To be a PhD Student through the Experience of Master of Arts in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages Programme

Mr Luke Yan, Graduate of MATESOL (2020), Current Student of PhD programme in EdUHK

As a student particularly interested in applied linguistics and corpus linguistics, I have long dreamed to become an academic researcher in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics since the third year of my undergraduate study. Before starting master’s study, I learned that there is a world-leading research team in English education and corpus linguistics involved in teaching Master of Arts in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (MATESOL). Therefore, I chose MATESOL at The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) and set the goal to be a future PhD student supervised by outstanding scholars from the Faculty of Humanities.

The MATESOL programme offers an array of interesting and valuable courses covering a wide range of English language education and studies. During my master’s study, the theoretical and practical knowledge in the courses provided me with valuable insights and meaningful experience on how to design, evaluate, and implement practical lessons. The lecturers are very generous in sharing ideas with students and are always ready to discuss the problems encountered by students during their learning processes. They also instructed students on how to conduct academic research in English language learning and teaching, and I am particularly interested in the workshops on corpus-based language learning and teaching designs. In the second semester, after choosing the course Dissertation, I received professional and valuable instructions from my supervisor (also my current PhD supervisor). Through completing my corpus-based academic research, I have learned various meaningful projects, powerful tools and abundant resources conducted, designed and collected by the MATESOL teaching team. I  made up my mind to pursue for a PhD study in EdUHK.

After graduation, I was employed as a Research Assistant at EdUHK and then successfully applied for the PhD programme. I would express my sincerest thanks to the MATESOL programme which equipped me with confidence and competence in linguistic and education studies and essential knowledge for my current PhD study.