Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University

Has your English Language A Level course made you even more curious about how language works and how people use it to communicate?  If so, you may be interested in studying English Language and/or Linguistics at University.

Lancaster University, where I teach, has the largest department of Linguistics and English Language in the UK. We offer a wide range of courses for undergraduate students, including both English Language and Linguistics as single majors.  Our department has been ranked in the top 10 in the world by an independent ranking organisation, QS (http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2013/linguistics). We offer high quality teaching and a flexible programme.

Whichever modules you choose to study, you will find an extremely supportive environment.  We scored 96% in the latest National Student Satisfaction Survey.  One reason for this is that my colleagues and I are involved in research as well as teaching.  New ideas and developments feed directly into what our students learn. Our full-time teaching staff come from a variety of backgrounds. All are experienced university-level teachers and all full-time teaching staff hold doctorates.  You will be taught through lectures, workshops and seminar groups. No seminar group is larger than 15 students and everyone can participate actively.

You will be able to study a wide variety of topics in Linguistics and English Language, including: phonetics, grammar, language change, sociolinguistics, stylistics, discourse analysis, language acquisition, language and education, language and the media, language and advertising, forensic linguistics, language in the workplace and corporate communication. You will also become familiar with a range of ways of conducting your own original research on the English language or other languages. These include, for example, conducting interviews and exploiting multi-million-word electronic text databases, known as ‘corpora’. In the third year, you will carry out an original piece of research, supported by one-to-one supervision from a specialist in your chosen topic.

Careers

Over 70% of our graduates have a graduate-level position six months after finishing their degrees. Here are some typical areas that will be of interest to you once you’ve taken a degree from our department:

• Professions involving linguistic expertise: speech therapy, dictionary-building, IT (e.g. speech recognition technology)
• Education: teaching in schools, colleges and universities in Britain, and teaching English as a Foreign Language abroad
• Journalism and the media, public relations
• Publishing
• Management
• Higher degrees and research

Finding out more

If you take a look at our website www.ling.lancs.ac.uk you’ll find out more about our students, staff and courses.  You are also welcome to book a visit on one of our Visit Days or Open Days. And, if you wish, you can follow us on Twitter: @LAEL_LU

Professor Elena Semino

Head of the Department of Linguistics and English Language

Lancaster University

Email: e.semino@lancaster.ac.uk