As an alternative to taking a complete Master's or Postgraduate Certificate programme, you can take our individual specialist postgraduate courses for institutional credit. These are ideal if you need to develop knowledge and skills in a specific area. Courses are currently available on topics in Corpus Linguistics and in Language Testing. Each course can be taken separately – they run for one term (three months) and are offered online.
Fees per course (one term)
2024/25 - completed by July 2025 - £1,250 (UK and International)
2025/26 - starting from September 2025 - £1,300 (UK and International)
Online learning
The courses are delivered via Lancaster’s high-quality virtual learning site. You will have access to the University’s extensive online library resources, and there will be plenty of opportunities during the course to interact with other students and your tutors.
To complete the course for credit, you will need to pass the assignment. You will receive detailed information about the assignment and its assessment.
Corpus Linguistics courses
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This course provides an overview of corpus linguistic methods and their application in a range of areas, including sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and applied linguistics. It will enable you to acquire theoretical knowledge of the underlying principles of the field of corpus linguistics as well as practical skills. The course introduces key corpus linguistic techniques such as concordance analysis, the analysis of wordlists and ngram lists, keyword analysis and collocation analysis. It also provides an overview of practical applications of corpus methods in a wide range of areas of linguistic and social research. An indicative outline of topics, not necessary in this order, includes (please note that the topics in the actual course may slightly vary):
The story of corpus linguistics: background and basic terminology
Linguistic description and corpus annotation
Concordances and frequency information
Collocations and n-grams
Types of corpora, available corpora, and corpus building
Corpus linguistics and society: discourse analysis, sociolinguistics
Corpus linguistics and pragmatics
Corpora in the classroom.
Presenting corpus research in research reports
Concise Bibliography
Biber, D., & Reppen, R. (Eds.). (2015). The Cambridge handbook of English corpus linguistics. Cambridge University Press.
Biber, D., Douglas, B., Conrad, S., & Reppen, R. (1998). Corpus linguistics: Investigating language structure and use. Cambridge University Press.
Gablasova, D., Brezina, V., & McEnery, A. (2019). The Trinity Lancaster Corpus: Development, description and application. International Journal of Learner Corpus Research, 5(2), 126-160.
McEnery, T., & Hardie, A. (2011). Corpus linguistics: Method, theory and practice. Cambridge University Press.
O'Keeffe, A., & McCarthy, M. (Eds.). (2010). The Routledge handbook of corpus linguistics. Routledge.
This course offers a detailed corpus-based description of the grammar and lexicon of the English language and the methodology to arrive at this description. You will learn about words – for example, their meanings and the relationships between words as observed in a corpus (collocation and colligation) – word classes, phrases and clauses. The course discusses the concept of lexicogrammar, a notion that allow us to see language holistically with the attention to patterns, which do not fit in older grammar book and dictionary descriptions. Special attention is paid to spoken language and the ‘grammar of conversation’. In this way, the course has a dual focus: 1) It provides linguistic knowledge and relevant terminology about the English language, guiding you through grammatical, lexical and lexico-grammatical patterns observed in large general corpora. 2) It teaches transferable skills of language description of a variety of lexico-grammatical phenomena based on corpus evidence. An indicative outline of topics, not necessary in this order, includes (please note that the topics in the actual course may vary):
Words and word classes
Phrases and clauses
Grammar of the noun phrase
Grammar of the verb phrase
The grammar of conversation
Words and their meanings
Producing (pedagogical) wordlists
Special topics in corpus-based analyses of lexicogrammar
Concise Bibliography
Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999, 2022). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Longman.
Biber, D., Conrad, S., & Leech, G. (2002). Longman student grammar of spoken and written English. Longman.
Brezina, V., & Gablasova, D. (2017). How to produce vocabulary lists? Issues of definition, selection and pedagogical aims. A response to Gabriele Stein. Applied Linguistics, 38(5), 764-767.
