A huge congratulations to our Assistant Director of Studies, Michael Gask, on his recent graduation from Victoria University of Wellington with a Master of Arts in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages – MA(TESOL)! This is Michael’s second Master’s degree. The first was a Master of Arts with Honours in English. Michael has also completed the Cambridge Delta, Cambridge CELTA and a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Asked if he would recommend doing an MTESOL to others, Michael replied, “I would definitely recommend doing this degree (or another similar one) to other language teachers: it’s entirely classroom focused, and gives you a greater understanding of the reasons why we do certain things in the language classroom, and the research behind this. It also provides opportunities to carry out short action research projects in your classroom, so it’s very practical. The distance learning was very well organised, and the structure allowed me to tackle one paper at a time over several years, so that I could better balance working full-time, studying part-time and trying to have a life! Victoria has a strong focus on learning and teaching vocabulary, English for Academic Purposes and cognitive linguistics, so I was especially able to increase my knowledge in these areas, which has had a direct benefit on my classroom teaching.”
