Master of Applied Linguistics

With Massey’s Master of Applied Linguistics, you’ll help make second-language teaching work in a multilingual world.

The Master of Applied Linguistics provides professionals in all areas of second-language teaching (including Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)) with a combination of professional and research skills which is increasingly important in both domestic and international settings.

Get real-world skills
You’ll use theories, methods and problem-based approaches that address real-life language issues in our globalised and digitally mediated world.

Draw on Massey’s research strengths
Massey’s research strengths include:

• heritage language learning
• mother tongue maintenance
• online second-language communities
• distance/online language learning
• sociocultural adjustment of international students and their teachers to their presence in New Zealand universities
• language learning and emotion
• bi/multilingualism
• oral proficiency
• teaching and assessment
• language education policy.

Research opportunities
In the Master of Applied Linguistics you’ll complete a research report (60 credits) or thesis (120 credits). Recent areas of student research include:

• investigating needs of non-income-earning students in community English classes
• the development of teacher identity among student teachers in Thailand
• navigating cultural conflict and dissonance in the immigrant ESL classroom
• the role of motivational beliefs in self-regulated learning for Kanji acquisition
• vocational tertiary students’ imagined experiences of learning English with native speakers in an Indonesian rural setting
• perceptions of Bhutanese students, parents and teachers of their learning progress in a New Zealand secondary school
• a case study of teacher beliefs and student attitudes on L1 use in multilingual classrooms.