About the course

Explore English language, linguistics and literature on a flexible course that allows you to follow your own interests in the field. There is also the option to study for the TEFLi, opening up a career teaching English in language schools across the UK and worldwide.

This degree will interest students who are fascinated by English, from discovering key linguistic frameworks to exploring exciting forms of literature and experimenting with creative writing. It is also flexible, allowing you to design a course that best fits your strengths, learning style and particular area of interest, choosing from a wide range of units and four specific pathways: TESOL; teacher training; legal (incorporating forensic linguistics); and clinical (such as speech and language therapy).

In your first year, you are introduced to the core skills you need for the degree: an introduction to ways of reading prose, poetry and drama as well as key concepts in linguistics and phonetics. In your second and third years, you build on these core skills while also choosing from a range of optional units that will really capture your imagination.

Why choose this course?

• Develop your subject knowledge as well as your skills in analysis, critical thinking and communication, creating a portfolio of work and a skill-set that will help you begin your graduate career
• Benefit from being taught by enthusiastic, highly experienced subject specialists who are nationally recognised for their research, at a University with roots in teacher training going back to 1882
• You have the option to study for the TEFLi, an important qualification should you wish to teach English in language schools across the UK and worldwide
• Employability skills are embedded throughout the course and, in your third year, you take a work experience unit which allows you to develop as a professional in your preferred field
• Learn research methods in your second year which will prepare you for your dissertation in the third year

I graduated with a PhD in English Literature in 2007 and I’ve been working at the University of Bedfordshire since 2009, teaching across all years of undergraduate and postgraduate study and supervise research degrees. I teach on a range of units, introducing students to literary theory, poetry, prose and plays from the medieval period to the twenty-first century, through to more specialist units such as Modern Irish Literature. I’m also the course coordinator for the undergraduate English provision, and really enjoy working with students as they make their transition into higher education, and helping them to achieve their full potential during their time at the university.

My own field of research focuses on women writers of the twentieth century and the literature of Bedfordshire, and I’ve published work on Elizabeth Bowen, Stella Benson and Nancy Spain. I’m also the co-editor for a journal dedicated to the work of Elizabeth Bowen. I’m currently working on an edited collection of essays on women writers of the interwar period, and the University’s Literary Bedfordshire project which brings to life writers who have lived or worked in Bedfordshire.