English Language and Literature

BA (Hons) English Language and Literature

Mode: full-time

How do we acquire language? How is language taught and learnt? How might we analyse different versions of world English? Do women and men communicate differently? Does accent matter? In answering these questions you will collect data, analyze text, and reflect on personal and collective experience.

We value personal contact with students through small-group teaching and one-to-one tuition. In the welcoming and friendly atmosphere for which the Scarborough campus is renowned, you will investigate issues relating to language, censorship and propaganda, and explore media and advertising. Through an engagement with literary texts from the Renaissance to the present, and with journalism, film, television, and digital media, you will reflect on the potential of language to shape our interpretation of history, culture, and society.

Structure

You study the equivalent of six modules per year, including The Story of English; Literature and Culture in the 19th Century; Language, Journalism and Media; Language Teaching and Learning; Film and the Moving Image; Shakespeare and his Contemporaries; and Language, Literature and the Law. In the final year, you produce a supervised 10,000-word dissertation on a topic of your choice.