Write for us

Our Contributors

We love getting new ideas and articles from people who haven't been published before (and those who have been!) Writing an article about your own teaching or training situation is a great way to help with your own professional development. We are always keen to hear from teachers with fresh ideas or approach about teaching, an interesting project, a lesson or course, your views on or the research itself that will appeal to our readers. Articles should be based on practice, reflection, experience or research. So, whether you are an experienced writer or a teacher with something to say, we would like to hear from you. We cannot promise to publish your article, but we do promise to read it carefully!

Worried about submitting an article? Don't be! At least 40% of our writers do not speak English as their L1, and we work hard to ensure we have a real mix of writers.

Throughout the time we have been publishing both English Teaching professional (ETp) and Modern English Teacher (MET) – now merged into the new Modern English Teacher (MET) – we have had a very even split of female and male writers (48% female / 52% male, if you are interested). So whoever you are, wherever you live, whatever your first language – if you have a good idea, please send your article to us. 

General Guidance

The best advice we can give is ‘Read ETp and MET’ – the new MET combines regular features from both magazines and covers the length and breadth of any teacher’s career from pre-service training through to teacher training and management. If you are already a subscriber – and we hope you are – you will know that we publish a wide range of features and articles dealing with practical classroom issues, research, professional and personal development, methodology, pedagogy, technology, language and linguistics, teaching resources – and a lot more besides.

Our Readership

Our new merged MET is a magazine for teachers of English to speakers of other languages at all levels and ages, with subscribers in over 140 different countries. The majority of MET readers teach (often large) monolingual classes outside an English-speaking environment. Some of them are first language speakers of English. Many of them are not. We have readers in most sectors – from primary school to university – but the majority teach in upper and lower secondary state schools and in private language schools or similar institutions..

Reader Friendly

The new MET is a teachers’ magazine and not an academic journal, and brings teachers, researchers and academics research and reflections on an ever-evolving English language together. We are looking for articles that promote discussion and cause the readers to reflect on their own teaching practice, or that are of direct relevance and immediate interest to teachers in the classroom. Our aim is to be interesting, fresh and accessible.

Teachers usually do not have time to read lengthy pieces or weighty prose. Please write clearly and simply, and avoid – or explain – technical terms or jargon. We are less likely to accept an article that says ‘This is what we did’ than one that says ‘This is what we did and here’s how you can do it too/adapt it to your situation, etc.’ Please avoid long lists of references and bibliographies.

Subject Matter

MET has a number of regular sections and some occasional sections, as you will see if you look through back issues of the magazine. We welcome contributions for any of these sections (but see Reviews below). MET has a long shelf-life so a report of a conference, for example would not be appropriate unless the article was making a 'timeless' point.

Reviews

MET cannot accept unsolicited reviews. If you would like to review a book, please write to Editor Robert McLarty c/o Modern English Teacher, Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd, Blue Sky Offices Shoreham, 25 Cecil Pashley Way, Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, BN43 5FF, United Kingdom or email robert.mclarty@pavpub.com.

Responses

If you have a comment to make on any of the items in this issue please contact us via Twitter or Facebook, or email robert.mclarty@pavpub.com. Your comments can be as short as you wish. We really need – and appreciate – this sort of contribution.

Editorial Support

We work with our authors to ensure that the articles we publish are as good as we can make them. We very seldom publish an article in exactly the form in which it was submitted. If you need help or support, we will be pleased to offer both. Our advice is to send us a draft or an outline in the first instance, so that we can help you to develop your ideas. Sending an outline is also a good idea because it enables us to warn you if we already have several articles on the same subject waiting to be published, and are unlikely to accept another one

Starting Point

New writers may wish to consider submitting shorter pieces to begin with. We are very pleased to receive letters and suggestions for publication, and contributions to the IT WORKS IN PRACTICE and GLOBAL VOICES sections of the magazine. Good, innovative photocopiable materials are particularly welcome. We are also looking for teaching resources and book reviewers.

Regular Features

Please contact us before contributing to one of our regular features as these are generally commissioned by us and their content planned several issues in advance. Please write to us also if you have new ideas for regular features.

Article Length

Most magazine articles in MET are between two and four pages in length, although we occasionally publish both shorter and longer articles. The length of your article will depend on the topic and maybe on the section for which you are submitting it, but try to be brief. Articles should be a minimum of 1,200 words.

