In the beginning of November, 2018, Edgar Lucero and Clara Valderrama assumed the responsibility of being the Editor and Editor’s Assistant, respectively, of this prestigious Colombian journal about English language teaching (ELT). The prestige of the HOW journal has been mainly the results of the tremendous work done by Dr. Melba Libia Cárdenas and Edwin Martínez Pulido for more than a decade. Many ELT scholars and professionals have written and published their research, reflections, and theoretical works with the formidable assistance of the Editorial Advisory Board, reviewers, and the leadership of Melba Libia, as the Editor, and Edwin, as the Editor’s Assistant. Now that Melba Libia and Edwin are leaving, everyone who is part of the HOW journal community gives them a well-deserved and enormous thank you for all their commitment.

Now as the new Editor and Editor’s assistant of the HOW journal, we, Edgar and Clara, will continue promoting the sharing of local and global ELT scholars’ insights of educational and research experiences intended to add understanding to English language teaching practices. As HOW journal’s purpose states, the mission is to maintain communication among English language teachers both in Colombia and abroad by offering opportunities for the dissemination of knowledge resulting from educational and research practices that concern English language teaching issues.

Local and global English language teachers, educators, scholars, and professionals, being experienced authors or just starting out, have remarkable knowledges and experiences capable of being used for the creation and construction of thought applicable to each particular ELT context. Specialized journals, as HOW is in the field of ELT in Colombia, present opportunities for all these authors, being local or global, to recount and expertly talk about what really happens with ELT in their contexts. This sharing has the aim of enhancing the creation of lines of thought and constructing foundations that can have the power of boosting strong and core considerations for the evolution of ELT in each context. Let us let HOW journal be a means to make it happen.

In this first issue of 2019, as research reports, María Fernanda Jaime Osorio, Mabel Catalina Caicedo Muñoz and Iván Camilo Trujillo Bohórquez present an action-research study which examined the impact of a radio program as a strategy to develop the speaking skills of a mixed course at a private institution in Colombia. Additionally, Frank Giraldo reports the contextual Language Assessment Literacy (LAL) of five Colombian English language teachers. The findings of this study show that the teachers used varied traditional and alternative assessment instruments to improve teaching and learning,

From the global context of EFL, we present three research articles. In the first, Elahe Saedpanah and Adel Dastgoshadeh investigate the comparative effect of teaching collocations through practicing them in literary and non-literary contents. In the second article, Özlem Özen Tosun and Emrah Cinkara investigate the validity and reliability of a ‘Coursebook Dependency Questionnaire’ developed in the current study. In the third article, Negar Moslemi and Parya Habibi aim to explore the relationship among Iranian EFL teachers’ professional identity, their self-efficacy, and their critical thinking skills in their teaching process.

In the section of Reports on Pedagogical Experiences, Anna Carolina Peñaloza and Jhonatan Vásquez Guarnizo seek to understand what types of reflections Modern Languages students reveal about educational issues when analyzing artwork within their context, at a public university in Colombia.

In the final section of this issue, Reflections and Revision of Themes, we present two articles. In the first, Julio César Torres-Rocha presents an article of reflection, which considers socio-political issues such as linguistic imperialism, native speakerism, English as an International language, and appropriate teaching methodologies, which are currently contentious issues in the ELT community. In the second article, Ana Clara Sánchez Solarte describes the importance of classroom management for language teachers, particularly for novice L2 teachers since it can affect their permanence in the teaching profession.