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TESOL Requirements & Courses

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Requirements

Students concentrating in TESOL are exempted from the usual departmental requirements; they are not obliged to take ENGL 506 Research Methods, nor any of the literature distributions. Students on M.A. assistantship are encouraged, but not required, to take ENGL 501 in their first spring semester. This course prepares students to teach First-year Composition and dovetails nicely with the goals of the TESOL program. They will then be ready to teach ESOL 101 or 102 in their second year.
 

Courses

M.A. students who select the concentration in TESOL are exempted from the English Department’s other course requirements for the M.A. Instead, they take the five required core courses and four additional electives from the list below:

required (5):
ENGL 506 Principles of Linguistics
ENGL 452 Language, Culture, and Society
ENGL 561 Syntax, Morphology, and Semantics for ESOL Teachers
ENGL 562 Applied Phonetics and Pronunciation Teaching
ENGL 563 Second Language Acquisition

electives (4):
EDCI 471 Professional Preparation for ESOL Teachers (required for those seeking Louisiana state certification)
ENGL 405 History of the English Language
ENGL 425 Semantics
ENGL 455 Topics in Linguistics (may be repeated for credit)
ENGL 458 Investigating Text and Talk
ENGL 553 Seminar in Linguistics (may be repeated for credit)

If desired, for up to two of the four elective courses, students may select a non-linguistics graduate-level course in English, such as a class in literature, composition, folklore, professional writing, or creative writing, or an appropriate graduate course in CODI, Psychology, Modern Languages, or EDCI.

Thesis or Non-thesis Options

Students concentrating in TESOL can choose to focus on their teaching practicum or complete a thesis. For the 33-hour non-thesis option, students will take nine courses (five required and four electives) and complete 6 hours of teaching practicum which will require them to teach ESOL for 1-2 semesters and produce a paper that reflects on their experiences as a teacher. Various ESOL placements are available within the University or the community, or students might take advantage of internships or jobs available around the world. Students who prefer to write a thesis will complete 6 hours of ENGL 599 and be supervised in a research project by a member of the TESOL faculty.