University of Westminster

B.A Honours ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS WITH FOUNDATION

Our degree courses with foundation year offer the opportunity to prepare you for advanced study before you progress onto a full honours degree. Whether you do not feel ready for degree-level study, don’t have the right qualifications, want to change your subject specialism or return to study after an absence from education, we aim to encourage a broad range of students to undertake our foundation year in order to progress onto their full honours degree with us.

The foundation year is designed to give you the opportunity to explore new ideas, opening up new perspectives on the key debates within your chosen field. Core modules accelerate your academic and professional development, bringing together like-minded students to think about the ‘big ideas’ within your discipline. You will also take modules from areas closely related to your chosen field, giving you the chance to develop a cross-disciplinary perspective on your course. 

On successful completion of the foundation year, you will be able to move on to study for the English Language and Linguistics BA Honours degree over a further three years study.

On this course, you'll study one of the key aspects of being human – our ability to use language. You'll examine how languages differ and what elements they share, as well as developing your knowledge of the historical and cultural aspects of the English language in particular.

The course provides a rare opportunity to combine in-depth formal linguistic study with a consideration of the ways in which the English language is used and how it reflects its social context. As a result, the course nurtures research and analytical skills at the same time as enhancing your own abilities with the English language.

You'll develop your knowledge and understanding of how the English language works in terms of its structure, how it has changed over time and how it's employed in different spoken and written contexts. Your knowledge of English will be informed and contextualised by your wider study of language as a human faculty. You'll examine what languages have in common and how they vary in terms of their grammatical structures and their sound systems.