 Best Article Award for work published in Writing Program Administration.

The article was part of the special L2 writing issue of Writing Program Administration (Volume 30.1/2, Fall 2006) that I edited with Maria Fruit and Tarama Lee Burton Lamm.

Congratulations, Gail! Well deserved!

Just when I finished migrating these lists to a new system, they had to upgrade the software and change the server, and the URLs for the subscription pages have changed. Here they are:

Journal of Second Language Writing Mailing List
https://lists.asu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=JSLWLIST

Symposium on Second Language Writing Discussion List
https://lists.asu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=SSLWLIST