English Literature and TESOL

This module is organised around key frameworks for the understanding of human and cultural identity; likely to include gender, sexuality, nationality, ethnicity, subculture and social class. The exploration of such frameworks is supported by theoretical materials designed to introduce you to key literary and cultural concepts (such as ideology, patriarchy, heteronormativity, performativity, otherness, diaspora, and hybridity). Literary texts will be drawn from a variety of genres, periods, and cultures, and you will be required to identify, and reflect upon, the correlations between identity and its literary and/or aesthetic expression. Through both seminar discussion and the assignment tasks, you will be encouraged to adopt a pluralistic and comparative approach to the topic, crossing textual and discipline boundaries in your exploration of the interlaced operations of cultural classification and individual self-definition.

This module provides you with knowledge and understanding of detective fiction by tracing its emergence as a distinct literary genre. It examines the historical, cultural and commercial contexts underlying the rise of the detective stories and considers how the genre adapted as these changed. The module addresses the narrative structure of detective fiction and traces the interplay between the detective, sidekick, supporting characters and reader in advancing the plot and solving the crime. As well as gaining a command of the authors and texts most central to detective fiction, you will critically engage with broader debates in the active field of genre studies. In group discussion and assessment you will develop a working knowledge of a literary genre’s development and evolution in the hands of a variety of authors writing in a range of historical periods.

This module specialises in literature written for children, starting in the eighteenth century to the present and exploring a range of genres, such as fairy tales/fantasy, picture books, and poetry for and about children. It provides you with knowledge and understanding of cultural contexts, origins of literary form as well as constructions and appropriations of childhood. Teaching will pay particular attention to themes, such as suitability, death and creativity as well as a range of different theoretical approaches, which can be used in the study of literature written for children and/or about childhood. The use of presentation skills will be developed in advance of the final assessment: the range of issues considered will be supported by directed research and discussion tasks, some of which will be carried out independently and others will involve group work. The module develops the conceptual and theoretical foundations laid at level 4, as you will be required to critically respond to and engage with the different approaches to literature written for and about children and childhood.

The TESOL Methodologies module will guide you through the approaches and techniques that professional language teachers use for teaching English, or other languages, in the UK and all over the world. You will find out about the development of methodologies over time, from audiolingualism to the post-methods era, enabling you to develop a toolkit of techniques that you can select from and identify in practical teaching modules. A particular focus will be how these methods can be applied for the teaching of the four skills: speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Not only will you learn about language teaching methods and approaches, but you will understand the principles that underlie them by examining the relationship between method and general learning, as well as language learning, theories. This part of the study develops your criticality and professional capacity to select appropriate methods and builds on the theoretical knowledge of Second Language Acquisition you gained in Year 1. Further topics covered in the module will include lesson planning, classroom management, teacher and students roles, among others.

This module aims to provide essential training in professional career management skills designed to assist you in actively planning and preparing for your future careers in English Language Teaching.

You will develop an awareness of the ELT market through and the personal attributes and achievements that employers require in this industry. You will explore the various contexts they have, opportunities for employment through a social, cultural and educational analysis of these contexts.

You will develop oral communication and team working skills through practical group exercises. You will have an opportunity to develop their personal statement, curriculum vitae and prepare for prospective job interviews.

Through these activities you will develop self-awareness; opportunity awareness; decision learning; and transition learning.

This module will introduce you to the generic and thematic diversity of the Victorian period (1837-1901). It considers a range of texts from across the period, from poetic forms to late-Victorian drama. The selection of texts combines some of the most familiar works of Victorian literature with lesser-known and recently neglected writings. It also studies Victorian social, cultural and scientific debates and considers the emergence and significance of a variety of genres, including (but not limited to) the social problem novel, serial fiction, sensation fiction, and comedy. This module emphasises the specific historical, socio-cultural contexts of the Victorian era to reflect on the ways in which Victorian writers negotiated ground-breaking ideas, discoveries, and significant events. It will encourage you to question current preconceptions about the nature of 'Victorianism' and what it represents, and engage with contemporary key Victorian scholarly debates. Teaching will focus on further developing the analytic skills acquired on the degree so far, and applying them in relation to illustrative examples of historicist analysis, debating skills, and nuanced interpretation. In the assessment you will deploy a historically informed approach to issues in context and test sustained research and analytic skills in the form of a written assignment.

This module offers a survey of the development of western drama from the late 19th century to the present day. You will be introduced to dramatists such as Ibsen, Brecht, Williams and Beckett, alongside key developments and debates in dramaturgical theory and practice. You will be required to think comparatively about theatrical style and ideological expression, relating approaches such as realism, expressionism and absurdism to thematic structures of cultural dissidence, moral subversion and political engagement. Individual plays will be considered as theatrical events as well as written texts so attention will also be paid to the specific theatrical and institutional contexts of individual works, and you will be examine visual and video materials relating to staged performances. Specialist workshop sessions will be scheduled to introduce and enhance the digital literacies required for the practical assessment.

