Good morning everyone, before my presentation, I’d like to ask you a question.

As we all know
that there are thousands of students every year come to Durham to study different subjects, So,
have you ever thought about the specific reasons for you to study your subjects at Durham. My
presentation today is going to talk about the things that have influenced my decision to study MA
TESOL at Durham.

My presentation will be divided into 3 parts, the first part is a brief introduction about my
education background, and the second part is the main motivations for me to study MA TESOL at
Durham, the last part is a short conclusion. So, now I’d like to start by giving you the education
background of mine.

Before I chose MA TESOL as my postgraduate subject, I studied medical English for 4 years. And
medical English is different from those English subject in those normal universities, which means
I didn’t receive any professional teaching training, programme or courses on how to be a good
English teacher which related to MA TESOL. Since TESOL is all about to teach English to
speakers of other languages. In addition to this, my family always expected me to be a medical
translator in the future. So, it’s kind of a big challenge for me to change my subject at the graduate
level. And now you may curious about why I made this decision.

Let’s turn the two main motivations for my decision about studying MA TESOL at Durham. The
first one is a person from my undergraduate university who is Professor Ning, and the second one
is an experience to be a volunteer teacher in a support teaching activity. now let’s take a look at the
person Professor Ning. I met her in my junior year, and she’s a teacher for interpreting course.
She’s nice and always passionate who is different from those middle-aged professors. I’ve never
felt any generation gap between us. So, when she told me she was graduated from Durham
university and got a Doctor degree in translation, I admired her very much and I was willing to
share my plan for studying abroad with her. Gradually, I received much information about Durham
including its collegiate system, the environment of Durham, and even some outstanding subjects
in Durham. So, I believe that’s when I got interested in Durham. What’s interesting is that, at first,
Professor Ning tried to persuade me to study translation as she did, but I expressed my wish to be
a teacher to her. Then she recommended MA TESOL for me, even at that time I had no idea what’s
this subject is about. It was her who introduced the subject to me and even helped me compare the
subject at several famous universities, and finally I decided to come to Durham which is one of the
best universities for MA TESOL.

As for another motivation, let’s move on to a support teaching activity. I took part in this voluntary
teaching when I was a sophomore, our team went to a primary school twice a week lasting for half
a year. As a volunteer, my main task was to lead the third-grade children to read English picture
books. I have to say that those young children were curious about almost everything in the books
that they had never been exposed to before. After being a volunteer teacher for a while, I found I
really enjoyed spending time with those children, and I was patient enough to answer their
questions using my own knowledge. However, gradually I realized that even so, there were always
some moments that I couldn’t satisfy them, which probably because I didn’t have enough teaching
experience or related knowledge. So, I suppose that it may be suitable for me to pursue advanced
studies in English education. Later, when I was preparing to study abroad, I found that there was
an optional module for MA TESOL at Durham University called “Teaching young learners that I
was very interested in. I hope that studying TESOL at Durham can enable me to master a lot of
teaching methods that are different from those in China, which can bring different teaching
experience to my students.

So, now, in conclusion, what in fact influenced my decision to study MA TESOL at Durham?
From my perspective, on one hand, the professor Ning offer me much information about MA
TESOL as well as Durham university, that inspired my yearning for the subject at Durham. On the
other hand, the experience of being a volunteer teacher also inspired me to be a good English
teacher. These are all important things driving me to Durham for MA TESOL programme.