COURSE CURRICULUM

The Master’s in English as a Second Language at the University of North Texas provides advanced training in linguistics, second language acquisition, and ESL instruction while combining research, theory, and practical teaching experience. Faculty research within the program focuses on areas such as corpus creation and analysis, poetics and discourse analysis, language variation and change, language learning, morphosyntactic and syntactic analysis, and phonetic and phonological studies, exposing students to a broad range of modern linguistic research methods and perspectives. UNT linguists are also actively involved in the international academic community, serving on editorial boards and as review editors for respected journals including Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area, Himalayan Linguistics, the Journal of South Asian Language and Linguistics, and the International Journal of American Linguistics. Students gain valuable hands-on experience through ESL practicum opportunities, which are sometimes offered in international settings, allowing them to design and implement ESL instruction while working directly with English language learners. The program also encourages active student engagement through student-led reading groups, collaborative discussions, and research activities connected to thesis topics in linguistics and language education. Coursework covers key areas such as second language acquisition, pedagogical approaches to English grammar, methods and practicum in teaching English as a second or additional language, and the study of global varieties of English and language change. Career opportunities for graduates are diverse and extend beyond traditional teaching roles into fields such as advertising, code analysis and code-breaking, marketing, forensic linguistics, speech-language pathology, and audiology. Because linguistics graduates possess strong analytical and communication skills, major technology companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Apple also value candidates with linguistic expertise, especially in areas connected to language technologies and communication systems. The curriculum includes courses in research design in linguistics, sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics, phonology, ESL teaching methods, and second language acquisition, providing students with both theoretical knowledge and practical professional preparation.