Always try to back up your comments and ideas with practical descriptions or examples. Try to give your own opinion whilst encouraging other teachers to respond.

Approximate word counts are as follows:

• Two pages: around 1,400 words
• Three pages: around 2,100 words
• Four pages: around 2,800 words

Though please note if illustrations or diagrams are required the word count may need to be reduced to compensate.

Additional Advice

Images

Think visual – pictures can lift a page, so do think about how your article could be illustrated. Our designer will make your article look good, but you can help by including bullet points, diagrams, tables, ideas for illustrations and photographs. So, send us ideas or rough or even finished artwork. If you are sending finished artwork, please supply originals (using black ink on a sheet of unfolded white paper). Photographs to illustrate the article – black and white prints, colour prints, PowerPoint slides or screen grabs – are welcome. Whatever images you send over with your article, please confirm you own the copyright and provide the images as high-res jpeg's or png's, not as pdf's, ideally 1MB +.

Quotations

If you are using quotations, identify the sources; depending on their length, it may be necessary to obtain permission for them to be used, so please give full information.

References

If you quote references, give full information.

Copyright

We do not accept articles or parts of articles which have been published elsewhere, and that it is not being considered by any other publication. When we accept an article, we ask you to confirm that it is your own work and to assign copyright to us. This helps us to keep track of where articles taken from MET are used. If we receive a request to reprint your article, we will always consult you before agreeing and will share any fees involved. If you wish to use the article again in a publication written or edited by you, please contact ellie.thackway@pavpub.com. Further information about this is available on request.

Presentation

Please send your article to the editor of new MET robert.mclarty@pavpub.com, preferably as a Word document, and keep a copy for your own records.

If you do send anything by email attachment, please use your surname as part of the file name and include your name and address within the document. You would be amazed how many articles come in with the file name ‘MET article’ and with no means of identification!

Please do not embed photographs or any other artwork in Word documents sent by e-mail attachment. Send them as separate jpg attachments or send them as hard copy by post.

Please ensure that anything you send is free of viruses.

Please do not use the track changes tool on your computer and do not allow any of your colleagues who read and comment on your article to do so, as it can cause issues.

As well as your article, please send us:

• about 70 words about yourself, your teaching experience and your professional interests
• your email address, if you are happy to have it published with your articles
• a 50-word summary of your article for the website

Please remember to put your name and full contact details, including postal address and telephone number, within the body of your article. Emails and articles often get separated and it is vital that your article is labelled clearly with your name and contact details.

If submitting an idea for a guest blog or vlog post, please note that the new MET website publishes English language teaching content only. If you are interested in doing that, please contact ellie.thackway@pavpub.com with your ideas.

Selection of Articles

Articles sent in to us are circulated to an editorial team and considered for publication. We try to let you know our decision as quickly as possible, but inevitably with all the work that has to be done on forthcoming issues and the fact that we receive an enormous number of articles each week, you may not receive an immediate response.

Please bear in mind that we receive many more articles than we can possibly publish. We only produce six issues a year and there is a limited amount of space in each issue. We also have to balance the content of each issue to ensure that there is something of interest to everyone and that it complements the theme of the issue. This means that even when we accept your article, you may have to wait some time before you see it in print. Please be patient. It is very unlikely to go into the next issue or even the issue after that, but if we have accepted an article, we will get it in as soon as possible.

If we do not accept your article, it may be simply because we have several others on a similar subject waiting to be published or we can see that it will be so long before we can fit your article in that you would be better seeking publication elsewhere. We will let you know if that is the case.

If you want to be published quickly, it is often a good idea to submit an article to one of the following sections: IT WORKS IN PRACTICE, GLOBAL VOICES, teaching young learners and early years, current (live) online teaching practices, and teacher development. We are often looking for articles to fill these sections, and we are particularly interested in photocopiable activities.

Publication

If your article is accepted, be prepared to revise it if necessary, in order to shorten it or to clarify something, for example — but do not necessarily expect to have the chance to make any changes. The article will almost certainly be edited to some extent. The changes will usually be cuts to make the article fit the available space and should not affect its overall thrust. Generally, if major changes are necessary, either the article will be returned to you for amending or the edited version will be sent to you for approval.

Any article that is accepted for publication in Modern English Teacher may also appear on the MET website.

Modern English Teacher is published by Pavilion Publishing and Media Ltd. If you have any questions, please contact us: