Can anyone give me an opinion about how’s the TEFL programme at the university of Birmingham(U.K) and at the university of Bristol? Your reply would be appreciated.
The Birmingham one is supposed to be pretty good I hear. Afterall, think COBUILD Project!
I’m on the Aston MSc TESOL/TESP now. We have a
Centre in Taipei, our profs visit once or twice a year, it’s not a lock-step programme like Leicester’s, Surrey’s or Edinburough’s. Instead, it’s action research based.
Study groups are encouraged, so some of us get together regularly to discuss our respective projects. Many of the grads end up publishing or getting PHds in linguistics. The professors, who are the tutors, are all well-established, published, linguists. It’s quite supportive overall.
I think it’s one of the better UK-DL Masters TESOL programmes available, which I didn’t even realise until I’d started my studies.
Write to Dr. Steve Mann at Aston for more info. He’s the Taiwan tutor.
s.j.mann@aston.ac.uk
Oh, btw, you can start this programme at any time. No need to wait for enrollment dates.
I found that Birmingham required a 2 week attendance in the UK for an orientation course.
The fees for UK universities are also quite high compared to Australia (x3).
At the moment I am looking at the University of Southern Queensland’s MA APPL.LING for a February 2003 start, or the University of Tasmania for a July 2002 start.
USQ comes highly recommended (featured in TIME about a year ago as a top Distance Education provider). http://www.usq.edu.au/opacs/cllt/ApplHons.htm
UPDATE
I have decided to go with The University of Tasmania. Information on their course can be found here http://www.educ.utas.edu.au/users/tle/Tesol/index.html
The cost for the masters course is about AU$7000 (about NT$100 000), compared to the UK courses at 6000 pounds (NT$300 000.
I have found some very possitive feedback about this UTAS course on Dave’s ESL Cafe Teacher Training Forum http://eslcafe.com/discussion/dz1/
The course is structured into 3 stages(years): 1:Grad certificate. 2: Masters and 3: Masters honours (thesis). I have been told that upon completion of masters honours one could continue with a PhD, although this may require a few months attendance at the university before continuing with the research work in whatever country you are living.