Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) MA

Overview

Our Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) MA will provide you with a thorough introduction to current research, teaching theory, principles and practices in English language teaching. You will have the opportunity to observe actual language classes, plan and teach real lessons and carry out research on language learning and teaching. This course was designed to enable you to acquire a range of practical skills for teaching English as a second/foreign language, and to prepare you to engage independently and critically with current language teaching and research issues. It will also give you the basic research skills you need to investigate language learning, and to help you to develop your individual pedagogic style by reflecting on practice.

Course detail

This MA in TESOL will provide you with a thorough introduction to current research, theory, principles and practices in English language teaching. It will enable you to acquire a range of practical skills for teaching English as a second/ foreign language, and will prepare you to engage independently and critically with current language teaching and research issues. It will give you the research skills you need to investigate language learning, and tools help you to reflect on your practice and develop your individual pedagogic. The core modules will allow you to develop in-depth knowledge of approaches to second-language teaching, theories of second-language learning, research methods, and ways to analyse the linguistic systems of English for teaching purposes. This will give you a solid foundation of professional knowledge and expertise in preparation for a teaching placement and provide skills to continue your professional development. Our optional modules and dissertation module will allow you to connect this knowledge to specialist areas such as language assessment, the development of teaching materials and teaching English in a variety of contexts. You will also have four weeks of supervised teaching practice through our collaboration with International House London, the leading provider of the initial teacher training certificate. If you are successful in the placement you will gain an additional qualification through International House, either the Cambridge English CELTA or the IH Certificate in Teaching English as a Foreign Language.

Teaching and assessment

We will use a delivery method that will ensure students have a rich, exciting experience from the start. Face to face teaching will be complemented and supported with innovative technology so that students also experience elements of digital learning and assessment. We will assess your performance on our required modules through essays, language analysis tasks, oral presentations and lesson planning tasks. We assess most of our optional modules through one 3,500-word essay per module, although assessment methods may vary depending on the optional modules you choose. You will also write a 15,000-word dissertation.

Career prospects

The skills and knowledge that you develop over the course of our MA will prepare you for a career in English language teaching, a research- oriented career, or a mixture of the two.

A 2:1 undergraduate degree is usually required in a relevant subject (for example: a foreign language; English; Linguistics/Applied Linguistics/Language and Communication; Psychology; a social science subject). Alternative qualifications may be considered. In order to meet the academic entry requirements for this programme you should have a minimum 2:1 undergraduate degree with a final mark of at least 60% or above in the UK marking scheme. If you are still studying you should be achieving an average of at least 60% or above in the UK marking scheme. No previous experience of language teaching is required (although any experience including informal tutoring or volunteer teaching and/or observation of teaching) will be taken into account in assessing your application.