Student Profile

My name is Richard Lawrence. I began the PG Dip SLT while in full-time employment, in 1999. I found that one paper per term was all I could manage, while in full-time employment, keeping family life exciting, and doing running and other pursuits. I completed an MA (Applied) in 2003 and graduated from
the University of Waikato in 2004.

When I was first employed at Waikato Institute of Technology I didn't have an MA, but the knowledge that I was working towards one was a factor in my gaining a job. Since then I’ve found that having, for example, CELTA, helped me in teaching a lesson to students around intermediate level but the PG Dip SLT and especially the MA assisted me to be effective in wider areas such as curriculum design, online learning content writing and the assessment of students. Right now I'm concentrating on online learning and mixed mode delivery of teaching. Doing the MA gave me a deeper theoretical understanding of what learning and teaching a second language is all about. I found Discourse Analysis particularly illuminating in helping me understand how language works.

Studying at the University of Waikato enabled me to change my career in mid-life. It means that I am older in years but younger in experience in my field. I’m going through a new learning cycle, and although I am waiting to see what life has in store for me in the next years, some of the skills that I had formerly in life are still useful, but I'm having to absorb a lot more and to articulate my learning at an age when it is easy to coast or drift. In the mean time, I have plenty of study still to do in areas of life such as playing the guitar, writing, running and art.

I particularly admire colleagues and students who have English as a second or third language. They have already done what many of us are still thinking about. I have seen friends succeed through character, determination and belief in themselves, as well as rigorous academic study.

To be a student at university, to have English as a second language, is to be vulnerable in some ways. Look after yourself and defend your own integrity. We all need to test ourselves in the academic world and age should not be a barrier. Studying both qualifications in the Department of General and Applied Linguistics at the University of Waikato has allowed me to do just that!