Language Polishing 

Authors who want to refine the use of English in their manuscripts might consider using the services of SPi, a nonaffiliated company that offers professional editing services to authors of journal articles in science, technology, medicine, and the social sciences. SPi specializes in editing and correcting English-language manuscripts written by authors whose primary language is not English. Visit http://www.prof-editing.com for more information about SPi’s services, pricing, and turnaround times; to obtain a free price quote; or to submit a manuscript for language polishing. ?Please be aware that ACTFL/Wiley has no affiliation with SPi and makes no endorsement of the company. Your use of SPi’s services in no way guarantees that your submission will be accepted. Any arrangement that you enter into will be exclusively between you and SPi, and any costs incurred are your sole responsibility. 

GENERAL ELEMENTS OF A MANUSCRIPT

Submissions to Foreign Language Annals must contain the following elements (unless marked “optional”) in the order listed below:

1. Title and Author Information
2. Abstract
3. Keywords
4. Classifications
5. Text body, including:
   • Acknowledgments (optional)
   • Notes (optional)
   • Reference list
   • Tables and figures (optional)
   • Appendixes (optional)

See “Requirements” below, for instructions on preparing each of the manuscript elements.

REQUIREMENTS

1. TITLE AND AUTHOR INFORMATION

A full title is required for each submitted manuscript.

Every author submitting a manuscript must complete registration information at the Foreign Language Annals submission page at Editorial Manager (http://fla.edmgr.com). When submitting a manuscript, the author will be prompted to enter the following personal information: Title, Name, Degree, Phone, Fax, E-mail Address, Institution Related Information, Personal Classifications, and Preferred User Name.

Corresponding Author
When a work has more than one author, the corresponding author—that is the individual who will handle correspondence related to the publication process—will be the one who completes the registration form electronically. The contact author assumes responsibility for carrying out any instructions given by the journal editors.

Note about Anonymity
All submitted manuscripts are sent to expert readers for anonymous review, that is, without disclosing any information about the authors or their institutions (including URLs for personal Web sites, names of colleagues, etc.). To preserve anonymity, authors should not place their names and other identifying information anywhere in the manuscript. Page headings that contain an author’s name should not be used. If the manuscript must for some reason contain information that reveals the identity of the author, then this material should be masked with “XXX” in the original submission and, if accepted, can be included by the author in the final submission.

2. ABSTRACT

All articles must contain a concise abstract of no more than 125 words. The abstract should describe accurately the objectives, methods, and results of the study.

3. KEYWORDS

Please provide five (5) keywords or phrases that could be used to identify your article in an electronic search. For example:

Title: “Teaching French Grammar Using Video in the Elementary Classroom”
Key words: action research, early language learning, FLES (foreign language in the elementary schools), grammar, video-based instruction

4. TEXT

For advice on how to organize a research report, theoretical work, or review article—and for questions about matters of style other than those addressed in these guidelines—consult the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5^th ed.   (“APA manual”). The following items should receive special consideration:

a. Quotations

All quotations, direct or indirect, must be properly referenced and include the page number(s) where the quote can be found in the work cited. Place direct quotations in quotation marks and make sure that they are worded accurately.

b. Reprint permissions

Any material published elsewhere or copyrighted by another author or organization must be accompanied by a letter from the publisher and/or authors granting permission to reproduce the material in Foreign Language Annals. The manuscript author is responsible for contacting the copyright holder and obtaining reprint permission as required by the copyright holder. Manuscripts that contain non-original and unauthorized material will be rejected. Note that brief quotations from outside sources (“fair use”) are allowable as long as they are properly referenced. See the APA manual (e.g., sections 3.41, 3.73, and 3.84) for more information about the use of copyrighted material.

c. Notes and references

Foreign Language Annals uses a dual system of citation that consists of (1) Notes [endnotes] and (2) References.

Notes are additions to the text that are necessary or interesting but inappropriate for the body of the article. They are listed in a separate section titled “Notes” after the text body (rather than at the foot of the page). Within the text, consecutive superscript numbers are used to key the reader to the notes. Do not use the automatic (embedded) footnote or endnote function contained in Microsoft Word. Type the numbers within the text body as superscript characters:

We measured the students’ progress¹ by . . .