Carter, R., & McCarthy, M. (2006). Cambridge grammar of English: a comprehensive guide. Cambridge University Press.
Kennedy, G. (2003). Structure and meaning in English: a guide for teachers. Routledge.
Huddleston, R., & Pullum, G. (2002). The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge
This course provides essential information about corpus design and data collection, one of the key areas in corpus linguistics. It will equip you with the necessary skills for carrying out research projects that are not dependent on existing corpora; instead, you will be able to collect data from a variety of sources and compile them into a properly sampled dataset. Building on a long tradition of corpus development at Lancaster University and providing specific examples from recent projects such as the British National Corpus 2014, Guangwai Lancaster Corpus of L2 Chinese or Trinity Lancaster Corpus, the course offers both theoretical knowledge and practical skills for you to be able to build your own corpus. An indicative outline of topics, not necessary in this order, includes (please note that the topics in the actual course may vary):
Corpus as a sample: Types of sampling, sampling frame
Corpus design: Necessary steps before data collection
Corpus development: Recording data and meta-data, data cleaning, xml conversion
Corpus annotation: Types of annotation, POS tagging and lemmatization, semantic and error tagging
Written corpus design
Spoken corpus design
Learner corpus design
Multimodal corpus design
Corpus distribution and copyright
Concise Bibliography
Biber, D. (1993). Representativeness in corpus design. Literary and linguistic computing, 8(4), 243- 257.
Brezina, V., Hawtin, A., & McEnery, T. (2021). The Written British National Corpus 2014–design and comparability. Text & Talk, https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/text-2020-0052/html
Brezina, V., Gablasova, D., & McEnery, T. (2019). Corpus-based approaches to spoken L2 production. International Journal of Learner Corpus Research, 5(2), 119-125.
Čermák, F. (2009). Spoken corpora design: Their constitutive parameters. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 14(1), 113-123.
Davies, M. (2009). The 385+ million word Corpus of Contemporary American English (1990–2008+): Design, architecture, and linguistic insights. International journal of corpus linguistics, 14(2), 159-190.
Knight, D. (2011). The future of multimodal corpora. Revista brasileira de linguística aplicada, 11(2), 391-415.
Love, R., Dembry, C., Hardie, A., Brezina, V., & McEnery, T. (2017). The spoken BNC2014.
This course offers an in-depth exploration of corpus-based discourse analysis, a prominent area of the application of the corpus method with a very long Lancaster tradition. A range of practical examples of corpus-based discourse studies across a variety of discourse domains (e.g. media discourse, healthcare-related discourse, etc.) will guide you to develop your skills in this area. The course includes an overview of different fields in which corpus-based discourse analysis can be employed, detailed discussion of linguistic and societal implications of these topics, as well as relevant social and linguistic theories. An indicative outline of topics, not necessary in this order, includes (please note that the topics in the actual course may vary):
Basic concepts and the role of corpora in discourse analysis
News discourse
Language on television
Social media discourse
Healthcare discourse
Financial discourse
Discourse and gender
Discourse and politics
Science discourse
Writing up discourse analysis
Concise Bibliography
Baker, P. (2019). Fabulosa!: The Story of Polari, Britain's Secret Gay Language. Reaktion Books.
Baker, P. (2014). Using corpora to analyze gender. Continuum.
Baker, P. (2006). Using corpora in discourse analysis. Continuum.
Baker, P., Brookes, G., & Evans, C. (2019). The Language of Patient Feedback: A Corpus Linguistic Study of Online Health Communication. Routledge.
Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C., & McEnery, T. (2013). Discourse analysis and media attitudes: The representation of Islam in the British press. Cambridge University Press.
Baker, P., & Ellece, S. (2011). Key terms in discourse analysis. Continuum.
Baker, P., Gabrielatos, C., Khosravinik, M., Krzyżanowski, M., McEnery, T., & Wodak, R. (2008). A useful methodological synergy? Combining critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics to examine discourses of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK press. Discourse & society, 19(3), 273-306.
