Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) (by Distance) : MA

The course has three main areas of focus:

• To familiarise you with important academic research and theories relating to TESOL;
• To highlight issues of contemporary interest in the field of TESOL, and discuss how attitudes towards these issues are changing and becoming more enlightened;
• To develop your skills in handling applied linguistic research for conducting evidence-based enquiry within the field of TESOL.

The course begins in late September with an online orientation session. You will meet your tutors and fellow students in our virtual learning environment and become familiar with this form of web-based learning. We will provide more information about how the course will work and how you will engage with the learning materials, tutors and other students.

The following five modules make up the course and you can find more details about each of them on the Course Structure page.

• Second Language Acquisition (October-December, Year 1)
• Trends and Issues in Language Teaching Methodology (January - March, Year 1)
• Curriculum Design and Teacher Development in Language Education (April - June, Year 1)
• Classroom Language Assessment (October - December, Year 2)
• Second Language Classroom Research (January - March, Year 2)
• Dissertation

Each module is completed within a 10-week period. The modules are either assessed by a 5000-word assignment or a combination of a shorter assignment of 2500 words and a recorded presentation. The final component of the course (from April, Year 2 - September, Year 2) involves a dissertation of 15,000 words, on an area of research relevant to your own teaching context or specific interests. Throughout all of the modules and the dissertation component you will have one-to-one access to our team of teaching staff for individual academic supervision, guidance and feedback, as well as taking part in web-based seminars.

Taught by senior academic staff

From day one you will engage with our experienced team of senior academic staff. All have led and contributed to numerous national and international projects in the field of foreign and second language teaching and learning. They have authored a number of well-known and popular books and articles on language teaching methodology and the study of second language acquisition. The Director of Studies is Dr Judit Kormos who was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship from the UK’s Higher Education Academy in 2013 for her ground-breaking work in distance teaching and learning.

Enhancing your career

The quality of Lancaster’s TESOL courses is widely recognised by employers world-wide and former students have taken up prestigious teaching positions in Ministries of Education, Curriculum Development Centres and Research Centres in countries around the world.