MA English
Certificates
Why Study at SF State?
As a graduate student in our department, you will join a vibrant intellectual community. You’ll receive close attention and support as you work collaboratively with highly motivated graduate students and nationally recognized faculty. Our curriculum, which is informed by cutting-edge scholarship and social justice values, will prepare you for professional success.
MA, CERTIFICATE, OR BOTH?
A master’s program immerses you in the research, theory and practices of your field. It consists of 10 courses (30 units) and culminates in a final portfolio showcasing your knowledge, skills, growth, and achievement. The MA is ideal for students who seek a degree for professional advancement, as well as students who will pursue PhD studies.
A certificate program offers you professional development and specialization. Certificates consist of 4 courses (16 units). As a certificate student, you will attend seminars alongside our other degree-seeking students, work with our high-quality faculty and obtain skills and knowledge that are directly applicable to your career.
Both: Many of our MA students choose to combine their degree with one or more certificates to obtain additional areas of specialization and gain an edge in today’s highly competitive job market.
MA English: Composition
Engage with the research, theory, and practices of teaching academic reading and writing. Courses emphasize equity and success for linguistically and culturally diverse student populations. Excellent preparation for teaching in two-year colleges. Full description: Composition
MA English: Linguistics
Study contemporary theory over a broad spectrum of the levels of linguistic structure: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, discourse analysis, psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. Full description: Linguistics
MA English: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)
Engage with theoretical foundations and contemporary research in linguistics, sociolinguistics, and second-language acquisition. Learn practical classroom teaching methodology suitable for adult second-language learners. Full description: TESOL
Certificate in Immigrant Literacies
Study language, literacies and the immigrant experience. The program integrates community service learning to enable certificate students to integrate their professional expertise and cross-disciplinary thinking with meaningful civic action. Full description: Immigrant Literacies
Certificate in Teaching Composition
Engage with the research, theory, and practices of teaching academic writing. Courses emphasize ways to support developing writing, particularly in accelerated, co-requisite and integrated reading-writing classes. Full description: Teaching Composition
Certificate in Teaching Postsecondary Reading
Engage with the research, theory, and practices of teaching academic reading. Courses emphasize ways to support developing readers, particularly in accelerated, co-requisite and integrated reading-writing classes. Full description: Teaching Post-secondary Reading
RELATED UNDERGRAD CERTIFICATES
Certificate in Technical and Professional Writing
Study fundamentals of technical and professional writing. Courses emphasize technical writing, editing, document design, writing for the web, and grant writing. The certificate includes an internship. Full description: TPW
Certificate in Computational Linguistics
Explore computational methods and their theoretical underpinnings including text processing, statistical patterns, part-of-speech tagging, text segmentation and classification, extraction of meaning from texts and machine learning. Full description: Computational Linguistics