TESL-L was founded in
May, 1991, with the goal of providing educators with a fast, convenient, and
topical electronic discussion forum that focuses on issues related to
TESL/TEFL. TESL-L is an independent entity and not part of any professional
group or organization. We maintain cordial relationships with all professional
organizations in the field of English language education, including
TESOL (Teachers of English
to Speakers of Other Languages) and
IATEFL (International
Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language), but we are not
affiliated with any of them. TESL-L was fortunate to receive a three-year grant
from the United States Department of Education, Fund for the Improvement of
Post Secondary Education (FIPSE) for the initial development, improvement, and
expansion of the services TESL-L offers. Later, the United States Information
Agency supported TESL-L with grant monies. The City University of New York also
supports TESL-L with its computer resources and personnel.
TESL-L
STATISTICS:
As of September 15, 2006, we have 32,293 members in 172
countries. Our message average is 5 per day (variable and
seasonal).
TESL-L IS
RUN BY:
Judy Snoke, Director of the project with overall
responsibility for TESL-L, together with the founder of TESL-L (Anthea Tillyer); the TESL-L Advisory Board (made up of veteran
TESL-L subscribers) monitors the list. TESL-L is an edited list, meaning that
the volunteer editors extract commercial, "housekeeping", and other irrelevant
messages before they are posted to the network. Editors do not tamper with
content of messages. In addition to our commitment to remain uncommercial,
focused, and useful, we are committed to making TESL-L as international as
possible, so that it will reflect the views of all our colleagues around the
world, not just those views that are current in one country or sphere of
influence.
COPYRIGHT: an important electronic issue
All electronic postings of
personal questions and/or comments are con sidered the private property of the
writer. They are protected by copyright. Therefore, no one may re-publish on
another network or medium anything that is written on TESL-L or its branches
without first obtaining the written permission of the original writer, nor may
TESL-Lers repost on TESL-L items that have been on other nets or in other media
without the written authorization of the original author, or a proper citation
(if it is a quotation). Furthermore, items posted on TESL-L may not be
published or reprinted in any other medium without the permission of the
writer. Our database is also subject to copyright laws. If you submit (and we
hope you do) copies of your previously-published articles, we must get the
permission of the original publisher to include your article in our database.
It is also the practice of TESL-L (although publishers do not require it) that
we get explicit written permission from all the writers involved in the
article, even when one of them submitted the item to us for inclusion in the
database.