MSc programmes in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)

There is a growing awareness in TESOL of the need to understand the professional contexts in which language learners are expected to operate, and an increasing demand for those who are able to analyse such contexts and produce properly focused courses and materials.

While the analysis of written text has been well established in TESOL for some time, spoken interaction has received far less attention, and the importance of the broader ethnographic context of such interaction is only now being recognised. In bringing together related but distinct qualitative traditions (ethnography, the ethnography of communication, conversation analysis and pragmatics), this module provides a broad but practical basis for the analysis of professional interaction for the appraisal and production of TESOL (especially ESP) courses and materials.

Discourse analysis is the study of language in action: spoken and written. It is a field that has existed for barely thirty years, yet in that time it has become recognised as one of the most important and widely practised approaches to language analysis. For language teachers, it provides tools for understanding their subject matter: language in use as communication in social settings. It offers insights into systematic variation in text types, the ways in which text is constructed and understood, the pragmatics of communication and cross-cultural differences. The even newer sub-field of genre analysis, dealing with the role of text in academic and professional discourse communities, is central to ESP and EAP and has an important place in general ELT.

As you would expect, the Foundation Module (FND) sets out to introduce you to the MSc, both in terms of building a familiarity with the content of the course, and in terms of helping you become an effective participant in a distance learning program. If the processes of reflective practice and action research are already apart of your everyday experience, then there will be little here to surprise you, although we hope that we can still lead you further into them. If they are not, then we hope that they become as transformative for you as they have been for so many participants. Here are a couple of quotes from participants completing the FND that give the flavour of what we mean:

‘The question of becoming theoretical is interesting for me because of the reaction of several colleagues when I told them I wanted to do an MSc course. 'Why? It's all just theory!' Indeed, when I started the first module, I presumed that the approach taken would involve learning about the theory and then looking at ways of applying it to practice.’ Nikola Gökalp, Turkey

‘My notion of 'theory', which I suppose I had been carrying around with me since the RSA Dip, defined it more as an externalised body of knowledge to be imposed upon practice, so it is profoundly empowering to realise that pedagogic theorising actually arises out of reflective practice with one's own local context.' Andrew Packett, Portugal

This is a module which encourages you, as a teacher, to account for what you are currently doing in your classroom is seen as an empowering starting point. This is one reason why it can be a good idea to take the Methodology course at the beginning of the MSc. You start by looking in and articulating a personal methodology. You are then in a position to look out and explore a theoretical perspective.

The units encourage you to begin a process of action research in order to increase your understanding of what lies behind the numerous decisions and choices that face a classroom teacher. This constructive and critical process establishes a theoretical perspective, and at the same time encourages an interest in and awareness of a range of issues related to a pedagogic environment that facilitates learning.

Several of the units incorporate a section which highlights a piece of action research from a previous MSc participant. These are included primarily to give you a taster of action research, and help get you started on the process of exploring your own teaching context.

Many teachers start out on their language teaching careers teaching in an institution where there are set syllabuses and/or course books to be followed. But even at classroom level there are decisions that teachers need to take that concern content of lessons and involve appraisal and evaluation of the existing syllabus or course book. Some institutions run short courses and involve teachers in the management and design of these. With ESP courses and special groups, the ability to design and evaluate suitable courses (often very fast) is essential. Selecting a course book, writing or commissioning course materials, designing a language project, assessing language teaching provision, planning a future curriculum – all these situations demand professionals with a wide repertoire of course and material design skills and an understanding of the underlying theoretical principles and practical issues of innovation and implementation.

Many managers in TESOL have been promoted into a management role largely because of their teaching skills and qualifications rather than because of their management skills and qualifications. Increasingly, however, middle and higher level managers are involved in a range of tasks and operations which are far removed from the classroom, and consequently from the skills they may have developed. We feel that an understanding of the principles of management in the broad sense is becomingly increasingly important to those of us who currently work, or who hope to work at a managerial level in the field of TESOL. Familiarity with issues such as finance, marketing, budgeting and resource management is becoming more and more necessary for educational managers. As language providers are operating in an increasingly competitive environment, understanding of how your organisation operates and is structured, and how effective this is, can make the difference between your organisation meeting its aims and objectives and failing to meet them.

One of the major responsibilities of language teachers lies in the organisation of a learning environment conducive to effective language acquisition and enrichment. However, unthinking assumptions about the relationships between lexis, grammar, text, and meaning, and about the nature of the language acquisition process, can lead to ineffectual practices. This module seeks to introduce you to some of the theories about lexis and grammar, and the methods of lexicography, corpus analysis and grammatical analysis, to help you to articulate and develop you own ideas and apply them in practical ways to your teaching situations.

Teaching English to Young Learners has become increasingly popular, with children as young as two years old now having classes in English. This module examines the theoretical underpinnings of discourses surrounding teaching young learners, such as the Critical Period Hypothesis and literacy, and it invites a critical discussion of current research into teaching young learners. It also presents a number of approaches to teaching the young and aims to support teachers of young learners to make effective decisions about appropriate pedagogy in local contexts.