BA (Hons) English Multidiscipline - English Language and Creative Writing Route
BA (Hons) English Multidiscipline makes possible the combined study of two subjects from English Literature, English Language, Creative Writing, and Drama, including career-focused options such as a work placement opportunity, the chance to study abroad, and masterclasses from professional writers, editors, and practitioners.
By studying English Language and Creative Writing as a part of BA (Hons) English Multidiscipline, you will study the uniquely human capacity for language while, at the same time, developing your approaches to creative composition.
Your English Language modules will teach you the fundamentals of language by considering sounds, structures, meanings, and mental representations. More specifically, you will be encouraged to investigate the historical development of the language alongside its role in constructing identities, social relations, and practices. These explorations of language will be supported and developed by a range of Creative Writing modules which provide the opportunity to explore writing in a unique range of contexts, including screenwriting, playwriting, novel writing, and poetry.
To apply to study English Language and Creative Writing as a part of BA (Hons) English Multidiscipline, apply through UCAS for BA (Hons) English Multidiscipline by using the course code of Q307 and the institution code of S03.
Below, you can find information about the modules that you will study within English Language and Creative Writing as a part of BA (Hons) English Multidiscipline.
Please note that it may not be possible to deliver the full list of options every year as this will depend on factors such as how many students choose a particular option. Exact modules may also vary in order to keep content current. When accepting your offer of a place to study on this programme, you should be aware that not all optional modules will be running each year. Your tutor will be able to advise you as to the available options on or before the start of the programme. Whilst the University tries to ensure that you are able to undertake your preferred options, it cannot guarantee this.
Year one modules
Introducing Language
This module will introduce you to the systematic study of language, with a focus on how English is organised in terms of its sounds, structures, meaning, and mental representations. We also explore how language study can be applied in the real-world.
The Writer's Practice
Start your writing life by exploring the creative process in a range of mediums: poetry, prose fiction, playwriting, and memoir. On this module, you will be challenged to define your territory as a writer and be inspired by new creative processes. In your first year at Salford, you experiment with all of your talents and discover your own writing practice.
Critical Skills in the Twenty-First Century
In this module, you will be introduced to the skills required for life in contemporary society. The module covers skills such as the following: argumentation, critical thinking, and clarity in written expression. Critical skills are practiced through the filter of “big ideas,” ranging from artificial intelligence to ecocriticism.
Year two modules
History and Diversity in English or Structure of English
History and Diversity in English
You will be introduced to key periods in the history of the English language and characteristic features of the language in these periods. You will explore language change with reference to the different levels of language and regional variation and change in English dialects.
Structure of English
Starting from an investigation of a wide range of grammatical phenomena and constructions in modern standard English, you will develop a firm grounding in the analysis of the structure of English sentences. You will learn how to analyse and think critically about data, how to formulate rules and hypotheses, and how to test them.
Sounds of English or Truth and Meaning
Sounds of English
The sound system of English is organised by subconscious principles that shape the content of speech sounds and their patterns of occurrence. This module introduces you to the sounds of speech, syllable structure and word stress in English. You will learn how to describe and classify consonants and vowels, transcribe speech sounds, and identify and analyse syllable structure and word stress.
Truth and Meaning
How can we understand the meaning of sentences we have never heard before? You will examine the role that truth plays in the study of meaning and learn how to analyse the meaning of English words and sentences. The module will also prepare you to seek answers to further questions about meaning in English.
