Masters in ESL in England- how to go about that?

[magdalena]

My friend has double Masters in Sociology and in Philosophy but facing rather poor living conditions in our country she has decided to put her english skills into good use. She holds CPE but (obviously)not being a native english speaker (you guys are lucky, believe me!) and having no formal training in the area, she is having trouble finding any ESL job in our country. We recon that she could move to England for a while and do some degree in ESL teaching there. That would certainly impress polish employers! How would you go about that? Could you give us some links as we have no idea what kind of schools offer Masters in ESL teaching and she certainly will not afford studying at Cambridge:) In Poland you will have to have Masters in English -which takes 5 years at university- in order to be able to teach in public schools- this bill is coming into effect in September. There are no shortcuts here, but maybe things look different in England and there are options allowing to complete Masters in ESL teaching in shorter time? (plus obvious advantage of having it done in Brittania :).

[Tdol]

A Master's doesn't take anything like that long in the UK- you can do one in a year. The general tendency is to have shorter courses in the UK, with small classes and then to get you into work instead of spending ages on courses. However, university courses are very expensive, unless she can get a grant of some kind. Even as an EU student, she is ikely to be oaying £4,000 or more for a course, I believe. I did mine some years ago and paid over £3k. Among the courses that have a good reputation, Lancaster University has a good reputation, and is one of the places, like Birmingham, that have done a lot of work with corpus linguistics. King's College has a reputation for EIL (English as an international lnaguage).

[magdalena]

Thanks! I guess we confused degrees. In Poland at university you may receive three kinds of degree: something which is similiar to Bachelor in USA (3 years, practically oriented, preparing to teaching English at prime schools and high schools, short dissertation ), Masters (may be Bachelor + 2 years or you may study for Masters since day one) - full blown 5 year studies about language, culture, history, of Britain, long, min. 60 pages & 50 tousand words thesis based on own research, you may teach at college and university) Phd (after Masters you may be accepted for another 4 year long studies for Phd., long, creative and innovative thesis which may be published, you may get tenure while doing it and teach at university part-time as assistant). It looks like in England there are more kinds of degrees. Or maybe not. I came across some polish university courses which offer strange diplomas but they all require teaching experience like british TEFL or DELTA . My friend needs something what does not not require any previous teaching experience, offers more in terms of qualifications than CELTA and lasts shorter than 3 years. Sick, she is pretty specific, I am not sure whether we are able to find anythig for her! :)

[magdalena]

I guess she should do CELTA, forget about public schools and try to find job in private schools which do recognise CELTA certificate.

[magdalena]

I guess Lancaster is also a good option though I have no idea how it translates into polish Masters. Thanks for links, now she will have to see if MA is the same as polish Masters according to our f....... Department of Education.

[Teacher Dude]

I did my Masters in TEFL with Aston university. It took me two years part-time, distance learning and wasn't bad. Also you don't have to be a native speaker. I think that now with the internet this is a much easier option than it used to be.