Course Overview

Lancaster's combined English Language and Literature degree is taught by award-winning teaching and research staff who'll help you develop an appreciation of literature through the appreciation of its language.

Your degree looks at the relationship between a writer's linguistic choices and the effects these have on the reader. You'll be introduced to literature from different genres and historical periods and to a range of current approaches in literary theory. You'll also learn about the structure, history, uses and variation of the English language.

In your first year, you'll take courses including English Literature; Introduction to English Language, and Introduction to Media Discourse. You'll move on to second-year subjects such as Stylistics and The Theory and Practice of Criticism and then complete your degree with a wide range of options including Women Writers of Britain and America; Modernism, 1890 - 1945; American Literature from 1900; Shakespeare, and Literature and Film.

For a list of compulsory modules, please see the tab above.

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Career opportunities

Lancaster's English Language and Literature degree helps you develop an analytical approach to working and refine crucial interpersonal and communication skills, which will be of great value in your future employment.

Your degree will be of particular benefit if you wish to work in education, language teaching, speech therapy, translation, information technology, management, the mass media, creative arts, social work and counselling. A sizeable proportion of our graduates take up employment overseas.

Recent graduates have gone on to work or train as speech therapists, teachers of English overseas, teachers of English as a mother tongue, computer programmers and consultants, bankers, chartered accountants, personnel managers, journalists and social workers.