The University of Essex MA Linguistic Studies is their broadest postgraduate degree, offering students the widest choice of options. Students expand their knowledge of language through studying everything from syntax, to computer-assisted language-learning, to language and gender, to language disorders, to multilingualism.

Students build a programme best-suited to individual needs. The optional modules students choose come from a broad list including: theoretical and descriptive phonology, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, semantics, and syntax. Students also gain a basic familiarity with some common research methodologies and paradigms used in linguistics. They will write a dissertation on a topic of their choice. This takes place between April and September.