My name is Crayton Walker. I am a
lecturer in Applied Linguistics in the
English Language and Applied Linguistics
department here at the University.
I'm also Director of the distance programmes.
We run two Masters programmes. One is the
MA in TESOL and the other one is the
MA in Applied Linguistics. These
programmes are unique in the way that
they're delivered online. So, the lectures
and the reading materials discussion
forums, etc. That's all online. And
so it's possible for somebody who starts
the programme in one country to 
finish it in another. The programme
follows you around the world.
If you start teaching in Japan
and end up in Dubai, that doesn't
really matter. The programme is designed for
practising English Language teachers.
It's a continuous professional
development programme so these would be
language teachers who have been for two to three
years into the profession.
Typically they're looking to further
their career. We run two programmes the MA
in TESOL, that's teaching English to
speakers of other languages,
this one has more of a methodological and
classroom basis, it covers things like
syllabus and material design, teaching
methodology. The MA in Applied
Linguistics is very much more, it has a
high linguistics component to it. It will
cover topics like corpus linguistics or
multimodal linguistics and this kind of
things. So the structure of the program is
that the Masters is made up of six
taught modules each counts for 20
credits and normally it takes four
months to complete a module, so that's two
years, and then you have six months for a
dissertation, so the whole programme is
two-and-a-half years. The assessment for
the modules is normally a 4,000 words
assignment of some kind and the dissertation
is 15,000 words and the amount of
time that you need to devote trough
the distance of the course it will vary
from month to month but generally we say
about 40 hours a month, so typical module
and take between 120 and 160 hours
of your time to complete. The aim of the
programme as far as career outcomes goes
is more for teachers who have kind of
decided that this is their profession,
this is their career, and they're looking
for advancement within that career. In
the private sector that would be towards
for example teacher training or materials
development or a director of studies
type of position within language school, in
higher education that would be moving
towards teaching in university or a
college or a situation like that. I think
students should call to choose one of
these programmes mainly for two reasons, firstly
they've been running for 20-odd years, we have
a lot of expertise in the delivery of
distance learning, we do a lot of filming
and editing and development of our
materials, and we have a lot of
structures that we put together over the
years: the tutoring system and so on, that
really supports distance learning. The
second reason would be more
associated with the subject areas that
Birmingham University is particularly
known for: corpus linguistics for example,
John Sinclair pioneered corpus
linguistics in the 1990s
which is basically using computers to
look and analyse language.
And also we have up-and-coming
areas like cognitive linguistics,
these kind of areas which Birmingham is
very definitely getting quite a
reputation for. The favorite thing about
teaching these programs is very much the
summer schools, I'm involved in actually
delivering the summer schools, so I
organized and involved in the delivery
of some schools here in Birmingham, but
the parts which I really enjoy the
travel parts and actually working with
experienced language teachers out in
countries like Japan and Korea, and
learning about the different teaching
situations that are evolved in and also these
countries and getting a chance to see them.
