BA (Hons) English Language and Media with Placement Year

What's the course about?

In your first year, you’ll learn the foundations of language. You’ll study phonetics, syntax and the building blocks that make up language. You’ll have a variety of modules to select from. You could choose to explore societal dialects, language in humans and even language in animals. For Media, you’ll explore Global Media and Society looking at who owns the news. Explore the influence of the BBC and commercial entities, such as Sky and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. You’ll debate current issues with your peers, such as propaganda, moral panics and fake news.

In your second year, you can take modules in English language teaching, psycholinguistics, forensic linguistics and more. How do children learn language? In media you’ll learn key research methods. You’ll practise conducting interviews, run focus groups and pitch the outcomes to different clients. You’ll explore radio journalism and the journalistic stories that changed history such as the black lives matter campaign and historic Watergate as well as having the chance to study video making and mobile media design.

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 fine too. You’ll decide in your second year with us, so there is still plenty of time to think about this.

In your third year, you can choose more modules in sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, and clinical linguistics. Learn how language is processed in the brain. Look at child language and communication, language disorders and brain injury, meaning and context and more. In media, you’ll get the chance to work with a client on a project or design a website or learn more about PR.

For a full list of modules, see the section under ‘What will I study?’

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.