See Section 6 of these guidelines (“Notes”) for presentation of the notes themselves.

References—to be distinguished from Notes—are works cited, first within the text in abbreviated form, then listed fully, in alphabetical order, in a final section under the heading “References.”

• In the text body, references are cited using the APA “author–date” system, which consists of the author’s last name and the year of publication:

One author: Jones (1998) demonstrated that . . .
Two authors: Hewitt and Sousa (2000) compared test scores among . . .
Three, four, or five authors: Cite all authors the first time the reference occurs; in subsequent citations, cite only the first author’s last name followed by “et al.”: This phenomenon was investigated by Chekov, Martin, and Cheever (1997), who . . . [first citation]; Chekov et al. (1997) also . . . [subsequent citations]
Six or more authors: Cite only the first author’s surname followed by “et al.”

• When references are listed parenthetically, separate the author name(s) and the year of publication with a comma. For works with two authors, cite both last names joined by an ampersand (&). For three or more authors, use the “et al.” convention:

Recent research has focused on the practical applications of this theory (Armstrong, 1998; Chekov et al., 1997; Turner & Stein, 2000) . . .

Note that when multiple citations are used within one parenthetical string, they are put in alphabetical order according to the first author’s surname and separated by semicolons.

• When two or more references have the same author(s) and same year, a lower case letter (a, b, c) is added to the year to differentiate them:

(e.g., Smith, 1998a, 1998b).

• Page numbers are used only for quotations:

Muyskens and Berger stated: “It seems apparent that better communication, access to more information, increased training, and recognition of achievement can only lead to better programs” (1982, p. 90).

See Section 7 (“Reference List”) for presentation of full citations.

d. Headings and subheadings

Section headings and subheadings are desirable as a means of organizing the text, but should not be overused. More than three levels of nested headings/subheadings should be avoided.

e. Foreign language translation
Any quote, reference title, or other text appearing in a language other than English needs to be translated by the author and the translation should appear in brackets following the text.

I: Nanji desu ka? [What time is it?]
C: . . Niji. [Two o’clock.]
I: Hai, soo desu ne. [Yes, that’s right.]

5. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Acknowledgments should not be treated as notes. They should appear—in paragraph form—in a section entitled “Acknowledgments” placed after the text body. The original submission should never include information that may identify the author or institution; these can be included in the final submission.

6. NOTES
Foreign Language Annals uses endnotes, not footnotes. The notes, numbered as they are cited in the text, should be listed in a section titled “Notes” placed immediately after the acknowledgments. The numbers in the list are followed by a period. For example:

Notes
1. This format is an adaptation of an error-detection paradigm used in a previous study (Bialystok & Frohlich, 1978).
2. “Interlanguage” refers to the kind of language any student of a second or foreign language speaks or writes, up to the point where he or she is 100% bilingual.
3. I am indebted to Pica (1983) for her comparison of different conditions of exposure to the second language (informal as opposed to classroom exposure only).

7. REFERENCE LIST

It is important to develop a list of all reference works cited in the article. References are listed alphabetically under the heading “References” after the Notes section. Do not include references that are not cited in the article.

Note in the following examples how the authors’ names are inverted (surname first). Do not use the “hanging indent” style when formatting references. Also note the differing presentations of book titles, article titles, and journal names in terms of italics and upper/lower case letters. Please always add English translations when article titles are in a different language. (Many more examples of reference styles can be found in the APA manual.)

Book, nonanthology:
Gardner, R. C. (1985). Social psychology and second language learning: The role of attitudes and motivation. London: Edward Arnold.

Piaget, J. (1929). The child’s concept of the world, 3rd ed. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Book, anthology:
Allen, W., Anderson, K.., & Narvaéz, K. (1993). Foreign language across the curriculum. In J. Oller, Jr., (Ed.), Methods that work: Ideas for literacy and language teachers (pp. 149–157). Boston: Heinle & Heinle.

