Bachelor of Arts (Honours) - English Language and Journalism

During this course, students will study the structures and theoretical principles of English and language in general, and use them to understand and analyse spoken and written English discourse in context. This may include investigating sounds, word meanings, sentence structures, discourse analytical principles, child language acquisition, and language variation and change. Students will be offered a variety of assessment types, including standard essays, presentations, data collection projects, exercises, transcriptions, dissertation and even blogs. This will help to equip students with the academic experiences they need to make the most of employment opportunities following their undergraduate degree and/or postgraduate study.

The course has been repeatedly praised by external examiners, who have noted the unusually broad range of expertise provided by the teaching team, which covers some of the most cutting-edge subjects in English language and linguistics, such as Corpus Linguistics (computer-assisted discourse analysis) and Cognitive Stylistics (how readers' minds process literary and non-literary discourse). Staff also have considerable expertise in the areas of sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, child language acquisition, models of grammar, critical discourse analysis, dialectology and comparative linguistics.

Journalism is an exciting and vibrant subject, crucial to any understanding of modern politics and the current state of the world. The courses at Chester strive to remain at the cutting edge of journalistic practice and theory, with an emphasis on sustainability and technology. The way journalists report the news and consumers then engage with the news is evolving all the time: digital technology is having a huge impact. Consider the evolution of social media over the past decade, from its role in the events of the Arab Spring through to the election of Donald Trump, Brexit and the war in Syria. Mainstream journalism has been responding in fascinating ways and its value and importance is being re-evaluated: it may allow us to break free of the damaging echo chambers shaping our world, and the courses at Chester are designed to help students, the students, do exactly that. Academic assumptions are changing all the time – Journalism as a field has never been more relevant or important.