English – BA (Honours)

At a glance

Develop your understanding of English as a writer, critic and linguist on a course led by established writers and academics at the forefront of research into the subject. You study English language and English literature as well as developing your creative writing skills, before tailoring the course to meet your interests and career aspirations.

Key points
• Study all aspects of English, including literature, language and creative writing.• Benefit from the insights of internationally acclaimed tutors such as Professor Jane Rogers, an award winning novelist, short-story writer and playwright.
• Gain experience with work-based projects working in journalism, education, and marketing environments.
• Tailor your studies to your own interests and career aspirations.

What is English?
Studying English means you become familiar with both the history and the current state of literature and English language. It includes studying English literature using techniques of literary analysis and interpretation, as well as the structure of the English language, its history, grammar and use. You also have the chance to put into practice what you learn about language and literature by producing your own creative work.

This course

Study the three strands of English, literature, language and creative writing, and get to grips with the subject from the perspective of the critic, the author and the linguist.

You study in a large English department, which gives you access to staff with diverse interests and this gives you the chance to examine the subject in all its dimensions, both familiar and new.

During the course, you study both historical and contemporary modules on literature and language, as well as creative writing practice. There is also the opportunity to take work-based projects to gain professional experience and understand how your skills and knowledge can be applied in the workplace.

In your first year, you complete • a broad literature survey taking in Renaissance tragedy, detective fiction and literature of ‘The Great House’
• an introduction to descriptive linguistics, which provides you with an English language toolkit
• a series of introductory creative workshops that give you experience in writing poetry, fiction, script and journalism

In your second year, you take literature modules studying writers such as Shakespeare Marlowe, Shelley and Keats. You study literary linguistics, and you also take an optional module in your preferred creative writing genre.

You then have a range of choices, including children’s literature, teaching English as a second language, writing and the environment, and the opportunity to take a work-related project or to study abroad.

In your final year, you complete an independent project working with your own supervisor. You also study Victorian literature and choose from a wide range of language, literature and creative writing modules. This might include working on literary texts which have been banned, looking at the relationship between language and music, or writing your own part of an historical novel.

Throughout you benefit from the support and supervision of a large team of research-active academic staff and published creative writers. You can choose from a large number of modules in your second and third years, some of which you can only study at Sheffield Hallam University.

We run a number of events where our students can perform their work, such as our regular open-mic night, Speak Easy.

Key areas of study
Key areas include • reading literature • critical theory • verse and narrative • describing language • renaissance literature • literature of the 18th century and Romantic period • professional writing• dissertation • Victorian literature.

Internationally acclaimed teaching team
Our internationally acclaimed tutors include
• novelist, short-story writer and playwright Jane Rogers (Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature; Arthur C. Clarke Award-winner)
• poet Maurice Riordan (former editor of Poetry London)
• prize-winning poet and memoirist Conor O’Callaghan
• award-winning children’s writer and performer David Harmer
• Forward-Prize-nominated poet Chris Jones
• script-writer and theatre director Mike Harris
• writer of literary detective fiction, James McCreet
• environmental poet and editor, Harriet Tarlo
• award-winning TV dramatist and novelist, John Milne