Job Discussion Forums

[773]

My husband and I are looking at unis in Australia or New Zealand to get either an MA in Linguistics or TESOL.

We are interested in teaching at the university level when we are finished in the Mid East primarily, and then maybe onto somewhere else. Which MA would be the most practical for securing the best jobs at universities abroad as well as in English-speaking countries? Applied Linguistics or TESOL? Can't decide....

Also, I am trying to find good programmes in places that aren't extremely expensive to live in (we have a total budget of about US$50,000 for everything). Any suggestions?

Thanks a million!

[moot point]

Check the course lists for the different programs your mentioned. I think you may be surprised to see just how close the "App. Ling." and "TESOL" Master's degrees are. I really don't think how one will give you and advantage over the other -- they are both very closely related MA's.

[773]

[Gordon]

Take a look at USQ - University of Southern Queensland and UNE - University of New England, both in Australia.

I am just finishing my masters in applied linguistics at USQ. It is a good program.

[zoubaidah]

Victoria Uni has had TESOL programmes for more than 20 years, and a good rep in NZ. I am checking it out at present re enrolling for an MA TESOL - pm me if you are still looking. Not sure what international fees are, but their site will have them:
www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/degrees/ma-tesol.aspx

[ambernz]

Hi there,

I did my MA at Victoria, and the App Ling and TESOL are very similar. It's done me in good stead, and I'd recommend it to anyone.

Amber

[cyberphi]

Hi
I've just finished the MEd TESOL at Sydney Uni. I learned a lot from the reading I did on the course and I think the degree will help my employability, but I'm not sure I would recommend it unreservedly.

The course runs face-to-face (ie they don't have distance options). 90%+ of the students on the course were non-native English speakers, some with IELTS scores as low as 6.0 (average - so their speaking was even lower in some cases). So the cut and thrust of interesting discussion, as I encountered on DELTA, just wasn't there - this was more than frustrating in tutorials etc, as I felt more like I was the teacher a lot of the time we had to work in small groups (as the others often didn't have a clue / hadn't read the material / had no experience to draw upon). Many had never really taught before, lots were quite young, and almost all were Chinese/Korean/Japanese (so confucian-style learners: learn facts and regurgitate them, and everything is assessment-driven - so if something 'doesn't count', like tutorial reading, they just didn't do it).

This meant that the standard was pretty low - good b/c it's stupidly easy to get the degree, but bad because - where is the challenge? I had to laugh, towards the end of the second semester, when there was confusion in class as to what, exactly, communicative language teaching might be. I mean, for god's sake. Is this TEFL 101?

In contrast, I have a friend who is studying at Macquarie. A lot of the same stuff applies for the face to face classes, but there seem to be some advantages:
-they do distance / online options, so you can mix and match - some online / some face to face. As Macquarie is an hour outside Sydney CBD, this makes it convenient.
-they seem to be more focused on quality / not selling their souls as much as Sydney - this could be conjecture, I don't know. All Aus unis have let their standards slip, it seems, with the funding crisis - offshore students, with their money, solve this in the short term. But Macquarie seems to be where most of the interesting research comes from - a lot of the reading on the Sydney course is Macquarie publications, for example.

For your purposes, though - you might want to look at living outside of Sydney, as it is easily the most expensive city in the country. An example: I pay $250/wk rent for a one-bedroom flat, and my BF in Adelaide pays $155 for the same (but salaries are almost the same). This could mean you doing the masters somewhere like Adelaide (or Hobart?), or it could mean doing a distance masters and basing yourselves anywhere - a Thai beach, say ;-)

Another thing to consider - some masters programs offer advanced standing for previous qualifications - e.g Sydney gives 2/8 credit for DELTA or 1/8 credit for CELTA. Macquarie gives 2/10 and 1/10 respectively. This is a reduction in both cost and workload, and was significant enough for me to choose Sydney over Macquarie.

Another factor: if you are planning to work as you go, Sydney is a much better bet for ELT work than, say, Adelaide. But, due to the ridiculous 'step' system of pay in Australia, the more experience/quals you have the less desirable you may actually be, as schools have to pay you more. It works like this: you get accorded a 'step' based on quals/experience (and some places count overseas exp'ce, some do not). I was step 11 (it goes, weirdly, step 2 to step 11). Step 11 is worth about $52k/year on contract, or $52/hr casual. But step 2 teachers (CELTA and uni degree, no experience) get $32k/$32/hr - so the schools I are keen to employ lots of lower step teachers instead of a few higher step ones. So, what ends up happening is a bargaining process - I am step 11 and you want to pay step 3. So how about you pay me as step 6 salary? Etc. I ended up 'training up' as a CELTA trainer to get more, better, better-paid work. On a student visa, you can work 20 hours/wk, which in most schools is pretty much a full-time teaching load (so you can pay your way if you get work).

What else? Doing a dissertation as part of the masters kept my enthusiasm going, and is essential if you want direct entry to a PhD afterwards (you might - I got inspired by research). So make sure that's an option if you think you'd like to do that.

Otherwise - MEd TESOL / MAppLing - they are very very similar, and I'm yet to find a job ad that specified one or the other. I have a colleague with a MA in App Ling from UNSW and our courses overlapped more than they differed. The main difference, which affected neither of us, was if you wanted to do outside options on my course you did education courses, whereas the outside options for his course were more linguistics courses. But as you can't really fit many outsides into a course if you get advanced standing (b/c have to do the core courses), then it's not relevant.

Hope this helps - best of luck
Phi

[Gordon]

Thanks phi for that analysis of Sydney uni. I just finished my masters of applied linguistics from the university of southern queensland. I did it by distance, but the courses are identical to the ones done on campus. I figure about 10% of the students were non-native, maybe half were Australian and many Cdns. Most of the other students were teaching in either Australia or abroad. I liked the program, but their biggest weakness was that most of my papers were not marked by the profs. I don't know how common that is for other unis. I would have liked to have been able to meet with the prof or other students face to face, but I had to work f/t at the same time. I would recommend the program to anyone interested in doing a masters.

[Super Mario]

Macquarie University [Syd