Teaching English in University

livinginkorea

Hi all,

I am currently doing my MA in TEFL from the University of Birmingham and one of the head lecturer (from Dublin) said that there are not many opportunities for teaching English Methods, Discourse Analysis, Social Linguistics etc in Ireland.

Does anybody have any information on this? It's my goal to go back to Ireland and work in a uni lecturing in a couple of years. What qualifications do I need?

Thanks in advance.

LiK

Tom Dunne

livinginkorea wrote: »

Does anybody have any information on this? It's my goal to go back to Ireland and work in a uni lecturing in a couple of years. What qualifications do I need?

There is some general information in the "How to become a lecturer" sticky at the top of this forum. Some of it is relevant to the Institute of Technology sector (i.e. my contribution), but there are also contributions on the university sector.

claire h

That sounds about right, given that English is not taught as a second language in Irish universities (as far as I can see), and that English courses are mostly literary, with some focus on language, but very little on linguistics itself. (Disclaimer - this is hugely biased towards Dublin universities, someone may come along and correct me on this!)

If it's that side of things that interests you, you'd need a language other than English to lecture in, as that's where those aspects of language tend to turn up at university level, or if it's English you want then you'd need a more literary MA and ideally PhD to get into it.

livinginkorea

Thanks for the info guys. I am just thinking ahead. I am teaching at a uni in Korea (English language teaching, not methodology) and I am hoping that experience would look good on a resume. I guess I should try and go into teaching methods but that won't be for another year at least.

Personally I don't know anybody who has taught in a uni in Korea and then went back to Ireland to teach there. It seems pretty difficult. I don't want to end up in some language school teaching English. I imagine the pay wouldn't be great either

Well there is always the rest of Europe anyway. Naturally, Ireland would be my number one choice.

If anybody knows if their college/university has linguistic departments then let me know please.

Cheers

Xhristy

This post has been deleted.

claire h

Trinity only teach linguistics in relation to foreign languages, though - if one only has English, I'm not sure how employable one would be as a lecturer.

Esmereldina

claire h wrote: »

Trinity only teach linguistics in relation to foreign languages, though - if one only has English, I'm not sure how employable one would be as a lecturer.

In UCD at least, Linguistics is a separate subject. However to teach in it, you'd need a PhD in linguistics, which I imagine would be different from whatever postgraduate study the OP is doing in English language teaching, even if it is more theoretical/on the linguistic/methodological side.

livinginkorea

How about Limerick? I heard that they have a department too. Actually they have a MA course for TEFL there I think. I briefly checked it out many years ago before deciding with Birmingham.

I have read a couple of papers from professors in Trinity durning the course of my studies so it has led me to believe that they might have some English linguists department there. But as Clarice H said it seems to be in relation to other languages. Time to brush up on French and German then! :P

Keep the info coming. It's really helpful guys. If I have to get a PhD then so be it but that will take years. Not to mention the expenses!