Main Text
Title: The title should be written in sentence case (only scientific names, geographic locations, or other proper nouns should be capitalized), and should include an accurate, clear and concise description of the research work under discussion, avoiding abbreviations.
Authors and Affiliations: Provide a Cover letter containing the complete names of all authors, and their addresses for correspondence, including e.g., institutional affiliation (i.e., university, institute), location (street, boulevard), city, state/province (if applicable), and country. One of the authors should be designated as the corresponding author. It is the corresponding author’s responsibility to ensure that the author list, and the individual contributions to the study, are accurate and complete. If the article has been submitted on behalf of a consortium, all consortium members and their affiliations should be listed after the Acknowledgements section.
Abstract and Key Words: Please have your abstract and key words ready for input into the submission module. Key words should be in alphabetical order and ideally differ from the words used in the title. The abstract should include the following sections: introduction (stating the problem and the purpose of the study), concise description of methods, results, and conclusion. The abstract should be informative (without general words), original, factful (provide a summary of the content of the article and key results of the study), written in good English,and concise (between 200 and 250 words). It should be followed by up to 6–8 key words that convey the main topic of the article.
Body Text: Only original research is published. The papers, when first submitted, should normally be between 4,000 – 9,000 words, and after revisions they do not generally exceed 60,000 signs (spaces included). All papers should be written in clear, concise, and grammatically correct English. Use either British/Commonwealth or American English provided that the language is consistent within the paper. The voice – active or passive – and the tense used should be consistent throughout the manuscript. Avoid the use of parenthetical comments and italics or bold for emphasis. This journal discourages the use of quotation marks except for direct quotations, words defined by the author, and words used in unusual contexts. Short quotations should be embedded in the text and enclosed in double quotation marks (“). Long quotations should be on a separate line, italicized, but without quotation marks. Single quotation marks are to be used only for a quotation that occurs within another quotation.
Spacing, Fonts, and Page Numbering: Single-space all material (text, quotations, figure legends, tables, references, etc.). Separate paragraphs with a blank line. Use a 12-point font (preferably Times New Roman).
Capitals: First capital letters should be used only in the beginning of a sentence, in proper names and in headings and subheadings, as well as to indicate tables, graphs and figure/s within the text. Software programsshould be written with capital letters (e.g., ANOVA, MANOVA, PAUP).
Italicization/Underlining: Scientific names of species and genera, long direct quotations and symbols for variables and constants (except for Greek letters), such as p, F, U, T, N, r, but not for SD (standard deviation), SE (standard error), DF (degrees of freedom) and NS (non significant) should be italicized. These symbols in illustrations and equations should be in italics to match the text. Italics should not be used for emphasis, and not in abbreviations such as e.g., i.e., et al., etc., cf. There should not be underlining of any text.
Abbreviations: Abbreviations should be followed by ‘.’ (full stop or period; for instance: i.e., e.g., cf., etc.). Note that you should not add a period/full stop at the end of abbreviated words if the last letter of the abbreviation is the same as the last letter of the full word. For example, you should abbreviate “Eds”, “Dr”, “Mr” without a period/full stop at the end. All measures, for instance mm, cm, m, s, L, should be written without a period/full stop.
Footnotes: Avoid footnotes in the body text of the manuscript where possible. It is always possible to incorporate the footnote into the main text by rewording the sentences, which greatly facilitates reading. Additionally, footnotes are not always handled well by software, and their usage may cause glitches in the text processing.
Statistics: Use leading zeroes with all numbers, including probability values (e.g., P < 0.001). For every significant F−statistic reported, provide two dfvalues (numerator and denominator). Whenever possible, indicate the year and version of the statistical software used.
Web (HTML) links: Authors are encouraged to include links to other Internet resources in their article. This is especially encouraged in the reference section. When inserting a reference to a webpage, please include the http:// portion of the web address.
Headings and subheadings: Main headings: The body text should be subdivided into different sections with appropriate headings. Where possible, the following standard headings should be used:
Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, Acknowledgements, References. These headings need to be in bold font on a separate line and start with a first capital letter. Please do not numberheadings or subheadings.• Introduction: The motivation or purpose of your research should appear in the Introduction, where you state the questions you sought to answer, and then provide some of the historical basis for those questions.
• Methods: Provide sufficient information to allow someone to refer to your study. A clear description of your experimental design, sampling procedures, and statistical procedures is especially important in papers describing field studies, simulations, or experiments. If you list a product (e.g., animal food, analytical device), supply the name and location of the manufacturer. Give the model number for equipment used. Supply complete citations, including author (or editor), title, year, publisher, and version number, for computer software mentioned in your article.
