BA (Hons) English and Creative Writing with Foundation

The importance of employability is reflected in our pedagogy which offers you access to all the employability initiatives open to students on the BA programmes: a wide range of internships and placements including a series of paid and volunteer opportunities in sectors including schools (primary/secondary); archives and libraries; heritage sector including museums, NT properties; opportunities to contribute to INK (the English and Creative Writing magazine) and other university publications; attend events run by the Writer in Residence; work experience opportunities.

Your personal tutor and University career advisers will help you reflect on your career aspirations and encourage you to make full use of the extra-curricular opportunities offered by the department, the University and the city of Plymouth, as well as offering guidance on practical skills such as the writing of CVs and interview techniques.

Our students progress to a wide range of careers in, for example, publishing, print and broadcast journalism, teaching, professional writing, advertising, marketing, the heritage industry, law, arts management, archival and library posts, graduate management training schemes, the public sector, and postgraduate study.

Where could your English degree take you?

This four-year course is designed to give you the grounding necessary to progress through your undergraduate studies in BA (Hons) English and Creative Writing, and through the many opportunities we give you,

find the best possible direction to grow your love of learning. 

Your first year will: 

• welcome you to an exciting and eclectic curriculum which will develop your knowledge of the disciplines of English literature, creative writing and history while also engaging with lively interdisciplinary enquiry across a wide range of historical periods and literary forms.
• provide training in all the skills required for a successful passage through your undergraduate study: research, use of digital resources, essay-writing, academic argument, presentations, independent study.
• introduce you to supportive and accessible academic staff in a welcoming community.
• immerse you in an academic environment offering a wide range of field trips, access to free cultural events through The Arts Institute, student-led magazines, internships and extra-curricular work experiences.
• give you access to state-of-the-art facilities, library and learning resources on our city-centre campus.
• enable you to find a route for you, whether you are returning to education after a break or if you come with qualifications other than A levels.
• Be required to attend classes only on Mondays and Tuesdays, and Wednesday mornings.

When you join the BA (Hons) English and Creative Writing with Foundation, you’ll: 

• Choose from a wide variety of specialist modules, including period and cultural studies and creative writing in your 2nd, 3rd, and final years.
• Receive free set texts for all core modules throughout your four years.
• Benefit from assessment through coursework, with no written exams.
• Boost your career prospects by working with a publishing house, literary agent, arts organisation or magazine on our work-based learning module or extra-curricular internships.
• Make use of our open-door policy and talk to your lecturers in a friendly and supportive learning environment.
• Learn from internationally recognised research-active staff, including published creative writers.
• Experience other cultures by studying or working abroad in either Europe or the US.
• Write and be published as part of INK, the BA (Hons) English and Creative Writing student-run magazine.
• Access resources at any time with the University library, open 24 hours 365 days a year, offering a vast range of electronic and print materials, including a rare books collection.
• Make the most of a rich cultural life with The Arts Institute programme and the University’s links with local arts organisations, like the Theatre Royal.

• Year 0

• Knowledge, skills, confidence

  In your first year, you’ll you acquire the knowledge and skills you’ll need to progress through your studies and become a confident, independent learner. You’ll take four modules focusing on the interplay of history, literature, and culture in the past and the present, examining the historical and literary stories that have shaped our world.

  The autumn semester contains two discipline-specific 30 credit modules, one in English and creative writing and one in history. The spring semester comprises an interdisciplinary module that broadens out the meaning of the humanities and an independent study project module. All modules will have a strong focus on study skills related to the progression to higher education.

  Entering full-time study can require many adjustments. To help you make the transition, all your classes will take place on Mondays and Tuesdays, and Wednesday mornings.
  

  Core modules

  • HUM001 Stories that Changed the World

    This module explores the key texts and voices that have changed the ways in which we think and write the Humanities. From the formation myths of the ancient world and the poets of the Renaissance to Imperialism, Marxism and Feminism in the modern world, we will investigate how thinkers, poets and writers have shaped our contemporary world, and the ways in which we study it. The module will have a distinct strand of study skills to assist students in acquiring the tools needed for progression to Higher Education. This module will contain a particular focus on reading, note-taking and essay writing.

  • HUM002 Imagining the Past: Voyages into Time, Space, and Experience

    This module will introduce three concepts central to historical study in the Humanities: Time; Space; and Experience. Students will work with a range of sources to understand how historians engage with the past. With a distinct emphasis on study skills, students will develop the tools needed for progression to Higher Education, with a particular focus on analysing textual materials and essay-writing.

