BA (Hons) English Language and Literature

Do you want to study a wide range of authors, genres, historical periods, literary movements, techniques and critical approaches? Would you like to combine this with discovering how the language at the heart of key literary texts actually functions? A joint English Language and Literature degree could be the answer.

You’ll be taught by the country’s largest Linguistics and English Language department and an English Literature department which has a cutting-edge approach to literary study. Our highly-rated undergraduate programme encourages a highly creative approach to projects.

The core modules in your first year will give you a strong foundation in English Language and English Literature. We’ll cover plays, films, short stories, novels and poetry from the sixteenth century to the modern day. You’ll master lexis, grammar and phonetics as well as descriptive concepts such as accents and dialects.

In your second year you’ll study core modules of Stylistics and The Theory and Practice of Criticism. You’ll also be able to choose from modules ranging from British Romanticism to The Language of Advertising. In your third year you are free to specialise in genres and periods that especially interest you such as Advanced English Phonetics, Victorian Gothic or Forensic Linguistics. In your final year you’ll also choose the materials, issues and themes you’d like to explore in greater depth by writing a dissertation.

Our English Language and Literature degree helps you develop an analytical approach to working. It will refine interpersonal and communication skills, highly valued by employers. Past graduates have gone on to careers in education, speech therapy, information technology, management, the media, creative arts, social work and counselling. We offer an English Language degree which teaches you the skills of data analysis, academic writing, and argumentation, and we are confident that our teaching, combined with your willingness to learn, will put you in the best position to move forward in your career.

Careers

Lancaster’s English Language and Literature degree helps you develop an analytical approach to working and refine crucial interpersonal and communication skills, which will be of great value in your future employment.

Your degree will be of particular benefit if you wish to work in education, language teaching, speech therapy, translation, information technology, management, the mass media, creative arts, social work and counselling. A sizeable proportion of our graduates take up employment overseas.

Recent graduates have gone on to work or train as speech therapists, teachers of English overseas, teachers of English as a mother tongue, computer programmers and consultants, bankers, chartered accountants, personnel managers, journalists and social workers.