Voght, G. M.., & Grosse, C. U. (1998). The development of Spanish and Portuguese for specific purposes in the United States. In T. B. Fryer & G. Guntermann (Eds.), Spanish and Portuguese for business and the professions (pp. 7–22). Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Co.

Journal articles:
Wigzell, R., & Al-Ansari, S. (1993). The pedagogical needs of low achievers. Canadian Modern Language Review, 49(4), 302–15.

Newspapers/Newsletters:
Woodhams, F. (1998, December 11). State colleges try to match private institutions with promises of timely graduation. The Chronicle of Higher Education, A50.

Unpublished material:
Dupuy, B. (1996). Promoting language and literacy in the intermediate French classroom: The effects of an extensive reading program. Paper presented at the December 1996 conference of the Modern Language Association; Washington, DC.

Oh, M.-J. (1996). Beliefs about language learning and foreign language anxiety: A study of American university students learning Japanese. Doctoral dissertation; University of Texas, Austin.

Online (electronic) journal articles:
Clark, A. C. (1999). Identification of quality characteristics for technology education programs: A North Carolina case study [online]. Journal of Technology Education, 11(1). Available: http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/v11n1.

Wallace, P. M. (2000). The psychology of the Internet [review essay; online]. International Electronic Journal for Leadership in Learning, 4(3). Available: http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~iejll.

Online abstract service:
Meyer, A. S., & Bock, K. (1992). The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon: Blocking or partial activation? [online]. Memory & Cognition, 20, 715–726. Abstract from: DIALOG. File: PsycINFO. Item: 80-16351.

Online newspaper (with English translation in brackets)
Immigración en España: El germen de una nueva sociedad [Immigration in Spain: The germ of a new society]. (2000, February 28). El Pais Digital [online]. Available: http:/www.elpais.es/temas/immigracion/index.html.

Online government publications:
Ed-Data Education Data Partnership (2000). Fiscal, demographic, and performance data on California’s K–12 schools [online]. California student trends. Available: http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/dev/state.asp.

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement (1993, November). State of the art: Transforming ideas for teaching and learning to read [online]. Available: http://www.ed.gov/pubs/StateArt/read.

This commonly cited reference should be written as follows:
National Standards in Foreign Language Education Project (1999). Standards for foreign language learning in the 21^st   century. Yonkers, NY: Author.

8. TABLES and FIGURES

Tables and figures must be distinguished from one another and numbered separately. When submitting tables and figures electronically, each should be in an individual file and not all grouped together in a single file.

Tables consist primarily of text or statistics presented in list or chart-like fashion. Numerical data used to explain research findings are generally presented in a table. All tables are directly related to the meaning of the text. Please add necessary notations to explain table headings and abbreviations used.

Figures include drawings, graphs, or photographs or exact reproductions of material found elsewhere. Only professional-quality photographs or drawings or computer-generated graphs are acceptable. When submitting manuscripts for consideration, include only photocopies or electronic scans of drawings, photos, etc.—not the originals. (High-quality originals may be requested upon acceptance for publication.)

• All figures and tables should be referred to in the text (e.g., “for students’ demographic characteristics, see Table 1,” or “the survey results are presented in Figure 1.”)
• Type all tables using a horizontally tabbed format.
• Figures and tables should be given a number (Figure 1, Figure 2, Table 1, etc.) and a title that summarizes their contents.
• All sources must be identified and properly referenced. Type source notes (e.g., “Source: Smith & Connors, 1998”; “Adapted from Rodgers, 2000”) at the bottom of each table, figure, or appendix. Add the full citations for these sources to the reference list.
• All material published elsewhere must be accompanied by a letter from the publisher granting permission to reproduce the material in Foreign Language Annals (see section 4b, “Reprint permissions” above).

9. APPENDICES

Appendixes are materials relegated to the ends of articles (either because they are too long and thus disruptive when placed within the text, or because they are not essential parts of the text itself). Common examples of appendixes are survey questionnaires, long lists or charts of data, and reproductions of other documents.

Appendixes should be given a letter (Appendix A, Appendix B, etc.), and a title that summarizes their contents. Otherwise, follow the same guidelines as for tables above.