http://dx.doi.org/10.19183/how.22.1.131

Editorial

How to cite this article (APA 6th ed.):
Cárdenas, M. L. (2015). Editorial. HOW, 22(1), 7-9. http://dx.doi.org/10.19183/how.22.1.131.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. License Deed can be consulted at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

Welcome back to the HOW Journal. This time I am pleased to share with you two important pieces of news. First, our readership can now read and download the full version of the articles published in HOW in our website http://howjournalcolombia.org

This achievement has been possible thanks to the academic guidance of the PROFILE Journal at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, the support of the ASOCOPI Board of Directors, the dedication of the assistant to the HOW Journal Editor—Edwin Martínez—and the sponsorship of Pearson Colombia. All of them, together with our reviewers, have kindly understood our requests to engage in various tasks and invest precious time to make HOW more visible on-line. This way, we can reach a wider audience and comply with a very important requirement of evaluation policies for academic journals: to have an editorial process characterised by the Open Journal System.

On our website we have a link to Pearson Colombia. Thus, our readers can also access their website and get acquainted with their products and events.

Second, we are delighted to share with you the news that Colciencias-Publindex has confirmed HOW's classification in category B. With this, the Colombian agency which evaluates the academic journals edited in the country acknowledges our rigor and commitment toward sustaining a serious publication. We hope we can move forward and get accepted by other databases and referencing systems.

I now gladly present the first issue of our twenty-second volume. It is made up of seven articles contributed by authors from Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the United Kingdom.

We have gathered two interesting pieces of work in the Research Reports section. To begin, we present the article by Puerto Rican authors Sandra L. Soto-Santiago, Rosita L. Rivera, and Catherine M. Mazak, who report on a study focused on the emergence of the zone of proximal development in a university ESL (English as a Second Language) course via the promotion of mutual understanding, respect, and emotional closeness. Their investigation invites us to learn about the conditions through which learners were able to activate their zone of proximal development.

Then, we can read an article dealing with teacher education. Argentinian authors Damaris Ana Ruth Panzachi Heredia and Pedro Luis Luchini deal with an investigation aimed at exploring the cognitive process and the language learning strategies and styles that one Spanish trainee used to become a good English language learner. Among the contributions this study can provide to the teacher education area we might highlight that the use of multiple direct/indirect language learning strategies and a significant change in teachers' learning styles can have a bearing on our success in becoming good English language learners.

The second section, Reports on Pedagogical Experiences, contains two articles. First we can read the account written by Colombian teachers María Fernanda Jaime Osorio and Edgar Alirio Insuasty who explored the sorts of in-service teaching practices used by teachers who work in a language institute in their English lessons and assessed the potential effects of these practices on the development of students' communicative competence. Interestingly, they pinpoint aspects concerning the students' organizational and pragmatic competences.

After that, Fredy Orlando Salamanca González describes and analyses the pedagogical intervention he led with university students in order to find a strategy to encourage them not only to write but to feel an identity with their texts. We can learn about the way this teacher guided his students to write narratives and how these allowed learners to portray their experiences using the target language. This way, the narratives provided the teacher with the possibility of knowing his students better, as well as understanding how they worked to look for the most accurate words and descriptions. In addition, by getting closer to his students' writing processes, the teacher could feel an affiliation towards them.

We gather three papers in the Reflections and Revision of Themes section. They come from three different contexts and contend with communities of inquiry, motivation in second language learning and technology in EFL (English as a Foreign Language).

In first place, Mexican teachers Darlene González Miy and Luz Edith Herrera Díaz share with us a literature review of communities of inquiry in TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) which, in the authors' words, has gained significant attention in online education research. We can find in this work a brief description of the model, its theoretical foundation, its applications, and potential uses in the area of language learning in online environments. We hope other researchers and educators feel motivated to submit more contributions regarding the setting up and development of communities of inquiry in different settings and on different educational levels.

Following that article, we can find Mario Guerrero's article in which he portrays key issues that can help us understand motivation over the past forty years. He has achieved this goal by focusing on the different theories associated with language acquisition. As stressed by the author, we need to understand the theoretical evolution of this field so that we can ponder its relevance in the learning and teaching of a foreign language.

Laying the foundations for a video-game based language instruction for the teaching of EFL is the work authored by Colombian teacher Héctor Alejandro Galvis. Among the relevant aspects he examines we can point out the justification for the use of video games in general education and, more specifically, foreign language education. We can also find in this last article a revision of second language acquisition theoretical foundations that provide the rationale for adapting video-game based language instruction in light of important second language acquisition constructs such as culture and identity.

I am sure experienced teacher-researchers and educators will acknowledge the seriousness and relevance of the works included in this edition of HOW. No doubt, the articles gathered in this edition will illuminate other teachers' works. I also hope novice teacher-researchers and prospective teachers find them useful. Hope more contributors feel encouraged to submit their papers so that their working theories and projects can be visible through publishing.

Melba Libia Cárdenas
Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Sede Bogotá
Guest Editor