Articles by David Shaffer
The KOTESOL Logo and Its Evolution
By David Shaffer
How many logos does KOTESOL have? Or maybe we should ask “How many logos has KOTESOL had?” This short article is an attempt to answer these burning questions, and a bit more to boot.
The TESOL Logo
To consummately understand the evolution of the KOTESOL logo, we need to go back to pre-KOTESOL days – to the days of two English language teacher organizations that preceded KOTESOL: TESOL International Association (TESOL) and The Association of English Teachers in Korea (AETK). For many years, until its recent change in logos, TESOL’s logo was a black-and-...
"They" as a Third-Person Singular Pronoun
By David Shaffer
When I was growing up, my English teacher told us that the proper way to express the third-person singular as a generic pronoun was to use he/him/his. Never mind that it was a masculine pronoun; it was the “convention” to keep things neat and succinct. Later, as the women’s liberation movement gained momentum, the need for more gender equality in the English lexicon and grammar became apparent.
One “solution” to the situation was to use feminine pronouns in place of the former masculine ones for the generic third-person singular: she/her/hers. This received...
New and Significant Changes to APA References and Citations
By David Shaffer
After a reign of ten years over the scholarly publications world of the social sciences, including ELT, the American Psychological Association’s Publication Manual (APA, 2010) abdicated to the seventh edition of the Publication Manual (APA 2020). APA (2020) brings with it a number of significant changes over the sixth edition, several of which are changes to frequently used items and which tend to simplify formatting. This article deals with some of the most significant APA changes in formatting for (1) references and (2) in-text citations, two related categories...