  • HUM003 Writing the Now: Literature, History and Visual Culture

    This module examines the role of the Humanities in the contemporary world exploring the ways in which literature, art, film, media, memory and heritage impact on history and writing today. Students will examine a range of contemporary literary texts as well as visual and media sources and consider the role of technologies in the Humanities. The module will be constructed around the exploration of key themes, for example gender and sexuality, faith, war, and race and ethnicity, using interdisciplinary approaches to identify how they have shaped the Humanities of the 21st century. The module will have a distinct strand of study skills to assist students in acquiring the tools needed for progression to Higher Education. This module will contain a particular focus on collaborative work, presentation skills and the Digital Humanities

  • HUM004 Independent Project

    Students will undertake, with supervision, an individual project. A choice of topics, based upon the specialisms of HPA staff will be provided. It can be an extended critical essay in English or History, or a creative writing project supported by a substantial critical reflection. The module includes a core of taught research skills sessions with an additional focus on work planning and time management.

• Year 1

• Read, write...

  In your second of four years, you'll study historical, theoretical, and aesthetic approaches to literary analysis. You’ll read literature which investigates the making of the modern world; engage with exciting theories of reading such as eco-criticism, psychoanalysis and Marxism; and write creatively in a wide range of genres including prose, poetry, drama and professional writing. You will also learn key research and essay-writing skills.

  Core modules

  • ENGL402 Writing the Modern World, 1600-1700

    This module considers `modern¿ ways of writing, thinking, trading, seeing, and relating to others in the seventeenth century. The literature of this period first explores ideas central to our own time and place, and is crucial both to understanding literary history and to understanding ourselves. The course will be structured through four key narratives, traced through a chronological selection of texts:¿ authority ¿ modern ideas of gender ¿ global capitalism ¿ modern print culture.

  • ENGL404 Critical Theory

    This module will introduce some key critical theories relevant to the study of English literature. It will familiarise students with a range of theoretical perspectives and enable them to develop an understanding of different ways of reading literature, and its wider contexts.

  • ENGL406 Gods, Monsters and Heroes: Myths and Legends in Literature

    This immersive module provides an important grounding for new students studying English and Creative Writing. Based around some of the earliest written texts that underpin Western literature, the module engages with a number of issues to enable students to gain an understanding of the historical development of literature and the ways in which texts relate to each other over the centuries.

  • ENGL407 Rewritings: Contemporary literature and its Histories

    This module will examine how and why modern and contemporary authors have rewritten or reworked influential literary texts of the past. Students will engage with a range of different literary forms, including fiction, poetry, drama and, where appropriate, film. By investigating the impulses behind such intertextual acts, students will explore the ways in which literature engages with the cultural politics of its times, focusing particularly on issues of gender, ethnicity, sexuality, class and aesthetics.

  • ENGL408 The Craft of Writing II: Poetry and Drama

    This module introduces students to creative writing research, including writing theory, contextual literature, and criticism. Forms emphasised will be poetry and dramatic writing, developing from the first-semester emphasis on prose. Lectures will introduce topics, and subsequent workshops will promote the development of student work through feedback. Students will submit creative work alongside `research statements¿ twice during the term, in the form of portfolios.

  • ENGL409 The Craft of Writing I: Prose Fiction & Non-Fiction

    This module introduces students to the key concepts and issues in creative writing through the practise of workshops. We will read classic contemporary works of fiction and nonfiction including autobiography, travel writing, poetry sequences, essays and reportage. We will produce our own works, and critically evaluate and contextualise them.

• Year 2

• The many forms of creative writing

  In your third year, you’ll write creatively in many forms including theatre and script-writing, autobiography and biography, travel writing, and literary adaptation. You will hone your skills as a writer in weekly workshops with tutors and peers. You’ll also study the writers who've shaped our literary canon, taking core modules in Romantic and Victorian literature, and selecting from a range of specialist creative, literary and work-based learning options.

  Core modules

  • ENGL501 Romanticism

    In this module literary Romanticism, in its rich and problematic diversity, is introduced and explored through a consideration of imaginative conceptions of the individual in writing between 1790 and 1830. The study ranges through a selection of texts in verse ¿ lyric and narrative ¿ and prose - essayistic, theoretical and fictional.

  • ENGL506 Victorian Literature and Culture

    This module aims to introduce students to the Victorian period through an examination of literature read in conjunction with a range of other contemporary cultural documents including scientific, sociological, psychological, political economic and aesthetic texts.