Additional modules:
In addition to your two core modules in English Language, you will select two modules from Creative Writing and two optional modules from English Language, English Literature, Creative Writing, or Drama from the list below:
| Researching and Planning a Novel | This module will equip you with an overview of the state of contemporary fiction. You will meet a broad range of contemporary practice, from literary fiction to experimental fiction and genre fiction, including ‘chick lit’, historical fiction, crime/thrillers, science fiction, and supernatural/fantasy fiction. You will continue to develop your ‘writer’s tool-kit’, adding techniques such as point of view, narrative drive, setting, character, and dialogue. You will also receive tuition in how the publishing industry works and the skills that a professional writer needs to acquire. |
| Writing Poetry in the 21st Century | This module revisits some traditional forms. The first part of the module involves creative explorations of the Japanese ‘tanka’ (a relative of the haiku), the sonnet, and the sestina, inviting you to invent your own original poetic form. In the second part of the module, you will encounter a range of innovative approaches to poetry, using sound, collage, found text, and visual elements in your writing. The format will be largely workshop-based with writing exercises, facilitating the sharing of work with your tutor. |
| 21st Century Women’s Writing | This module explores a range of contemporary texts written by women and includes novels and other forms of writing such as manifestos, graphic novels, feminist history writing, and TV shows and music. As a consequence, you will learn about the socio-political and cultural climate of today’s society as it affects and is shaped by women. |
| The Female Gothic | This module explores a selection of Gothic novels, novellas, short stories, and films, working to trace the development of the Female Gothic in fiction from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. By exploring the significance and the effects of various recurrent tropes—including the uncanny, Gothic spaces, the absent/dead mother, abjection, and the monstrous feminine—you will be introduced to the themes of Gothic writing and to the specialised vocabulary of and theoretical approaches to the Female Gothic. |
| Literature, Adaptation, and the Screen | On this module, you will study a range of literary texts and their screen counterparts, including Sherlock, Psycho, and Gone Girl. By encouraging you to consider and explore the relationships between literature and screen adaptations, the module will explore the distinctiveness of both cultural forms while investigating the problems of generating visual and dialogic substitutes for psychological and narrative complexity. You will learn about theories of adaptation and the integral role of technical arts such as scenography, music, and sound production; further, you will also learn about techniques associated with writing film and TV synopses, treatments, and step outlines. |
| Analysing Media Texts | In this module, you will explore what constitutes a media text in the 21st century. You will learn how to deconstruct media texts using tools from linguistics in order to explore ideology and manipulation in texts. You will analyse a variety of media texts ranging from news reports and advertisements to political speeches and social media by using qualitative and quantitative methods from discourse analysis. |
| The Romantic Period: the Sublime and the Gothic | The Romantic Period was a time of revolution when radical writers began to argue for the natural rights of mankind. On this module, you will study the literature that emerged in a time of revolution while exploring how a range of writers experimented with new literary forms and styles, including the Gothic mode: a form of writing that captured contemporaneous anxieties in monstrous, terrifying, and horrific forms. By exploring ideas relating to nature, childhood, empire, and the self, you will study the ways in which the “spirit of the age” was expressed through the revolutionary compositions of Romantic writers. |
| Language and Big Data | The British National Corpus is a vast collection of over 4,000 English texts, providing a unique record of contemporary spoken and written English. In this module you will gain hands-on experience in using this and other computer-based corpora of English to answer questions about language structure and use. |
| Work Placement Module | On the work placement module, you will have the opportunity to fulfil a module of study by finding and completing an internship or work placement related to your degree. While on your placement, you will be assigned an academic tutor from the English discipline. The tutor will meet with you to discuss the progress of your placement, help you think about what you are learning, and establish goals. |
| Political Communication: Media and Democracy | This module explores the relationship between the media and politics in liberal democracies. You will focus on the nature of political media and reporting, the media's influence on politics, and how political actors use the media. You will also study the rise of the internet and new media technologies and what this means for democracy. |
| Comedy Writing and Performance | The module explores the writing and devising of comedy. You will watch, listen to, and discuss examples of a range of online, radio, and TV comedy before working in small groups to create an original comedy sketch idea and to develop your own script and characters within it. You will be encouraged to develop range and flexibility in your vocal, facial, and physical skills in order to produce a range of comic personas. The module also examines aspects of storytelling—theme, narrative structure, character development, comic types, the relationship of character to plot, and the use of subplots—in relation to the writing of comedy drama and situation comedy. In the second half of the module you will create your solo performance: a piece of Stand Up of comic monologue. |
| Page to Stage: Drama Texts in Translation | You will develop a practical and theoretical understanding of a range of 20th/21st century theatre texts in translation and the ability to interpret dramatic texts, whilst fostering an understanding of the particular ideological and cultural implications of staging plays in translation. You will be able to direct and perform in extracts of the plays studied. |
| Introduction to Theatre Directing | In the first part of the module, a series of workshop/seminars will introduce you to the role of the director, using a range of contemporary and historical play texts. We will explore and apply appropriate theatrical vocabularies in order to help you develop your own directorial approach. |
| Introduction to Screenwriting | On this module, you will develop your own original idea for a screenplay across the semester, moving from a one-line pitch to a treatment and scene-by-scene breakdown to, ultimately, a script. The script can be for any platform or audience, with no limitations to cast size or location. The module examines the fundamental aspects of storytelling for screen: character, story, structure, and dialogue. You will learn how to format your documents to a professional standard. |
| University-Wide Language Programme | This module provides the opportunity to learn or develop a language with the University-wide language programme. |
Year three modules
Language and Communication
How does communication work? In this module you will examine key aspects of communication which result from the interaction of linguistic meaning, context and principles of human cognition. You will study how language is used in context by analysing data drawn from your own experience in communication.
