English Literature (with Foundation Year)

Our foundation year is intended to prepare you for your subsequent years of studying, offering you the chance to strengthen your skills, knowledge and confidence.

The BA (hons) in English Literature at Cardiff Met is a wide-ranging and immersive degree that will allow you to engage with the earliest works written in English to books being written and published today. Through this reading, you will open up your critical thinking and, over the course of your degree, will learn to explore the world in new and original ways.

You will read and discover movements and genres from the Gothic to children’s and YA literature, critically explore world literatures and literatures from the UK, and investigate and contextualise literary movements from Romanticism to Modernism. You will also delve into writing that addresses the most pressing issues of our time, from ecology to politics, and cultural identity to feminism. Primarily through three discrete but overlapping approaches to reading literature – historical approaches, literary themes, and geopolitical questions – you will become familiar with writing from the fourteenth to the twenty-first centuries, always asking: How and why is this writing important? How does my world emerge out of this literature? Where am I in this literary world?

You will be taught by academics working at the cutting edge of their research fields, who will be sharing this new knowledge with you directly. The teaching team also includes creative writers who are actively involved in the work of writing and publishing texts, giving you a direct insight into the changing worlds of writing and publishing.

In your third year, you will have the opportunity to write an extended research project on a subject or books that you are passionate about.

In a digital age, the skills that a degree in English Literature offers are becoming more rather than less important. Because books deal with the gamut of human experience, and writing and reading is an essential part of every single walk of a life, a degree in English Literature is uniquely open to a range of careers once you graduate.

The degree is housed in the Cardiff School of Education and Social Policy, giving you direct links to postgraduate teacher training after your degree for those students who plan to teach in primary, secondary or tertiary education. Many students will go on to careers in the creative industries and publishing, and a second-year placement module will give you the necessary skills and and help you build the networks to make this move with confidence. Others will find careers in marketing and PR roles, human resources, law, civil service, arts management and countless other fields.

The university also has popular MA and PhD routes for those students who want to continue their journey in academia.

We’re committed to innovative assessment practices that match identified learning outcomes for your module and degree. This means assessment, wherever possible, is linked to enhancing not only your subject knowledge but skills vital in developing your employment opportunities.

Examples of assessment include essays, research portfolios, group work, writing portfolios, critical and reflective practice, reviews, poster presentations, blogs, annotated bibliographies and so on. You will also complete a placement, which will be assessed through a reflective text.

Throughout the degree, you will regularly be provided with written and verbal feedback on your academic work and will work closely with tutors to develop work suitable for publication.

You will also have a single personal academic tutor assigned to you for the duration of your degree, who will be able to support you throughout your academic journey at Cardiff Met.