Education (TESOL) – (M.A.)

Contents

Course length

Full-time: 12 months
Part-time: 36 months, or 24 months fast-track

TESOL is taught by distance learning or on campus full-time. Students can combine different modes of study depending on their needs.

The MA course is based on the completion of a compulsory element, plus optional modules.

Compulsory element:

* Reflective Professional Development aims to develop your reflective practice and provide you with an opportunity for systematic review of your progress, helping you to explore and document the coherence and progression of your experience of the course.
* Educational Research will enable you to develop knowledge of a range of research approaches, methods and techniques and to consider ethics in educational research. You will have an opportunity to develop your research skills through preparatory work for the dissertation.
* The Dissertation or Major Project will involve a piece of investigative research and will comprise approximately one third of your degree work. Your dissertation will focus on a research problem of interest to you. It need not be based in an educational setting and may be literature based, but should be relevant to educational concerns. Please note that there is also an alternative for creative practitioners and artist teachers, the Major Project in Education.
* Language Acquisition – Principles and Practice aims to provide you with a thorough grounding in the theoretical models of both first and second/foreign language acquisition and with psycholinguistic theories of learning and skills acquisition. By the end of this module, you will have reflected on the relevance of different kinds of theoretical knowledge of language learning to your own perceptions of teaching and learning in the ELT/ESOL classroom, and how these theories might have practical impact on learner-focused classroom practice (core module).
* Language Teaching – Methods and Approaches focuses on the practice and reflective development of the teacher in the classroom. The module aims to develop teacher understanding of the process and principles behind professional skills such as researching their own classroom, planning for learning, designing and evaluating teaching materials, and formulating and evaluating the syllabus. It also focuses on how the teacher can develop principled pedagogic approaches to language and explore the validity and effectiveness of these approaches for specific classrooms, contexts and student needs (core module).
* Descriptions of English – Language in the Classroom explores the linguistic description of English with a focus on ‘language in use’. The module will go on to look at how our understanding of the English language relates to how we apply this knowledge in the classroom: what the teacher should ‘know’ about language, what the learner should ‘know’, and how classroom materials such as pedagogic grammars and course books approach this (core module).
* Sociolinguistics deals with the effect of society on the way language is used. The module focuses on four core research areas: i) language and society; ii) language and variation; iii) language and interaction, and iv) language and culture. Key themes that recur throughout the sessions include language attitudes, the use of standard and non-standard linguistic varieties in education, language and identity, and World Englishes.



Freestanding modules - open to students on all pathways:

* Action Research (double module) comprises a taught unit on action research methods, including managing change leading to an action research project. The project will require students to research aspects of their own work-based practice.
* Independent Study offers the opportunity to engage in independent study of a topic, issue or area that is not available elsewhere within the course. You will, in consultation and negotiation with a tutor, identify a topic, issue or area of personal or professional interest and relevance and then draw up a course of independent study, which may include library and practical research.

Credit towards an MA award can be made up of appropriate work completed outside the course, for example the Oxford Brookes Postgraduate Certificate in Advanced Educational Practice (CAEP). Other work such as a PGCE taken at master's level, or the DELTA, may be awarded credits by the university in accordance with the regulations of the university's credit accumulation and transfer scheme (CATS).