Northern Voices
What does it mean to be ‘northern’? Where is the north and where does it begin and end? Using both archive and contemporary recordings of northern speech, this research-based module will enable you to carry out a project on an aspect of northern identity as expressed through language in the interactional and media domains.
Final Portfolio
This is a double creative writing module that runs throughout your final year. Here, you can undertake a self-directed project in the genre(s) of your choosing, while giving and receiving feedback in a supportive workshop environment. By the end of the module, you should have 6,000 words (or equivalent) of highly polished creative work.
Additional modules
Alongside your core modules above, you will study two optional modules from English Language, Creative Writing, English Literature, or Drama from the list below:
| Dissertation | The Dissertation module provides you with an opportunity to undertake an independent and challenging research project under the guidance of a member of academic staff. The dissertation expands and hones your research skills, strengthening your ability to engage with complex materials in a productive way and preparing you for further study or a career in the workplace. |
| British Theatre Post-1950 | This module contextualises post-war British theatre in terms of naturalism, the avant-garde, political contexts, and the epic mode. Examining a varied range of play texts, you will consider the ways in which British theatre since the Second World War has engaged with issues of class, sexuality, gender, and national identity and how form, narrative, action, and character have evolved in different contexts. |
| Scriptwriting for TV and Film | Through a professionally geared script development programme, you will create a premise, a treatment, a step outline, and a first draft of a complete screenplay of at least fifty minutes. In seminars, you will discuss ideas for story, character, and theme within the group. Treatments, step outlines, and the first draft are developed in one-to-one tutorials. |
| Biography: Tradition and Innovation | This module introduces you to the rich, innovative, and subversive traditions of biography as well as ground-breaking contemporary practice. The module will explore the following issues: biography as autobiography; biography as fiction; biography as poetry; biography as visual text; biography as political critique; and biography as a way of understanding our world. Postmodern concerns about what we understand by “reality,” “life,” representation, subjectivity, and “truth” will underpin our explorations, and you will be guided through a range of key research and writing techniques as you embark upon your own biographical project. |
| Writing for Performance | The module offers you the chance to explore the theory and practice of playwriting and writing for performance, covering concept, story, structure, characterisation, dialogue, theatricality, rewriting, and revising. |
| Visual Text | The term “visual text” usefully reminds us that text is visually-recorded language, designed to be perceived through sight. All text is therefore visual but readers and critics often have difficulty sustaining their awareness of its dual nature. This module is devoted to engaging with the visual delivery of text, its possibilities, and its potential to alter and influence meaning, storytelling, and criticism. You will engage in close textual analysis, and you will be encouraged to question the creative decisions behind the presentation of a wide variety of texts, including graffiti, site-specific writing, illustrated and illustrative writing, graphic novels, concrete and shaped text, and text-based animations. |
| Alternative Ulster | This module will discuss literature written during the period known as the Northern Irish ‘troubles’, the Peace Process, and after. It will consider poetry, prose, drama, and film produced in this period, as well as other visual sources (mural, video, and performance art) to consider a variety of ways of representing the conflict. While a historical narrative will be presented in the first lectures and seminars, the focus will be on considering how form and content intersect in these fictive representations. |
| Rebels, Villains, and Discontented Minds | The subject of this module is ‘disobedience’: how it was defined, represented, condemned, and (on occasions) celebrated in sixteenth and seventeenth-century English literature. In particular, you will study the many ways in which authors structure specific discourses around socially marginal characters and outcasts (villains, malcontents, and prostitutes) whose distinctive qualities can include a disruptive and sarcastic verbal idiom as key figures in the contemporary cultural and historical discourse. |
