MTESOL Courses in the Ideal World?
Someone who is doing a review of a master's program in TESOL at his institution asked me to come up with a list of 10 courses that should be required in the "ideal world." Here is what I came up with:
- Principles and Practices of TESOL (with a post-method emphasis)
- Research Methods (with an emphasis on classroom research and action research)
- SLA Theory (with an emphasis on theories and issues that are relevant to language teachers and learners)
- Pedagogical Grammar (English Grammar, including some of the useful materials covered in introduction to linguistics and sociolinguistics)
- Curriculum Design and Materials Development
- Classroom Language Assessment
- Technology and Language Teaching
- Teaching Oral Communication
- Teaching Written Communication
- English as an International Language/World Englishes (including some discussion of sociolinguistics relevant to English teaches)
After getting feedback from people (teachers and teacher educators) from around the world on Facebook, I've revised the list--this time including some electives:
- Principles and Practices of TESOL (with a post-method emphasis)
- Research Methods for TESOL (with an emphasis on classroom research and action research as well as understanding research)
- SLA Theory for TESOL (with an emphasis on theories and issues that are relevant to English language teachers and learners)
- Pedagogical Grammar (English Grammar, including some of the useful materials covered in introduction to linguistics, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, genre studies)
- Curriculum Design and Materials Development
- Classroom Language Assessment
- Teaching Oral Communication (including some insights from phonetics, phonology, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, intercultural communication but with a greater emphasis on developing communicative competence and teaching strategies)
- Teaching Written Communication (including some insights from composition studies, genre studies, corpus analysis and intercultural communication but with a greater emphasis on developing communicative competence and teaching strategies)
- Practicum in TESOL (with internship opportunities in intensive language programs, first-year writing programs, community language programs, writing centers, etc.)
- Linguistics/Applied Linguistics/TESOL Electives
- Introduction to Language for Language Teachers
- Introduction to Applied Linguistics for Language Teachers
- Research Methods in Applied Linguistics
- Phonetics and Phonology for Language Teachers
- Sociolinguistics and Pragmatics for Language Teachers
- Systemic-Functional Linguistics for Language Teachers
- English as an International Language
- Technology and Language Teaching
- Corpus Analysis
- Language Program Administration
- Second Language Writing
This list will likely continue to evolve.
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