- guardian.co.uk, Thursday September 26 2002 01.52 BST
Teachers who are looking for an MA TESOL course that allows them time to take stock, step back and cogitate, should avoid the Fast-track MA on offer from King's College London. That's not to say that the course short-changes students in terms of its content or breadth. It's just that this is a course for people who are in a hurry to get places.
The course has been run at King's College in central London since 1997, and according to programme director Dr Jennifer Jenkins, it was born out of a kind of frustration.
"We had been running a diploma course for many years and we had students saying there wasn't a lot of difference between a diploma course and the MA. Those that were going on to do an MA were finding that they were repeating quite a lot of what they'd done on their Dip courses."
Most of the duplication was in the methodology and language awareness sections of the MA. So Jenkins and her colleagues decided to look at how they could streamline their course so that candidates who had already had a Dip could skip to the content that was both new and most relevant. Thus the Fast-track MA was born.
King's standard MA in ELT and Applied Linguistics is made up of a core course, divided into two sections, Professional Foundations and Language Acquisition And Use. The Professional Foundations section is further divided into two parts, Principles and Practice, and Linguistic Analysis. To gain the standard MA students are required to complete all of the core course plus two optional courses. Part-time study takes two years. The Fast-track option is also part-time, but it allows students to cut eight months and a lot of teaching hours off the standard part-time course. This is achieved by by-passing the Principles and Practice section altogether and condensing the Linguistic Analysis section into a special "bridging course", which runs over 10 three-hour sessions between late April and late June. Fast-track students then join the second year of the standard part-time MA, which starts in late September and runs to late June. All the teaching is during evenings at twice-weekly sessions. Fast-track students are only required to do one of the optional courses.
Assessment for the Fast-track is based on two written assignments from the Language Acquisition section, one assignment from the Optional section and a dissertation. While the Fast-track may live up to its name in terms of speed, this is not a lighter option in terms of work demanded. Jenkins points out that Fast-track students are only exempt from 20% of the standard assessment.
So candidates need to approach the course with some caution. The evening teaching makes it a good option for teachers who are working full-time and who live within commuting distance of central London. But students also need to be confident that they have both their working and personal lives well ordered.
Jenkins says candidates must be highly motivated and be able to keep to deadlines. And because candidates need to hit the ground running in terms of absorbing and interpreting academic texts and theories, she also wants them to have an "abstract interest in the field, not just mechanical".
Jenkins does not recommend the Fast-track to overseas students who would be better off with a full-time MA, and expatriate teachers should first establish themselves back in Britain with a job and accommodation before taking on the course.
Candidates for the Fast-track must show that they have achieved a recognised diploma-level qualification within five years. And they must be able to show a varied range of teaching experience.
Helen McAllister, who completed her Fast-track in 2000, found the course hard but worthwhile.
"The course was very demanding in terms of the amount of reading and writing we were expected to do. A lot of the reading was dense, complicated stuff - but it's an MA, after all, and I expected to be mentally challenged. Sometimes the evening sessions were hard to follow after a full day's work." She says there was seldom enough time for dissecting and discussing course work with other students, but nevertheless the group did become close. "Most of the discussion went on in the coffee break or en route to class or the exit afterwards. Only short amounts of time, but enough to reassure ourselves we were on the right track or just share our stress and worries," she says.
McAllister, who is director of studies at the Cambridge School in London, would recommend the course to anyone who, like her, is working full time and who wants a faster and cheaper alternative to a standard MA course, and who can find the space in their lives.
"I'm definitely glad I did it, but it was hard work and it was helpful that I didn't have too many other distractions outside work at the time."
For more information on the King's College Fast-track MA in English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics email ial@kcl.ac.uk
