English BA (Hons)

Bachelor's degree

In Stoke-On-Trent

£ 9,000 + VAT

Description

  • Type

    Bachelor's degree

  • Location

    Stoke-on-trent

  • Duration

    3 Years

"Staff always make time for me and help me out if I do not quite understand something or are having any problems. The texts we study are varied and enjoyable. Option modules are brilliant. Love Staffs!" National Student Survey 2015
Our English degree will help you to develop the analytical, interpretation and communication skills that are so highly valued by today's employers. The wide choice of options – including American literature, Victorian, modernist and Shakespeare, along with a range of thematic choices - lets you focus on your own areas of interest or to explore widely. You can take a workplace module to boost your employability and in your final year you will have the opportunity to complete a supervised research dissertation to explore an area of personal interest.
Throughout your time with us, you will have the support of highly regarded academics who are contributing to critical debates in their fields through publication.
English can also be studied as a 2-year fast-track degree.

Facilities

Location

Start date

Stoke-On-Trent (Staffordshire)
See map
College Road, ST4 2DE

Start date

On request

About this course

Typical UCAS Offer: 112 points
A levels: BBC
BTEC: DMM
All applicants are individually assessed.
Applicants with non-standard qualifications or relevant work-based/life experience can apply for our free ten-week Step Up to Higher Education foundation course.
• Build your confidence
• Develop essential skills (Prep for lectures, student finance etc.)
• Try academic taster sessions
• Become "University-ready"
Successful completion will qualify you for entry to the first year of a degree course.
Find out more and apply or email stepup@staffs.ac.uk

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Reviews

Subjects

  • English
  • Poetry
  • Writing
  • Options
  • Prose
  • Shakespeare

Course programme



Core modules studied are:
Level 4
Introduction to English Studies
Learn about the key forms, genres and developments of modern English literature. Critical debates, terminology and influential theoretical essays will be studied to ensure you are equipped for your degree course.
British Literature 1945-Present
Explore British writing and cultural forms (including fiction, poetry and drama ) from 1945 to the present. The module will introduce you to a range of literary themes in their cultural contexts (such as the Windrush Generation, Thatcherism, multi-culturalism, urban culture and postcolonialism).
Early Modern Writing
Discover the English literature of the 17th and 18th centuries. Analyse poetry, drama and prose, in relation to genre, style and form, and the external influences of the broader culture and society. Study texts may include: Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, the metaphysical poetry of Donne and Marvell and Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe.
Writing for Success
Learn how to produce clear and effective prose for academic and creative writing. The first half of the module focuses on standards of university written English (punctuation, syntax, paragraphing etc.). The second half of the module moves on to the more sophisticated skills of research, essay structure and engaging in academic debate.
Poetry of Early Romanticism
Learn about one of the key ‘moments’ in the development of English literary culture. Study Romantic poetry and its relationship to the social, political and cultural revolutions of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, through works by authors such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron and Shelley.
Imagining America
Explore some of the main American texts from the 19th and 20th Century, including narrative prose, essay and poetry. Examine how each text deals with the issue of American identity and enquires into its historical context. Themes covered include founding principles, the New Republic and its national literature, race, gender, immigration, class, urbanisation, region and capitalism and the American Dream.
Introduction to Fiction
Learn a number of writing techniques (journalism, poetry, short stories and plays) through workshops and writing exercises. You will also be given opportunities to practice traditional and more experimental forms of prose, poetry and imaginative writing.
Level 5
Literature & Modernity
Learn about English literature's involvement in the developing social, economic, cultural and conceptual processes of modernisation in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Authors you will explore include Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Charlotte Bronte and Oscar Wilde. You will also look at modernity and modernisation in relation to literary and cultural developments in Britain, Ireland and the United States during the 20th Century.
Options
Beat Writing, Magical Realism and Gothic Fiction are just a few of the options also available to study.
Full options list available in the Course Handbook.

English students progress through their degree by a cumulative process of gaining subject knowledge and analytical, critical and communicative skills. In our thematic and skills based modules you will learn to reflect upon the literature and culture of English; our placement modules help you prepare for a vocational career of applied English in the workplace.

At Level 4 there are three core modules and a number of options. The first of the cores, `Introduction to English Studies', builds a university level skills base; the other two introduce a historical dimension with English in the Early Modern and Post1945 periods. At Levels 5 and 6 there is greater emphasis on optionality, with more scope for independent learning, for example in the Level 6 dissertation. With the aim of fostering independent learning, a variety of teaching and learning strategies are employed, including lectures, seminars, tutorials, but also workshop settings, with a 2hr workshop model allowing for short lectures involving student interaction and feedback, also independent research assignments, whole group and small group exercises, the guided development of presentations, and elearning exercises.
Assessment modes are accordingly diversified, including class tests to assess and feedback quickly on skills development, formative short essays feeding into longer assessed pieces, and class unseen exam papers assessing close reading skills and subject knowledge. At Level 5, notably in the group presentations which are a central feature of the core coursework, you are expected to work cooperatively at an agreed project which is part of the final assessment for the modules. Greater emphasis is placed at Level 6 on independent learning and research, not only in the dissertation and work placement modules, but in specialist option modules. Here, more self-reliance is expected, as well as group cooperation on collaborative presentations and/or assignments. Guided research topics/tasks are built into Level 6 option modules to ensure that research and independent learning skills are developed in option modules as well as in the dissertation. Individual tutorials provide support in the preparation for assessment (especially in the supervision of the dissertation and of the English in the Workplace Project) and as feedback after the return of coursework.

English BA (Hons)

£ 9,000 + VAT