In recent years, women’s writing has emerged as a major influence of twentieth-century and twenty-first literature. This module examines the impact of women in literature through a variety of literary forms and transnational parallels and contrasts. It highlights identity politics and the ways in which women have fought to change discriminations based on race, gender, class, age, and sexuality. By bringing together several themes other modules have introduced, this module will strengthen your confidence in undertaking independent research. It will equip you with increased research skills and resourcefulness in choosing your area of specialist literary knowledge by exploring women’s writing by weaving a thread of critical enquiry determined by the significance of women’s contributions to literature. In doing so, it follows a chronologic trajectory, which acknowledges the origins of feminism, and an international perspective that encompasses a variety of diverse authors. It will test your knowledge through coursework that facilitates your choice and independent research skills.

In this module you will have the opportunity to analyse and evaluate how English language, in spoken, written or digital forms, shapes meaning for use in fields ranging from media to politics to marketing. You will also explore how factors such as audience, purpose, genre and mode affect our use of language.

This module promotes detailed knowledge of the major developments in English Literature occurring during the Romantic period. With its emphasis on the cultural contexts of literary, poetic and dramatic language this module enables you to discuss critically changing modes of expression in relation to political, philosophical, aesthetic and social contexts. It includes some consideration of visual art and print culture, building upon your exposure to other instances of this on other period or genre modules. The teaching pays particular attention to primary resources in terms of social, cultural and literary contexts, by examining for example, texts written in response to the idea championed by revolutionaries, reformers and Enlightenment thinkers. In view of the final assessment the module facilitates the building of research context and skills.

This module will give you the opportunity to evaluate and design materials for English language teaching use. You will develop a practical understanding of the role, principles and procedures of the design and evaluation of language teaching materials.

This module offers a final opportunity for you to extend your critical engagement with modern writing through an examination of some of the most significant writers, movements, and innovations in literature since the end of the second world war. Through a variety of genres and literary forms, the module will examine divergent representations and responses to this unsettling period, from disillusioned expressions of national or political decline to progressive visions of renewal through cultural hybridity and reinvention. Central strands of investigation will likely include: challenges to realism and aesthetic experimentation; the rise of apocalyptic imaginaries and the arrival of the Anthropocene; multiculturalism and globalisation; and the deconstruction of self and subjectivity. Lectures and seminars will test and enhance the literary-critical skills acquired at levels 4 & 5 through an engagement with relatively complex literary works, contexts and theoretical frameworks, paying particular attention to the development of independent critical argument in advance of the final assessment. The inclusion of different national literatures within the module acknowledges the significant impact of international exchanges during the period as well as providing a means of investigating the increasingly global contexts and concerns of late 20thand 21stcentury literature.

In this module you will use your creative skills and imagination to examine innovative ways in the teaching of English. You will have the opportunity to explore how to use technology, augmented and virtual reality and games as tools in English language teaching.

If you aspire to teach English in the primary, secondary, further, higher education or the professional sectors, this module will familiarise you with specific English language teaching contexts in the UK and abroad and the finer details of the National Curriculum for English Language.

This module requires you to devise and undertake a dissertation on a subject of interest and to prepare, in written form, a substantial literary critical essay, including a proposal and reference list. It draws on research skills imparted on earlier, research-led modules, but requires you to impart these in a more independent and critically advanced manner. This module will deepen and refine your knowledge of your chosen specialist area and offers insights into the construction of longer pieces of analytical written work and the ways in which arguments are honed across them. The teaching pays particular attention to supporting you in your research and writing processes. This support includes taught whole-group sessions at the beginning, midpoint and end of the module, feedback sessions, and tutorial provision delivered by individual tutors.

In this module you will demonstrate your ability to design, conduct and report the results of a research project in an area of TESOL and/or Linguistics. You will work independently and under the guidance of a supervisor.

This module explores a range of literary and other texts associated with the cultural and artistic developments of Modernism during the early decades of the twentieth-century. It will introduce you to the diverse strands of Modernism, as exemplified by writers such as Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Ernst Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W. B. Yeats, Katherine Mansfield, Jean Rhys, and William Faulkner. In addition, it will contextualise these literary achievements amidst the cultural and historical contexts of modernity, examining areas such as colonialism, the artistic avant-garde, modern alienation & the metropolis, gender and sexuality, and the impact of the First World War. Workshops and seminars will pay particular attention to the relationship between cultural transition and aesthetic innovation, further enhancing your close reading skills and historicist methodologies. There will be specific sessions dedicated to the introduction and enhancement of digital literacies to help you prepare for the hypertext assessment.

At a time of climate emergency, this module asks how literature reimagines the environment and our relationship to it. You will begin by studying literatures produced in the early stages of the industrial revolution in order to understand some of the causes of our current environmental crisis, including fossil fuel production, major transport networks and other infrastructures, urbanisation, and global food supply chains. Literature not only represents these developments, but also imaginatively responds to the environmental changes that result from them. Poetry and fiction, in particular, call attention to alternative ways of conceiving of and responding to our surroundings, from evoking nostalgia for pastoral lands unaffected by industry to presenting utopian visions of environments for the future. This module will develop your understanding of the range of literary forms that imaginatively respond to environmental change. You will examine elegies that express despair at environmental change, creative essay prose that fosters environmentalist action, and speculative fiction that promotes ecological utopias. Teaching will focus on enhancing knowledge and understanding of key literary texts and environmental debates and issues from the eighteenth century until today. The assignment will ask you to develop critical arguments that bring your understanding of environmental literatures to bear on pressing ecological and environmental questions in the environmental humanities today.

This module will introduce you to the basic principles of how teachers construct and present English language tests. You will look at the different purposes of tests and you will critically evaluate testing techniques.