- UCAS course code
- QQ10
- UCAS institution code
- M20
BA English Language and English Literature / Course details
Year of entry: 2024
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Course description
Our BA English Language and English Literature joint honours course will enable you to delve into the science of language while exploring a wide range of texts dating from a variety of periods.
You will be taken on a broadly chronological journey of English Literature from the Anglo-Saxon period through to the present day.
In addition, you will investigate the sounds, words and grammar of the English language, and you will discover where English comes from, how it developed over time, how it varies across the UK and further afield, and how it is used in different situations.
You will acquire the skills required for analytical language study alongside the means to apply those skills to the study of historical and present-day English.
You will practise key transferable skills such as essay writing and how to give a presentation.
You can also broaden the scope of your studies to investigate the interaction between psychology and language (psycholinguistics), child language development, and explore a range of methodological approaches used in study of English Language and English Literature.
You will become part of a thriving community of students, lecturers and writers at The University of Manchester, based in the heart of a UNESCO City of Literature that has produced some of the world's greatest writers and has a thriving literature and arts scene, including major events like Manchester Literature Festival.
Special features
Placement year option
Apply your subject-specific knowledge in a real-world context through a placement year in your third year of study, enabling you to enhance your employment prospects, clarify your career goals and build your external networks.
Study abroad
You may apply to spend one semester studying abroad during Year 2.
Exchange partners are offered through the Worldwide Exchange scheme (eg USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore).
Literature events
Manchester Literature Festival holds literary events across Manchester throughout the year, many in partnership with the University.
The Centre for New Writing also hosts a regular public event series, Literature Live, which brings contemporary novelists and poets to the University to read and engage in conversation.
Unique collections
John Rylands Library on Deansgate is part of the University and offers the rare opportunity to see a Gutenberg bible, Shakespeare folios and other archival treasures.
Get involved with interesting projects
Our students are encouraged to take an active role in funded teaching-enhancement projects, whose outputs benefit them individually and collectively. For example, some of our students have developed an online atlas of dialect variation in the UK and storyboards for the use in fieldwork.
Meet like-minded students
You can get to know your fellow students outside of your course by joining the English Society or volunteering to work on the student-run Sonder Magazine.
Teaching and learning
You'll be taught through a mixture of:
- formal lectures
- tutorials
- seminars.
You'll spend approximately 12 hours each week in formal study sessions. For every hour spent at university, you will be expected to complete a further two to three hours of independent study.
In your independent study time, you may be reading, producing written work, revising for examinations or working as part of a team of students.
Coursework and assessment
Our courses are assessed in various ways, for example, written examinations, oral presentations and different types of coursework.
Coursework may include library research, linguistic fieldwork and data collection, or web-based research.
In your final year, you can choose to write a dissertation.
Course content for year 1
In English Language, you'll study the foundations of English grammar and will be introduced to the history of English and the variations of English in the UK and further afield. You may also choose additional optional units, including those in which you learn about the study of meaning or of sounds, or learn how to investigate English using corpus methods.
In English literature, you will sample a wide variety of literature and cultural theory and develop a solid basis of knowledge and skill which you'll build on in your second and third years.
Course units for year 1
The course unit details given below are subject to change, and are the latest example of the curriculum available on this course of study.
Title | Code | Credit rating | Mandatory/optional |
---|---|---|---|
Reading Literature | ENGL10021 | 20 | Mandatory |
English Word and Sentence Structure | LELA10301 | 20 | Mandatory |
History and Varieties of English | LELA10342 | 20 | Mandatory |
Study Skills | LELA10601 | 0 | Mandatory |
Mapping the Medieval | ENGL10051 | 20 | Optional |
Theory and Text | ENGL10062 | 20 | Optional |
Literature and History | ENGL10072 | 20 | Optional |
Language, Mind and Brain | LELA10201 | 20 | Optional |
The Sounds of Language | LELA10322 | 20 | Optional |
Study of Meaning | LELA10331 | 20 | Optional |
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Course content for year 2
You will tailor your degree to suit your interests in both areas. While studying two compulsory units in subjects like language change, sociolinguistics, stylistics or pragmatics, you may additionally choose from a wide range of optional units tapping into academic expertise in specialist fields such as phonology and experimental phonetics, and psycholinguistics.
In English Literature, you can tailor your studies by selecting from a wide range of options: from medieval and early modern literature to Victorian, 20th century and contemporary writing and film.
Course units for year 2
The course unit details given below are subject to change, and are the latest example of the curriculum available on this course of study.
Title | Code | Credit rating | Mandatory/optional |
---|---|---|---|
Chaucer: Texts, Contexts, Conflicts | ENGL20231 | 20 | Optional |
Shakespeare | ENGL20372 | 20 | Optional |
Gender, Sexuality and the Body: Theories and Histories | ENGL20481 | 20 | Optional |
Writing, Identity and Nation | ENGL20492 | 20 | Optional |
Medieval Metamorphoses | ENGL21022 | 20 | Optional |
Renaissance Literature | ENGL21151 | 20 | Optional |
Old English: Writing the Unreadable Past | ENGL21162 | 20 | Optional |
Satire and Sentiment: British Literature, 1680–1820 | ENGL21181 | 20 | Optional |
Modernism | ENGL21192 | 20 | Optional |
Romanticism (1776 - 1832) | ENGL21521 | 20 | Optional |
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Course content for year 3
You will have complete freedom of choice among a wealth of different course options in both subjects. In English Language, you can choose options spanning subjects as diverse historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, child language development, formal semantics and syntax, and forensic linguistics.
You will also have the option of writing a dissertation, where you explore and write about a particular topic in depth. For the English Literature component, you may wish to enrol on to the long essay unit (if you haven't opted for the dissertation above), and then you will choose the remaining units from the optional list.
Course units for year 3
The course unit details given below are subject to change, and are the latest example of the curriculum available on this course of study.
Title | Code | Credit rating | Mandatory/optional |
---|---|---|---|
Climate Change & Culture Wars | AMER30572 | 20 | Optional |
American Hauntings | AMER30811 | 20 | Optional |
The Uncanny and the Undead: Gothic American Literature and Culture | AMER33151 | 20 | Optional |
Long Essay | ENGL30001 | 20 | Optional |
Long Essay | ENGL30002 | 20 | Optional |
Creative Writing: Fiction | ENGL30122 | 20 | Optional |
Narrative Theory and Victorian Fiction | ENGL30172 | 20 | Optional |
Culture and Conflict: Neoliberalism and Cultural Production | ENGL30261 | 20 | Optional |
Creative Writing: Poetry | ENGL30901 | 20 | Optional |
Irish Fiction Since 1990 | ENGL30941 | 20 | Optional |
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Facilities
You will access resources to enhance your learning, including an extensive collection of linguistics texts and our psycholinguistics and phonetics laboratories, with facilities for:
- signal analysis;
- speech synthesis;
- laryngography;
- electropalatography.
In addition, you will have access to a wide range of other facilities to enhance your studies at Manchester, including the University Library and John Rylands Library.
You will also have the opportunity to enjoy Manchester's many other cultural assets for both study and recreational purposes, including the Whitworth Art Gallery and Manchester Museum.
Find out more on the facilities pages for English Language and English Literature .