My name's Crayton Walker and I'm a lecturer
in Applied Linguistics. I'm also Director
of the distance learning programmes that we
run in the Department.
The postgraduate certificate has three modules.
Each module is 6 months so the whole thing
takes about 18 months. The first two modules
are core modules. In the postgraduate certificate
TESOL for example that's going to be language
teaching methodologies and syllabus materials
design.
Applied Linguistics has more linguistic type
core modules.
The third module you can choose from four,
it's an option module.
They're both aimed at practicing teachers.
They can be teachers who are resident in the
countries or expatriate teachers who are travelling
around the world teaching English and they're
aimed particularly at more experienced teachers
- people who aren't that used to or haven't
recently completed a first degree. So there's
a lot of support on essay writing for example
and getting back into academia. And writing
in an academic way.
You're also assigned a tutor who works with
you through the programme and the tutor is
an alumni, somebody who's gone through the
programme themselves. There's a lot of supporting
material on writing, essay writing and this
kind of thing. So you know there's a lot of
support that we give.
The teaching material is all online. On a
VLE called Canvas. The materials have texts
that are very interactive. There's video,
quizzes, discussion forum and also we've got
a lot of supplementary reading. The University
has a very extensive e-library so a lot of
the readings now are available electronically.
We also have events like summer schools that
we run in countries like Japan and Korea so
there's a lot of additional things happening,
not just based online.
A masters programme has 180 credits and if
you want to you can actually continue on to
a Masters and of course at the end of the
certificate you'll already have 60 credits,
so that's one third of the way through a Masters.
We run two Masters by distance learning, an
MA in Applied Linguistics or an MA in TESOL.
