Page 22 - ELG2001 Jan Issue 468

El•Gazette 468.qxp_El•Gazette 468 08/01/2020 15:58 Page 22

MASTERS LISTINGS .

Top marks for Masters

Melanie Butler looks at the metrics that can help you choose your course
hat information does a teacher need to choose the best
Masters course? The answer, of course, depends who
that teacher is and what they want to use the Masters
Wfor. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
So, this year, in our annual listing of UK Masters courses, we are
providing three metrics teachers can use to select a programme that
will suit them.
The first metric comes from the QS Top Universities Ranking by
Subject and tells us the academic reputation of the university
department Masters programme in one of three subject areas:
Linguistics, Education or English Language. The QS reports on the
top 300 universities globally (turn to page 20 to find out more) but in
our listings, we report their rankings in tiers: Top 50, Top 100, Top
150 and Top 200. Modular measurements: designed to fit you best
Academic reputation is very important, especially for teachers
looking to move into the Higher Education sector. But what about of its English language centre, or its British Council (BC) inspection,
teaching quality and student satisfaction? and we report on both of those here, too. This information is
In England and Wales the government scores every university for particularly informative where a Masters is offered in the university
teaching, based on undergraduate surveys and data on drop-out rates language centre (this marked with a * in the listing). This type of course
and employment prospects. The Teaching Education Framework, or suits teachers looking for pragmatic, classroom-focussed programmes
TEF, awards one of three stars: gold, silver and bronze. These awards Only a minority of university language centres opt to be inspected,
are included in our listings and those that do have a tick in the BC column. We also show those
However, the TEF doesn’t tell us everything about teaching. This is that are an EL Gazette Centre of Excellence, meaning they are in the top
because it takes into account the entire university, not a particular 25 per cent of all UK language centres, based on their inspection results.
course or department, and it only covers England and Wales. Who are the best all-round performers? Two universities each have
And what about language teaching? two departments in the QS rankings, a gold star on the TEF and are
A university which offers a Masters for language teachers should be EL Gazette Centres of Excellence based in their British Council (BC)
good at language teaching. The best metric for this is the performance reports. So, well done to the Universities of Nottingham and Leeds.

KEY
HERE IS
THE ASTON British Council Rankings
MASTERS BC
Certificate in English Language Teaching to
CELTA
Adults
EL Gazette Centre of Excellence
CoE
Distance learning
DL
English Language Teaching
ELT
QS World University Rankings
QS
HERE’S SLA Second language acquisition
FOR GOING TEF Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes
Framework rating
FURTHER TEFL Teaching English as a Foreign Language

TEACH TESOL Teaching English to Speakers of Other
Languages
TRANSLATE * Programme is taught in the language
Go further with centre or jointly with language centre.
the Aston Masters
in TESOL or
TESOL and Master of Arts
Translation MA
Master of Philosophy (research-based
MPhil
Masters)
bit.ly/TESOLAston Master of Science
MSc
PGCert Postgraduate certificate

22 January 2020