• Results: Results should be stated concisely and without interpretation.
• Discussion: Focus on the rigorously supported aspects of your study. Carefully differentiate the results of your study from data obtained from other sources. Interpret your results, relate them to the results of previous research, and discuss the implications of your results or interpretations. Point out results that do not support speculations or the findings of previous research, or that are counter intuitive. You may choose to include a “Speculation” subsection in which you pursue new ideas suggested by your research, compare and contrast your research with findings from other systems or other disciplines, pose new questions that are suggested by the results of your study, and suggest ways of answering these new questions.
• Conclusion: State clearly the main conclusions of the research and give a clear explanation of their importance and relevance. Summary illustrations may be included.
• References: The list of References should be included after the final section of the main body of the article. A blank line should be inserted between single-spaced entries in the list. Authors are requested to include DOIs and/or links to online sources of articles, whenever possible.
Where possible, the standard headings should be used in the order given above. Additional headings and modifications are permissible.
Subordinate headings: Subordinate headings should be left-justified, italicized, and in a regular sentence case. All subordinate headings should be on a separate line.
Citations and References
Citations within the text: Before submitting the manuscript, please check each citation in the text against the References, and vice-versa, to ensure that they match exactly. Any references cited in the abstract must be given in full. Unpublished results and personal communications are not recommended in the reference list, but may be mentioned in the text. If these references are included in the reference list, they should follow the standard reference style of the journal and should include “Unpublished manuscript”. Citation of a reference as “in press” implies that the item has been accepted for publication.
Citations in the text should be formatted as follows:
• Single author: the author’s name (without initials) and the year of publication (separated by acomma).
• Two authors: both authors’ names (separated by “and”) and the year of publication.
• Three or more authors: first author’s name followed by “et al.” and the year of publication.
Citations may be made directly (or parenthetically). Groups of references should be listed first alphabetically, then chronologically. Examples: “as demonstrated (Smith, 2006a, 2006b, 2011; Brock and Gunderson, 2010). Smith et al. (2000) have recently shown ….”
References: It is important to format the references properly because all references will be linked electronically as completely as possible to the papers cited. References should be arranged first alphabetically and then further sorted chronologically if necessary. More than one reference from the same author(s) in the same year must be identified by the letters “a”, “b”, “c”, etc., placed after the year of publication. It is desirable to add a DOI (digital object identifier) number for either the full-text or title and abstract of the article as an addition to traditional volume and page numbers. If a DOI is lacking, it is recommended to add a link to any online source of an article.
References should follow the referencing style used by the American Psychological Association (APA 7th Edition). Examples:
Reference to a journal publication:
Li, X. (2021). Textbook Digitization: A Case Study of English Textbooks in China. English Language Teaching, 14(4), 34-42. DOI:10.5539/elt.v14n4p34
Reference to a book:
Friedman, M. (1956). A theory of the consumption function. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Reference to a chapter in an edited book:
Kachru, B., & Nelson, C. (1996). World Englishes. In S. McKay & N. H. Hornberger (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and language teaching (pp. 71-102). Cambridge University Press.
Illustrations, Figures and Tables
Figures and illustrations are accepted in the following image file formats:• PNG • JPEG
Figure legends: All figures should be referenced consecutively in the manuscript; legends should be listed consecutively immediately after the References. For each figure, the following information should be provided after the figure: figure number (in sequence, using Arabic numerals − i.e. Figure 1, 2, 3 etc.); short title of figure (maximum 15 words); detailed legend, up to 100 words.
Please note that it is the responsibility of the author(s) to obtain permission from the copyright holder to reproduce figures or tables that have previously been published elsewhere.
Figure citations in the text should always be with Capital “F” and En-dash for ranges. One figure with a full stop, figures without.
Example: Fig. 1, Figs 1–3, Fig. 2A–E.
Citations of figures from other publications should always be Lower Case (fig. / figs). When two subsequent figures or parts are cited (for instance figures 1 and 2 or A and B), a comma should be used.
Example: Figs 1, 2 and Fig. 1A, B.
Parts belong to one figure.
Example: Fig. 1A, B and Fig. 2A-E.
Tables: Each table should be numbered in sequence using Arabic numerals (i.e. Table 1, 2, 3 etc.). Tables should also have a title (given before the table) that summarizes the whole table, maximum 15 words. Detailed legends may then follow, but should be concise.
Do not use tabs to format tables or separate text. All columns and rows should be visible; please make sure that the borders of each cell display as black lines. Colour and shading should not be used; neither should commas be used to indicate decimal values. Please use a full stop to denote decimal values (i.e., 0.007 cm, 0.7 mm).