BA (Hons) English Language and Creative Writing with Placement Year

What's the course about?

In your first year, you’ll explore the building blocks of language. You’ll learn the basics of phonetics, which is the study of speech sounds, grammar and you’ll work on your academic writing skills. For Creative Writing, you’ll learn how to become a writer, looking at building words in fiction genres and writing for the screen. There are a few optional modules for you to choose too, including language and mind and language in the media.

In your second year, you’ll continue looking at grammatical structures and phonetics. All other modules are optional. You’ll choose from a range of modules, from vocabulary to language in society. You can choose to learn how to write plays, learn the art of the poem and look at literature. You’ll even have the option to study a module on English language teaching to speakers of other languages.

Work placement/study abroad option: Between your second and final year, you’ll have the option to study abroad or do a work placement for up to a year. Not only will this give you an amazing experience to talk about but will also give your CV a boost. If you’d rather go straight to your final year, that’s absolutely fine too.

In your third year, you can undertake a Creative Writing project in either poetry or prose. This is the culmination of three years of writing studies. You can choose to do an English Language project as well, where you’ll independently research an area of linguistics of your choice. You’ll take a two hour weekly short story writing workshop, where you produce your own writing and discuss this with your course mates. Other modules include clinical linguistics, child language and meaning and context.

For a complete overview of each module, see the ‘What will I study?’ section below.

Your main campus is de Havilland

You’ll share this campus with students from business, law, sport, education, and humanities subjects. The student housing is close to our Sports Village which includes a gym, swimming pool and climbing wall. You can get breakfast, lunch, or dinner in our on-campus restaurant or bar (in the newly built Enterprise Hub) on days you don’t feel like cooking. You can also use the common room to play pool, video games or just to hang out with friends. Our Learning Resources Centres are open 24/7, which means you can study whenever suits you best. Want to pop over to the other campus? You can take the free shuttle bus or walk there in just 15 minutes.