Bednarek, M. (2018). Language and Television Series: A Linguistic Approach to TV Dialogue. Cambridge University Press.
Partington, A., & Taylor, C. (2017). The language of persuasion in politics: An introduction. Routledge.
Semino, E., Demjén, Z., Hardie, A., Payne, S., & Rayson, P. (2017). Metaphor, cancer and the end of life: A corpus-based study. Routledge.
Taylor, C., & Marchi, A. (Eds.). (2018). Corpus approaches to discourse: A critical review. Routledge.
The course is divided into two main parts. The first part (Weeks 1-5) will cover major areas related to using corpora in the classroom. This part will familiarise you with the main theoretical and practical issues in corpus-based language teaching, raising your awareness of advantages and limitations of corpus-based approaches. The second part (Weeks 6-10) will consist of application of corpus methods in different areas of language teaching. An indicative outline of topics, not necessary in this order, includes:
Corpus-based approaches to language teaching: Key issues
Direct use of corpora in the classroom: Data-driven learning
Developing corpus-based teaching materials
Analysing learner language using corpora
Corpora in teaching vocabulary and grammar
Corpora in teaching speaking and writing skills
Corpora in teaching English for Academic Purposes
Corpora and language assessment
Concise Bibliography
Bennett, G. (2010). Using corpora in the language learning classroom: Corpus linguistics for teachers. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press/ESL
Campoy-Cubillo, M.C., Belles-Fortuno, B., & Gea-Valor, M.L. (Eds.) (2010). Corpus-based approaches to English language teaching. New York: Continuum.
Granger, S., Gilquin, G., & Meunier, F. (Eds.). (2015). The Cambridge handbook of learner corpus research. Cambridge University Press.
Gilquin, G., & Granger, S. (2010). How can data-driven learning be used in language teaching. The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics (pp. 359-370).
Hunston, S. (2010). Corpora in Applied Linguistics. Cambridge University Press.
Jones, C., & Waller, D. (2015). Corpus linguistics for grammar: A guide for research. Routledge.
McEnery, T, Xiao, R., & Tono, Y. (2006). Corpus-based language studies: An advanced resource book. New York: Routledge
O'Keeffe, A., McCarthy, M., & Carter, R. (2007). From corpus to classroom: Language use and language teaching. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Reppen, R. (2010). Using corpora in the language classroom. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Sinclair, J. (Ed.). (2004). How to use corpora in language teaching. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Timmis, I. (2015). Corpus linguistics for ELT: Research and practice. New York: Routledge.
This course provides an overview of the main statistical procedures used for the analysis of linguistic data and language corpora, together with examples of application of these methods. Since corpus linguistics is an essentially quantitative approach, the module will enable you to acquire theoretical knowledge of the mathematical modelling of linguistic data and of appropriate statistical tests, as well as practical skills to carry out a range of statistical analyses of linguistic (corpus) data. The course is tailor-made for linguistics students and structured according to linguistic topics and the relevant statistical methods for their analysis. An indicative outline of topics, not necessary in this order, includes (please note that the topics in the actual course may vary):
Measures of frequency, dispersion and diversity
Meta-analysis and effect sizes
Statistics behind collocations, keywords and reliability of manual coding
Contingency tables, the chi-squared test and regression models
Correlation, cluster analysis and factor analysis
T-test, ANOVA and their non-parametric counterparts
Bootstrapping and non-parametric regression
Data visualization
Presenting statistical information in research reports
Concise Bibliography
Brezina, V. (2018). Statistics in corpus linguistics: A practical guide. Cambridge University Press.
Brezina, V., & Meyerhoff, M. (2014). Significant or random. A critical review of sociolinguistic generalisations based on large corpora. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 19(1), 1-28.
Brezina, V., McEnery, T., & Wattam, S. (2015). Collocations in context: A new perspective on collocation networks. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 20(2), 139-173.
