Bachelor of Arts (Honours) - English Literature and History

Program Description 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.

Studying the human past helps students gain a better understanding of why the world is as it is and a greater appreciation of their place in it. Studying History helps students to acquire the skills that employers value, such as critical thinking, teamwork, communication skills, information handling and original thinking.