BA Hons English Language

English has over 330 million native speakers, and there are about 810 million more who speak it regularly as a second language. Add to these the hundreds of millions of the world's population who learned English in school, or are learning it today, as a foreign language - there are more people learning English in China than the total population of the USA! - and you can see how important English is for the world.

People talk nowadays of an "English language industry": a vast world-wide enterprise which provides employment opportunities for native and non-native speakers of English all round the world. These jobs are primarily in education - at every level from primary school to university and adult education, taking in such vital areas as English for science and business. But they are also in language-related fields such as publishing, the media and information technology, and in fields where international communication is important, like science, trade and international relations.

Studying the English language is a good way into the study of language in general:

  • the sounds of language (phonetics)
  • the structure of language (grammar, text and discourse structure)
  • the meaning and significance of language (semantics and pragmatics)
  • language in its broad psychological and social contexts
  • the way the language has developed over the centuries.

What will I study?

In Part I you will take the following:

In Part II you take eight units in total, four in each year. At least six units must be taken within the Department (you can choose to take up to two units in another department, as a 'minor'). The following courses are compulsory:

  • LING203 English Sounds and Structures (to be taken in the second year)
  • LING306 Corpus-based English Language Studies (to be taken in the final year)
  • LING301 Linguistic Methodology (to be taken in the final year)

The remaining units can be selected from the Department’s list of courses.

What qualifications will I need?

We normally expect successful applicants to have AAA/AAB inc. English Language, English Language and Literature Combined or a modern/classical language. We normally expect three A-levels. One (but only one) of these grades may be achieved from the average of two AS-level grades, one of which should have been taken in year 13, with each contributory grade in a different subject

We intend this degree course to appeal particularly, but not only, to students who have taken English Language A-level. This scheme will also be appropriate to students whose native language is not English.

How is my work assessed?

As in all courses, there are examinations at the end of the first year before proceeding to the second and final years. In the second and final years, you will normally take an examination for each course at the end of the year in which you study it. Coursework typically involves an essay (2000-2500 words) each term for each course, but it often comes in other forms. The weighting of coursework varies with departments: in the Department of Linguistics and English Language the final mark is usually based on 40% coursework and 60% examination.

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