The Japanese Language Testing Association (JLTA) conferred its 2024 Best Book Award upon UNCP linguistics professor Dr. Eun Hee Jeon and her co-editor Dr. Yo In’nami (Chuo University in Tokyo, Japan) for their book Understanding L2 Proficiency―Theoretical and Meta-analytic Investigations. 

“In this volume, we study what makes up the ability to use second or foreign language well. We examine the relationship between four language skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) and key variables that support these skills,” the co-editors wrote on the John Benjamins Publishing Company website. “By reviewing a large body of research on second/foreign language reading, writing, listening, and speaking, we have shown that linguistic knowledge (e.g., vocabulary, grammar) consistently plays an important role compared to cognitive, affective, or conative variables,” the co-editors said.

According to Jeon, the idea for the book emerged from a 2014 Language Learningjournal article, which she presented at a conference. 

“Jan Hulstijn (Professor Emeritus, University of Amsterdam) was among the audience and asked me what my next step would be. So, this got me to think about how I would expand my research,” Jeon said. “Until then my studies were pretty much focused on reading comprehension, and I thought it would be fun to expand my investigation to all language skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking), so we [could] make comprehensive claims about how various linguistic, cognitive, and meta-cognitive variables relate to the four language skills,” she said.

As Jeon and her co-editor presented at different conferences, they were approached by a series editor from John Benjamins Publishing Company who was interested in publishing the research as a book. 

“Since my research focus had been reading comprehension, but the book focused on all four language skills, I really needed to recruit help from the authorities of writing, listening, and speaking, as well as experts of language testing,” Jeon said. “So, I started recruiting colleagues in various countries including Japan, the Netherlands, China, the U.S., and Canada. We were lucky that we could recruit contributors who are important authorities of language testing so they could share their expertise with testing professionals and language teachers through this book,” Jeon said.

The final collection included articles written by scholars from ten universities, one high school, and five countries. Jeon admitted that working with a diverse group of scholars was fun.

“Working in an international group had its perks,” Jeon said, “such as being able to access grants in Japan, which my colleagues won and contributed to our projects!”

At the same time, Jeon noted that working with international co-authors was also challenging because the long-term, multi-year, meta-analytic studies were interrupted by the pandemic and illnesses of some contributors.

Jeon said she hopes that winning the award “will increase the visibility of the book and help us reach a larger group of readers” especially since “language testing is a very important area in many countries as language proficiency tests are often an important part of university entrance exams or job requirements.”

While the book can be purchased on Amazon, it is also open source and can be freely downloaded by anyone.

Additional scholarship by Dr. Jeon can be found by visiting Google Scholar. 

*Note: Nikki Agee interviewed Dr. Jeon and wrote this article.