TESL-EJ welcomes book reviews and review essays of scholarly works and textbooks dealing with English teaching, applied linguistics, second language acquisition, language assessment, applied socio- and psycholinguistics, literacy, language policy or related disciplines. Though we will occasionally publish book reviews of edited volumes, our preference is for monographs that offer more in-depth explorations on a focused area of teaching or research. When selecting a proposed book for review, please keep TESL-EJ’s global readership of English language teachers and teacher educators in mind. We will prioritize books that are relevant across educational contexts.
Anyone interested in reviewing a book for TESL-EJ should take the following steps:
- Choose a recent book in the field published within the past two calendar years. You are encouraged to review previously published TESL-EJ issues to ensure that the book has not been reviewed already (duplicates will not be accepted). After confirmation from the Book Review team, you might be able to directly request a review copy from the publisher.
- Contact the Book Review Editors about its suitability. They can be reached at reviews@tesl-ej.org.
- If your book is approved, write a review following the Content and Style Guidelines below. Explore and read past published reviews for an idea of the content and structure to which you should attend.
- Submit your review to the Book Review Editors for its evaluation for publication in TESL-EJ.
In all cases, submitted reviews will be considered for publication on the basis of the quality of the critical evaluation and description of the book, as well as the relevance and importance of the book to the field and our readership. Simply submitting a review to the Book Review Editors does not alone ensure its publication.
Please see the Content and Style Guidelines (below) before submitting a review.
All reviews must be emailed to the editors and submitted as a Word document. Please label your file as follows: Your last name, author’s last name.doc (e.g., Seng_Grosjean.doc).
TESL-EJ reviews are published on a rolling schedule. There are no deadlines. If accepted, reviews will be published in the next available issue. The Book Review Editors reserve the right to edit for style, length and format, as well as reject unsuitable reviews. Substantive changes will be made only after consultation with the reviewer.
Content and Style Guidelines
Book Reviews
Book reviews should be 900-1,200 words long and should provide both a description and a critical evaluation of the content, with the emphasis on the latter. Descriptive content of books should not make up more than ⅓ of the review. We welcome reviews of textbooks you have already used with students or have included in a syllabus for an upcoming course. Please make such uses evident in your review. Also, considering our broad international readership and readers’ varying backgrounds, please define or explain all terms only an ESL/EFL subfield specialist would be expected to know.
The typical structure of a review should be:
- Introduction to the background of the book. This should discuss the purpose of the book and why the topic of the book is valuable
- Summary of the book. This should be clear and concise. If it is an edited volume, there is no need to talk about every chapter in detail, but rather sections as a whole; The summary should ideally be no longer than 1/3 of the review.
- Critical evaluation of the book, both benefits and shortcomings.
- Conclusion including an overall assessment of the book for its intended audience
- References (If any)
Review Essays
Review essays may be 1,500-2,000 words in length and should include discussion of two or more related books or one author of several books. While the structure of a review essay may vary depending on the needs of the author, an example structure is provided here:
- Introduction to the topic and the books to be discussed. The reader should understand why the author chose the books to be reviewed.
- A brief overview of what the books contain. This description should be short and succinct.
- A thorough critical evaluation of the books under discussion. This section should be the bulk of the review. Include a comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of the books.
- A conclusion highlighting the author’s overall opinion of the books. The reader should be informed about which books are most suitable for their purposes.
- References
AI Usage Note
Please note that we discourage authors from using generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT) when preparing their book reviews. If we believe there is egregious use of these textual supports in the writing we will be inclined to desk reject the manuscript.
Formatting
All reviews and review essays should include all elements in this section. First, reviews and review essays should conform to the American Psychological Association format (7th edition), with the following adjustments:
- Single space the text.
- Double space between paragraphs (no indents).
- Do not use endnotes
For more details, please see the TESL-EJ Style Sheet for Authors
Include a full citation of the book(s) at the beginning of the review, including title, author/editor, edition, date of publication, place of publication, publisher, pagination (small Roman numerals for introductory pages + Arabic numerals for main text pages), ISBN number (13-digits), and price. A sample of the format follows:
Why Is English Like That?
Norbert Schmitt & Richard Marsden (2006)
Ann Arbor: U. of Michigan Press
Pp. x + 246
ISBN 978-0-472-03134-4 (paper)
$27.50 U.S.
The reviewer’s name, affiliation, email address, and short 50-word bio should be included at the end of the review, flushed left, and on separate lines, as shown:
Joe Smith
Example University, USA
email@email.com
ORCID ID. If you do not have an ORCID ID, please create one at https://orcid.org
Bio: Joe Smith is a XYZ at ABC university in DEF university.