Graduate Certificate

The Graduate Certificate in Second Language Studies, administered by the Department of Linguistics, Languages and Cultures, is designed to provide working professionals in applied linguistics or a related field or current graduate students at Michigan State University with materials and methodologies for researching their own practices, their program’s practices, or external language-teaching programs’ practices in second, additional, or multilingual language-teaching methods. The foci of the program is on applied linguistics and second language acquisition, exploration of the cognitive and social mechanisms underpinning second, additional, and multilingual language development, and how identities and ideologies, and educational language policies, practices, and assessment, affect teaching and learning. The program aids in the understanding of second language acquisition theory and places emphasis on including marginalized and underrepresented language learners and teachers in research on second, additional, and multilingual language learning and teaching.

Admission

Applicants must complete the Intent to Enroll form on the Second Language Studies Program’s Web site at https://sls.msu.edu/admissions/.

Requirements for the Graduate Certificate in Second Language Studies

Students must complete 9 credits from the courses below with a minimum grade of 3.0 minimum in each course for it to count toward the certificate. 

1.	The following course (3 credits):
	LLT	860	Second Language Acquisition						3
2.	Complete two additional courses selected from the following courses (6 credits):
	LLT	807	Language Teaching Methods						3
	LLT	808	Assessment for Language Teaching and Research						3
	LLT	809	Teaching Second Language Reading and Writing						3
	LLT	821	Individual Differences in Second Language Acquisition						3
	LLT	822	Interlanguage Analysis						3
	LLT	823	Introduction to Corpus Linguistics in Second Language Studies						3
	LLT	841	Topics in Second/Foreign Language Learning and Teaching						3
	LLT	842	Teaching and Learning Vocabulary in Another Language						3
	LLT	856	Language Identity and Ideology in Multilingual Settings						3
	LLT	861	Advanced Topics in Second Language Acquisition						3
	LLT	862	Advanced Research in Second Language Acquisition						3
	LLT	864	Second Language Psycholinguistics						3
	LLT	870	Instructed Second Language Acquisition						3
	LLT	872	Research Methods for Language Teaching and Foreign/Second Language Learning						3
	LLT	873	Quantitative Research in Second Language Studies						3
	LLT	874	Qualitative Research in Second Language Studies						3
3.	Demonstrate working knowledge on second language studies research methods and skills by turning in a paper from any of the courses taken toward the certificate to the Second Language Program Director during the final-exam week of the last semester in the certificate program. The Director will provide feedback to the student on the paper by the time course grades are due that semester, with the expectation that the student will use the feedback to revise and then send the paper to an appropriate venue for potential publication.
4.	Complete an exit survey during the final-exam week of the last semester in the certificate program.