Deborah Adams - 30 April 2009
Deborah Adams, 4th year Humanities with English Language student at the Open University, was a runner up in the Subject Centre's undergraduate student essay competition 2009.
- 8 March 2005
This article considers the expectations of students attending MA courses in Applied Linguistics, many of whom have a background in language teaching. It contrasts academic approaches to language with those widely adopted in the language classroom. It identifies four possible rationales when planning course content for Grammar and Linguistics modules at MA level. One treats linguistics as a body of knowledge; another aims to develop students language awareness. A third meets short-term goals by providing the linguistic knowledge necessary for the study of second language acquisition. A fourth aims for long-term goals by equipping students for new professional roles.
Roger Hawkins - 2 March 2005
This article first asks what linguistic knowledge, understanding and skills a graduate from an MA programme in Applied Linguistics should ideally have, and then considers what might reasonably be expected of graduates in the real world.
Pamela Rogerson-Revell - 17 January 2005
This paper considers some of the issues involved in ensuring that a distance Masters programme is both academically rigorous and vocationally relevant. It will demonstrate that students are motivated not only by career concerns but also by their desire to deepen their understanding of theoretical aspects of Linguistics and language learning and show how one Department (at the University of Leicester) meets these demands in their distance MA in Applied Linguistics and TESOL.
Marjorie Lorch - 17 January 2005
The teaching of research methods to postgraduate students in Applied Linguistics presents a particular challenge. For the most part students will come to the course with a humanities degree. Their undergraduate study previously involved reading secondary sources, textbooks or review chapters that summarized large bodies of evidence and spelled out their theoretical significance. In postgraduate study and research, however, primary sources of evidence become crucially important. Students need to become acquainted with a variety of empirical approaches to research questions and must learn to pose questions in such a way that clearly specifies the type of evidence and analysis required to produce the answers being sought. In addition, there are general research skills which are essential equipment for academic pursuits. Training students to become researchers in Applied Linguistics presents a challenge: how to encourage the development and acquisition of the critical skills, conceptual and analytical tools as well as the practical knowledge to enable students to navigate the research literature and develop their own research agenda.
Christopher Brumfit - 8 September 2004
If there is a single academic core for a Masters programme, it should probably rest with descriptive Linguistics, but a pedagogic core should rest with the needs of the participants. The tension and potential conflict between these are explored, with particular reference to a succession of only partially successful attempts to make descriptive work directly relevant to language teaching and other applied concerns. This paper will also try to show some associated ways of making the overall course both coherent and genuinely research-based.
Gillian Brown - 8 January 2003
A brief description is provided of the content of a master’s programme which focuses on preparing participants to teach English Language and/or Applied Linguistics at university level. An overview of the content shows the role of linguistic theory in the programme. A slightly more detailed account is given of the content of the phonology component to illustrate how linguistic theory relates to practical issues in language learning.
