English Language and Literature Master’s program at Illinois State University

Children Literature, Creative Writing, English Education, Linguistics, Literary and Cultural Studies, Rhetoric and Writing (including New Media Studies, Professional Writing and Rhetorics, Rhetoric and Composition, and Teaching Writing), and TESOL offer our community of students and researchers the means of examining how we teach, learn, and understand ourselves and others through the stories we tell and the ways in which we tell them.

Each year Illinois State sponsors the Central Illinois Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference, providing a forum for graduate students throughout the region to present original research.

Discover what life as an Illinois State graduate student is like.

A student applying to a master program must:.

Have earned a four-year bachelor degree or its equivalent from a college or university that is accredited by the appropriate regional accrediting association, or do so within one academic year.

The unofficial transcript should be easily readable and clearly indicate degree(s) awarded, courses and course grades for each term.

Describe your goals following the completion of the degree.

Our department strongly supports the English studies model. This means you take courses in a variety of areas including rhetoric, literature, linguistics, writing, pedagogy, and so on.

Submit names and email addresses of three references for letters of recommendation within the online application.

International students are required to submit English Proficiency scores from TOEFL or IELTS. The minimum TOEFL score required for graduate admissions is 100 TOEFL ibt or 7.0 on IELTS. For International students interested in being awarded a teaching assistantship, a TOEFL iBT speaking score of 27 or higher, equivalent IELTS score, or the Test of Spoken English (TSE), is required.

The University provides graduate assistantships as a means of . They are intended as a way to facilitate a student progress to degree while providing important professional development.

Assistantships offered to Master students are 10 hours week assignments, generally teaching one class in the Writing Program, with some assistantships available in the English Language Institute. Master students spend their first semester assisting a teacher. After their first semester, they teach one course each semester.

Assistantships for Master students currently carry a stipend for 9 months and a full tuition waiver. Summer teaching and summer research are occasionally available.

Sutherland Fellowships are awarded to a small number of Creative Writing students. Sutherland Fellows work a year in the Department Publications Unit and spend a second year teaching creative writing.

See Student Accounts for information on tuition and fees. Funding for graduate students is available from several different sources. Students who have been admitted from contiguous states including Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, and Wisconsin will receive in-state tuition.