Everitt, B. S., & Skrondal, A. (2010). The Cambridge dictionary of statistics. Cambridge University Press.
Gries, S. Th. (2013). Statistics for linguistics with R: A practical introduction. Walter de Gruyter.
Oakes, M. P. (1998). Statistics for corpus linguistics. Edinburgh University Press.
Vogt, W. P., & Johnson, B. (2011). Dictionary of statistics & methodology: A nontechnical guide for the social sciences. Sage.
Language Testing courses
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This course familiarises you with the ways in which language tests are constructed and evaluated. It includes an overview of basic concepts and principles in language testing. We aim to help you construct language tests, with a focus on the four macro-language skills, and evaluate test items critically, through the application and interpretation of descriptive statistics.
Indicative topics:
Basic concepts in language testing
Evaluating and revising test items
Item analysis
Descriptive statistics
Reliability
Assessing writing, reading, speaking and listening
Concise bibliography
Alderson, J. C., Clapham, C., & Wall, D. (1995). Language test construction and evaluation. Cambridge University Press.
Fulcher, G., & Harding, L. (Eds.). (2022). The Routledge handbook of language testing (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Hughes, A., & Hughes, J. (2020). Testing for language teachers (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Tsagari, D., & Banerjee, J. (Eds.) (2016). Handbook of second language assessment. De Gruyter Mouton.
Winke, P., & Brunfaut, T. (Eds.). (2021). The Routledge handbook of second language acquisition and language testing. Routledge.
This course provides an introduction to theoretical concepts in statistics and to practical statistical methods common in language testing research. We aim to provide you with a range of statistical tools to carry out routine and research-related analyses of language test data, and to develop your general understanding of statistical procedures often found in research publications.
Indicative topics:
Descriptive statistics
Reliability
Probability and significance
Correlations and scatterplots
Frequencies and chi square
Comparing means: t-tests and ANOVA
Item response theory & Rasch measurement
Many-facet Rasch measurement
Concise bibliography
Bachman, L. F. (2004). Statistical analyses for language assessment. Cambridge University Press.
Field, A. P. (2018). Discovering statistics using IBM SPSS statistics (5th ed.). Sage.
Green, R. (2013). Statistical analyses for language testers. Palgrave Macmillan.
Pallant, J. (2020). SPSS survival manual: A step by step guide to data analysis using IBM SPSS (7th ed.). Routledge.
Salkind, N. J., & Frey, B. B. (2019). Statistics for people who (think they) hate statistics (7th ed.). Sage.
This course considers a range of current issues in the field of language testing. Topics are reviewed annually so that the most relevant are included. We aim to help you explore recent developments in validation research, understand the theory that underlies issues covered, and discuss critically key topics in language testing.
The course is recommended for people who already have some experience and/or academic foundation in language testing.
Indicative topics:
Changing views of validity
Methods of test validation
Judgements in language testing
Testing language for specific purposes
World Englishes, English as a Lingua Franca and language testing
Technological innovation and language testing
Language assessment literacy
Standards, good practice and professional ethics
Concise bibliography
Bachman, L. F., & Palmer, A. S. (2010). Language assessment in practice. Oxford University Press.
Fulcher, G., & Harding, L. (Eds.). (2022). The Routledge handbook of language testing (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Kunnan, A. J. (Ed.). (2014). The companion to language assessment. Wiley-Blackwell.
Shohamy, E., Or, I. G., & May, S. (Eds.). (2017). Language testing and assessment (3rd ed.; Encyclopedia of language and education). Springer.
Winke, P., & Brunfaut, T. (Eds.). (2021). The Routledge handbook of second language acquisition and language testing. Routledge.
How to apply
Contact the department at linguistics@lancaster.ac.uk if you have any questions about the application process or the entry requirements for the short courses (e.g., English language requirements). We will be able to monitor your status and provide relevant information to the University Admissions Teams once you tell us that you have submitted an application.
