Paul Kei Matsuda
http://pmatsuda.faculty.asu.edu/

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. 

Last update: January 6, 2008