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Studying English Linguistics

English Linguistics

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Work on your knowledge of the structures of English

If you are passionate about education and you enjoy making teaching materials accessible for students, then you may want to enroll in a teacher training programme, after finishing your Bachelor’s programme in Literature and Society.

If you want to join the teacher training programme (Ma level, 2 years), then your proficiency in Dutch must be B2 or higher. But you can also opt for a teacher training programme in an English speaking country. The following text, however, refers to the VU Master’s programme.

During this Master’s programme you will learn to master your subject (teaching English language and literature) at all Dutch high school levels. Of course, you will also learn the tricks of the trade in courses that focus on didactics: how do you activate pupils to really learn something? How do you deal with differences between pupils? And what is the best way to learn a language? What can language education mean for developing citizenship?

When you complete this master you will be a first-degree qualified teacher. This is the highest authority in the Netherlands, with which you can teach in all classes and in all forms of secondary education, from pre-vocational secondary education to pre-university education, and from first-year classes (‘brugklas’) to the final exams.

With this piece of paper in your pocket, you are really an all-round English teacher. And those teachers are desperately needed!

Before you can start this master, you must have sufficient professional knowledge and proficiency in English. In your bachelor's degree in Literature and Society you did not study English from a linguistic perspective, nor did you get acquainted with the role that language plays in society. With this school subject minor you ensure that your linguistic knowledge is at the level needed for studying English at a master's level.

The complete overview of this year's courses can be found in the study guide. 

Overview courses

  • Introduction to Linguistics

    This course provides you with elementary knowledge of formal linguistics and of language use. At the end of this course, you will be able to correctly use basic linguistic terminology and you will be familiar with the basics of the linguistic domains of language acquisition and language disorders, phonetics and phonologiy, morphology, syntax, language variation and language contact, semantics, pragmatics, and computational linguistics. You will also become aware of the role that linguistics plays in society, such as in speech/ language therapy and in educational environments. After the course, you will also be able to perform basic linguistics analyses on language datasets from languages you do not speak. 

  • Literacy Development

    In this course, we examine how reading skills develop during the course of children’s and adolescents’ lives, to what extent this development is affected by personal characteristics such as motivation and which role families and schools play. Themes that are discussed are: emergent literacy, reading motivation, reading comprehension and ICT.

  • Second Language Acquisition

    This course is focused on a particular set of questions related to the research domain of second language acquisition. Are adult second language learners able to learn a language in the same way as children acquiring their first language? What is the role of innate language principles? What is the effect of language teaching on the second language acquisition process? You will analyse these questions and evaluate how we can make second language education as effective as possible.

  • Analysing Text and Talk

    The course is designed to learn about the linguistic and pragmatic differences between written and spoken texts and their similarities. During the course you will become familiar with various theories and methods that will help you to plan for your thesis and further research. You will learn to take a critical view on different modes of communication and how they co-construct meaning in their social contexts.

  • Advanced English Language Skills (blended learning)

    After successfully completing this course, you will have further refined your Dutch-to-English translation skills and will be able to give a successful oral presentation on an academic topic. You will also have demonstrated your grammatical competence and acquired further insight into grammatical differences between English and Dutch.