한국영어교육학회

Dear KATE members,

I am greatly honored to serve The Korea Association of Teachers ofEnglish (KATE) as its 27th president. I would like to express my warmest anddeepest greetings to all of you. Especially, I would like to send my earnest respectand gratitude to the former presidents, board members, and all KATE members fortheir great dedication and excellent endeavors. Now, I am very proudto be part of this prestigious group of scholars and teachers.

Last year, we celebrated our 50th anniversary. Over the past fivedecades since its foundation in 1965, KATE has grown into a highly acknowledgedcore community of ELT professionals both at the domestic and internationallevels. This growth has been possible thanks to the boundless contributions andself-sacrificing dedication of our former presidents and board members as wellas other members of KATE. Based on their previous accomplishments for KATE, Iand the new KATE board members will exert our utmost efforts to maintain the statusof the association with service-minded leadership, together with my passion forthe development of English education and to continue our journey to pursue academic andprofessional excellence in the field of English language teaching and researchin order to expand our horizons and perspectives locally and globally. We are also equally committed to encouraging English languageteaching and research that will ensure the excellence andfairness of English language education practices that are currently being developed and conducted inKorea. These are always worthwhile objectives, but we must continually renewour commitment to pursuing thesegoals.

For the next two years, I and the KATEboard members will particularly do our best to broaden the base of Englishlanguage education not only from the cognitive perspective but also from thesocial, cultural, political, and ideological perspectives. As the issues ofglobalization, educational accountability, and the sociopolitical dimension ofeducation and assessment increase their influence on English languageeducation, we are seeing the expansion of English education and research notonly in terms of language teaching per se, but also in terms of the social perspectivesof English education domestically and globally. We have long felt that there isan urgent need for the field of English language education to maintain its highquality and fairness of learning, teaching, and assessment in terms of Koreansociopolitical consequences as well as globalized perspectives. Moreover, inaddition to the academic aspects of English language education, I will alsofocus on the non-academic aspects of English education, such as the empowermentof KATE in dealing with current sociopolitical issues of English languageeducation and active involvement in initiating, developing, and evaluatingEnglish language education policies.

I believe that KATE should be a wellspringwhere professors, researchers, teachers, and other stakeholders in Englisheducation can work together to find solutions to their current problems andgain insight by sharing their thoughts and difficulties within the association.For English teaching at schools to be implemented effectively, issues andproblems that emerge in the process must be resolved through the combinedefforts of English education scholars, teachers, researchers, the schools, andthe government. We need special support and encouragement f