Graham Crookes is Associate Professor in the Department of Second Language Studies at the University of Hawaii. He received his doctorate from the University of Hawaii, in Educational Psychology, specializing in the area of second language learning. Before joining the Department of SLS, he was Assistant Director of the Center for Second Language Classroom Research at the University of Hawaii. He began his career in second language education in 1977, and has since taught mainly in the Pacific area, spending several years in Malaysia and Japan before coming to Hawaii. Dr. Crookes has published in such journals as TESOL Quarterly and Applied Linguistics, and his current research interests include teacher-research and critical pedagogy.

Richard R. Day is a Professor of SLA at the University of Hawaii. His instructional and research interests are in second language teacher education, reading, literature, and materials development. He has presented his work at major conferences in Canada, Asia, and the United States. The author of numerous articles and books, his most recent publications include Extensive Reading Activities in the Second Language Classroom (with Julian Bamford, Cambridge University Press) and Impact Issues and Impact Topics (both with Junko Yamanaka, Longman Asia).

Kenton Harsch is the Director of the English Language Institute (ELI), University of Hawai’i at Manoa. He did his M.Ed. in Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages from Temple University. He oversees and assists with development of curricula, materials, and activities. He has taught graduate-level courses on Second Language Pedagogy: Program Administration. He has also developed two undergraduate-level teacher-training courses: Second Language Teaching: Using Film and Video in Second Language Classrooms and Second Language Learning: Strategies for Language Learning and Language Use. He is an invited instructor at the Center for Asia-Pacific Exchange Teaching Technique Workshops for Korean Elementary, Middle, and High School English Teachers. His recent publications include the following text-books: 1) Day, R.R., & Harsch, K. (2007).  Cover to Cover 2.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, and 2) Harsch, K. and Wolfe-Quintero, K. (2007).  Impact Listening 3 (2nd edition).  Hong Kong: Pearson Education.

Christina Higgins is an Associate Professor at the Department of Second Language Studies, University of Hawaii. She is a sociolinguist who is interested in the politics of language, multilingual practices, and identity. Her research draws on discourse analytic and qualitative approaches to study various facets of the global spread of English, Swahili sociolinguistics, and second language identities. Geographically, she has focused her research on East Africa, where she has studied language in the workplace, the intersection of popular culture and multilingualism, and HIV/AIDS education sponsored by non-governmental organizations. Her research in Tanzania also includes a recent study on the intercultural identity development among L2 Swahili speakers. She has also begun to explore the sociolinguistics of multilingualism and language awareness in Hawai'i through a collaborative video ethnographic project with high school students on the Leeward Coast of O'ahu.

Sandra McKay is a Professor of English at San Francisco State University where she teaches courses in sociolinguistics, methods, and materials for graduate students in TESOL. Her books include Teaching English as an International Language: Rethinking Goals and Approaches (2002, Oxford University Press, winner of the Ben Warren International Book Award), New Immigrants in the US: Readings for Second Language Educators (edited with Sau-ling Wong, 2000, Cambridge University Press) and Sociolinguistics and Language Teaching (edited with Nancy Hornberger, 1996, Cambridge University Press). Her research interests in English as an international language developed from her extensive work in international teacher education in countries such as Chile, Hong Kong, Hungary, Latvia, Morocco, Japan, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea and Thailand. She recently completed a research methodology text for Lawrence Erlbaum Associates entitled Researching Second Language Classrooms.

Hanh Thi Nguyen is Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics with the TESL Programs at Hawai'i Pacific University. Her research interests include the development of interactional competence in a second or professional language, social interaction in language learning situations, learners' transforming identities, and Vietnamese applied linguistics. Dr. Nguyen received her M.A. in Applied Linguistics with a focus on Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), and her Ph.D. in English Language and Linguistics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has lectured at Vietnam National University and various programs in Honolulu, and has also travelled to several cities in the U.S., Europe, and Asia to present her research at international conferences. Her recent and forthcoming articles appear in Applied Linguistics, The Canadian Modern Language Review, Language and Education, Critical Inquiry in Language Studies - An International Journal, Communication and Medicine, the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association, and Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area.

Lourdes Ortega is an Associate Professor in the Department of Second Language Studies, University of Hawai’i at Manoa. She holds a five-year degree in Spanish Philology from the University of Cádiz, Spain, and an M.A. in English as a Second Language and a Ph.D. in Second Language Acquisition, both from UHM. She has taught SLA and applied linguistics at Georgetown University, Georgia State University, and Northern Arizona University. She has given talks and lectured in Brazil, Canada, China, Greece, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Spain, and the United States. She was a Pre-Doctoral Mellon Fellow in 1999 and a National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow in 2003. In 2001 she was co-recipient with John Norris of the TESOL Distinguished Research award and the MLJ/ACTFL Paul Pimsleur award. She specializes in second language acquisition and has long-standing interests in second language writing, foreign language education, and research methods in applied linguistics. She teaches graduate courses in these areas in the M.A. and Ph.D. programs at SLS-UHM. Courses she teaches regularly include Second Language Acquisition, Second Language Writing, Research Synthesis and Meta-Analysis, CHILDES and Learner Language, and Error Correction.

Richard W. Schmidt is a professor and former chair of the Department of SLS at the University of Hawaii, where he has been teaching since 1976 in both the M.A. program in ESL and the Ph.D program in SLA. He is also National Foriegn Language Resource Center director at the University and American Association for Applied Linguistics president-elect. He is the author of many journal articles and editor of three books in the area of social and psychological factors in second and foriegn language learning. He is also co-author of the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (3rd Edition, 2002).

Dina R. Yoshimi is an Associate Professor of Japanese at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She received her B.A. in Linguistics at Yale University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of Southern California. Prior to taking a position at the university of Hawaii-Manoa, Dr. Yoshimi taught English as a Second Language in the People’s Republic of China and English Composition at the University of Southern California. Her commit to increasing cross-cultural communication between the United States and Asia has led her to explore the sociocultural patters of interaction in settings of higher education in the U.S. and Japan, and, over the past decade, to developing innovative instructional approaches to classroom foreign language instruction of conversation interaction and sociocultural awareness.