Hey, Martin. It's been a while, mensch. I, too, am looking into an online master's program. I would like to get it over and one with in about 15 months. Can you give me any ideas on programs? I know those in Australia are good. I have a friend in Thailand who got his master's through AIU, I believe.

I quit teaching on my cert, man. I figured out I couldn't get the job I wanted with just a cert or a diploma.

I'm back in my home country getting more bored by the minute. However, I won't go back to teaching until I get the master's.

Hi Matthew,

about entry standards, here's what they say on the Victoria University, Wellington info page for their MA in Appl Ling:

Candidates for the MA in Applied Linguistics or TESOL must already have a good undergraduate degree, usually a Bachelor's degree, and at least two years of teaching experience or relevant professional experience, preferably but not necessarily in the teaching of English as another language. You need to have at least a B average in your previous study.

Tuition fees for this course are NZ$18000 for international students - there may be one or two additional fees to pay for services (not sure about that) so perhaps allow for $19000 altogether, which is just under US$13000.

There is also a programme from Auckland Uni, but you'd have to contact them for more details. See their info page at:

http://www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/subjects/index.cfm?P=9002

I imagine the costs and entry requirements will be roughly comparable (as they are at Macquarie Uni in Sydney, Australia too).

good luck.

Hi Matthew,

I think the fact that you have a degree and some teaching experience would be enough to get you a place on most Master's courses. Having said that, I think it would be useful for you to do some reading up on methodology and language issues beforehand to build up your background knowledge considering that you've come from a science background. I think that Jeremy Harmer's site www.eltforum.com might be a useful resource for you here .. it costs about $35 a year to subscribe. The books in the "how to .. " series edited by Jeremy would also be useful .. eg How to teach Grammar and How to teach Vocabulary by Scott Thornbury.

There are many hundreds of MA courses available around the world. You'll need to decide where you want to do it - whether you want online or face to face etc - and also what blend of classroom / theory focus you want. Also, what you can glean about the concerns / research specialisations etc of the particular university would be useful .. for instance, here in NZ, Victoria Uni in Wellington has a strong focus on vocab learning because of the prof there (Paul Nation), while at Auckland Uni, there's a stronger focus on task-based learning (Rod Ellis is there), while at AUT also in Auckland, there's a strong focus on writing / correction etc (John Bitchener's special research topic). Where I'm studying (online from Macquarie in Australia), there's a big faculty, but one of the big topics is text and discourse and in particular Systemic Functional Grammar (following Halliday, Matthiessen, Martin, Butt etc) and language testing (Geoff Brindley).

Anyway, if you don't have any idea about what areas would interest you etc, don't worry about it .. there are other criteria about price, location, reputation, convenience etc to think about too.
good luck