Systemic functional linguistics and the ground-breaking literacy initiatives of the ‘Sydney School’ in primary, secondary, tertiary and adult education are internationally recognised. New areas of strength include World Englishes, the politics of English language teaching, media discourse, critical discourse analysis and the discourse of emerging electronic modalities of communication (eg. news websites, blogs, chat rooms, Youtube, Facebook, MySpace).

Applied linguistics includes a focus on the process of teaching and learning a second language and is suitable for those involved in teaching English to speakers of others languages (TESOL), second language teaching (SLT) and teaching of modern languages and other kinds of language education. The program is also designed for those interested in applying linguistics in other professional areas, including translation, journalism & media, language policy and planning, website design, and socio-educational development work.