Interest Sections (IS), Special Interest Groups (SIGs), or National Special Interest Groups (N-SIGs) as they are known in different parts of the world, are primarily organized and maintained to provide a focus of time and resources on specific areas of interest--as the names imply. The three organizations represented in this issue have developed a very significant emphasis on these groups which in turn serve the organizations. Rather than an exclusionary way of dealing with the specific fields of applied linguistics, they provide a forum to adequately address problems and innovations as well as a means of disseminating information in their respective areas. If you have an interest that is only addressed occasionally in a large forum, then these groups will provide you the means to concentrate your efforts in your area of concern. I would add that members of JALT, IATEFL, and TESOL belong to more than group at a time just as some of us belong to more than one of these organizations. This is natural since we have varied interests, and the interests overlap a great deal.
This issue is the culmination of more than two years of international cooperation. At the TESOL Conference in 1995 at Long Beach in California, members of all three organizations sat together thinking of ways to encourage cooperation between the varied special interest groups worldwide. After a great deal of negotiation and meetings held in varied locations around the world, we have shown to ourselves that we can organize and launch an international project. I might also say that had we done this prior to the advent of email it would have been impossible. So in a very real way we also show here that the medium of communication enables us to achieve far more than was possible when these three organizations began. Special thanks for this issue go to Madeleine du Vivier and Simon Greenall of IATEFL and Helen Kornblum of TESOL who solicited and compiled so much of this work.
Thomas Simmons and Steve McGuire
IS Special Issue Guest Editors