| Post/Colonial African Literatures | This module explores how postcolonial theory can be used to analyse a range of nineteenth- to twenty-first century African literatures, including novels, short stories, and graphic narratives. You will develop the theoretical grounding to aid your analysis of African literature in relation to ideas of race, empire, national identity, language, conflict, and the environment. Collectively, we will consider literature from diverse locations, including South Africa, Rwanda, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe, in ways attuned to cultural, historical, linguistic, and local contexts. |
| Teaching Masterclass | This module is for students who are interested in developing the knowledge they have gained on their degree programme and transforming it into practical teaching skills. You will explore fundamental theories of pedagogy and apply them to practice in the classroom. This module will develop your interpersonal, leadership and communication skills and help prepare you for the transition to a PGCE. |
| Theatre Directing | This module begins with series of classes exploring the role of the director in relation to a range of contemporary and historical scripts. Under close tutor guidance, you will then consider and apply appropriate theatrical methodologies in order to develop your own directorial approach. All students will be given the opportunity to lead small group work in terms of exploring and experimenting with a range of directorial approaches to both script and to performers. |
| University-Wide Language Programme | This module provides the opportunity to learn or develop a language with the University-wide language programme. |
FAQs
What's the English and creative writing scene like in Greater Manchester?
We're proud that Greater Manchester's English and creative writing sector is etched on the world map. Greater Manchester has produced iconic writers such as Thomas De Quincey, Howard Jacobson, Elizabeth Gaskell, Anthony Burgess, Jeanette Winterson and Lemn Sissay. There is a thriving creative writing scene here covering all kinds of genres, and regular literary festivals and events that are a great source of inspiration and ambition for our students.
Do you have any social channels I can follow you on?
How can I best prepare for my studies at the University of Salford?
If you're taking one of our degrees with Creative Writing in the title, our tutor David Savill (a famous published novelist) recommends that you keep working on your writing, so you have a readymade store of work to draw on in your first year workshops.
If you're taking a degree with drama in the title, Szilvi Naray-Davey (actress, translator and programme leader for Drama) recommends that you try your best to take in as many plays as you can, whether in person or online.
If you're taking a degree with Literature in the title, you should focus on the writing that makes you happy - there is space for a personal, focused project in the final year dissertation.
If you're taking a degree with Language in the title, listen for the language all around you - whether that's children in your family learning their first words or different accents you encounter. Start noticing language in the world and note down anything you find interesting so your expert tutors can explain it.
What career pathways have Salford graduates followed?
You may be asking 'what can you do with an English degree?' Our students go into so many wonderful careers: writing, public relations, teaching, journalism, academia. The exciting thing about English is that it gives you the skills for the jobs of the future. Your communication skills will set you up to be a flexible, independent thinker who can deal with the changing nature of work in the twenty-first century. We also offer an internship at a publishing house as well as other opportunities.
You can find more details of these opportunities here.
How are students supported as they progress from college level study to university level?
We offer support with academic writing, from breaking down an assignment brief to critical analysis. For more information, you can take a look at the Academic Writing webpage.
When can we expect our timetables?
Personalised timetables are sent to students when they register in September. We try our best to keep your timetable sensible and avoid you being in every day of the week. There are no lectures on a Wednesday afternoon then so that students can participate in clubs, societies and extracurricular activities.
You will have nine in-class hours a week, which will be a mix of lectures, seminars and workshops - alongside drop-in office hours and personal tutor meetings.
WHAT NEXT?
Go back to the course page for more information on the degree: BA (Hons) English Multidiscipline
Or, if you're ready to apply, click here and don't forget your UCAS information:
UCAS code Q307
Institution code S03
HAVE ANY QUESTIONS?
We're always here to help support you and answer any queries you may have about an English degree. Get in touch with our friendly team by emailing enquiries@salford.ac.uk or phoning +44 (0)161 295 4545.