MSc in Applied Linguistics for Language Teaching

About the course

The MSc ALLT is a degree aimed at professionals of TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) or modern foreign languages, which is taught primarily via distance/online learning. This innovative two-year part-time course offers a cutting-edge introduction to the linguistic and pedagogic knowledge needed for teaching language.

While the concepts covered in the course can be applied to all languages in most contexts, there is a strong opportunity for students to specialise in the teaching of English language in university settings.

A low-residency course, it is characterised by intense online interaction and feedback, using a range of communication media. Its small-group teaching format pursues the Oxford tradition of demanding much of students and giving them much in return.

The course is taught over two academic years, preceded by a week’s residential module in Oxford. Numbers on the course are kept low, to ensure quality of teaching and learning.

Assessment

The assessment for each module comprises a take-home examination, which is in the form of a written academic essay on a topic related to the module content. The dissertation module is assessed via a 15,000-20,000 word original dissertation. Students will decide on a dissertation topic in consultation with their supervisor, and establish a research plan to collect and analyse data.

Graduate destinations

The most recent Oxford University Destination of Leavers from Higher Education Survey made contact with 635 master's course students who graduated from the Department of Education between 2012 and 2014. Fully 90.2% of alumni were in work and 5.8% in further study with only 2.0% looking for work, ranking the department in the best 3 of the 20 departments in Oxford's Social Sciences Division.

Past students from the Department of Education have gone on to academic and research careers at universities in the UK (eg Oxford, Edinburgh, Warwick, UCL, King's College, St. Mary's, Liverpool) and across the world (eg Stanford, Princeton, MIT, Hong Kong, Chile), or are employed across a wide range of other sectors such as policy for government departments or NGOs, international organisations such as OECD, think tanks and administration at local and national levels. The department’s ‘Conversations with Alumni’ feature includes interviews with two DPhil alumni on their career paths after Oxford.

As a minimum, applicants should hold or be predicted to achieve the equivalent of the following UK qualifications: a first-class or strong upper second-class undergraduate degree with honours in any discipline. For applicants with a degree from the USA, the minimum GPA sought is 3.6 out of 4.0.