  • ENGL520 Creative Nonfiction

    This module introduces students to the key concepts and issues in contemporary works of creative nonfiction including autobiography, travel writing, essays and reportage. We will produce our own works of poetry, short story and nonfiction, and critically evaluate and contextualise them.

  • ENGL522 Dramatic Writing for Stage, Screen, and Beyond

    This course explores a wide range of dramatic writing and dramatic writing theory, integrating critical reading with creative writing projects. Class time will be spent discussing published authors/texts/productions, writing/reading theories, compositional processes, practical exercises, and student work.

  Optional modules

  • ARHI516 Imagery in Online and Offline Worlds

    This module provides Single Honours and Joint Honours Art History students with a comprehensive understanding of current approaches towards mass media and visual culture. Particular emphasis will be put on medium-specificity, content analysis and audience studies.

  • ENGL502 Gothic Fictions: Villains, Virgins, Vampires

    This module looks at eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels to trace the variety and scope of literary contributions to the Gothic. It begins by discussing the origins of the Gothic novel, then moves to the heyday of the genre in the revolutionary 1790s, on to authors writing in the early and mid-nineteenth century, through to the decadence of the 1890s.

  • ENGL505 Rakes, Rascals and Rudeness in the Eighteenth Century

    Introduces historical & contemporary satirical theories; analyses satirical forms; enables critical engagement with the foundational associated modes: comedy, parody, irony and hyperbole.

  • ENGL511 Apocalypse and the Modern Novel

    This module explores how fiction from the late nineteenth century to the present day has represented end of world scenarios. It will engage with issues of genre and form, and with appropriate historical and cultural contexts including the environment, spirituality, technology, and globalisation. Criticism and secondary sources pertaining to these issues, as well as to individual authors, will be considered alongside the primary texts.

  • ENGL519 Working with Literature

    While remaining focused on English and English and Creative Writing projects, this module will provide students with the opportunity to apply their literary and creative skills in a 'work-facing' environment.

  • ENGL526 ‘Hurt Minds’: Madness and Mental Illness in Literature

    This module considers changing attitudes towards, and a variety of theories of, the mind, examining how different cultures have understood ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ mental states. It will look at how the experience and treatment of mental illness has been represented in fiction. The mind is at its most fascinating when it behaves outside of expected social norms. By considering a variety of literary texts over several centuries, this module explores shifts in the definition, understanding, evaluation, and management of exceptional mental states.

  • HIST511 Heritage and Public History

    The module content will examine the theory and practice of the presentation of the past to public audiences. In it, students will examine the creation, nature, use and understanding of heritage and public history, nationally and internationally. They will examine these issues in case studies of historical `sites¿ of different types, to gain a critical awareness and understanding of the theories and controversies surrounding heritage and public history. This is a work facing module, where students will consider the theory and practice of `using¿ `sites¿ of heritage and public history from the point of view of a range of stake holders.

• Year 4

• Your words, your voice

  In your final year, you’ll refine your reading and writing, undertaking workshops to polish your skills in research and revision. Core modules will bridge your writing and reading experience, as you study widely-differing examples of the short story and contemporary poetry. You’ll have further opportunities to write creatively and critically, including your own year-long project – a 12,000 word creative dissertation, which you'll work on with the focused support of your personal supervisor.

  Core modules

  • ENGL602 Project in Creative Writing

    The student will complete, under tutorial supervision, a project in creative writing such as a collection of poetry, short stories, a longer piece of prose fiction, autobiography, travel writing or other suitable modes which may draw upon issues encountered in other English modules and which includes relevant literary-critical material. Maximum length 12,000 words.

  • ENGL603 Modernism

    This module will explore a number of themes through an examination of writing published in the approximate period 1910-1930. The themes will include structural and linguistic experimentation, historical and artistic influences, the First World War and literary networks.

  • ENGL616 Advanced Short Story Workshop

    In this module we will examine a range of contemporary short story writing and relevant theory as a way for students to learn how to compose their own short fiction. Class time will be divided between discussion of short fiction and theory, writing exercises and peer workshops of student work. The workshops will be substantially informed by staff research practice.

  • ENGL617 Advanced Poetry Workshop

    In this final year module we will examine a range of contemporary poetry and poetic theory as a way for students to advance their own composition of poems. Class time will be divided between seminar discussions of published poetry/theory, writing exercises, and workshops of student poetry.

  Optional modules

  • ENGL608 American Crime Writing

    This module considers the development of twentieth-century American crime fiction from hard-boiled detectives, to myths of the mafia, and postmodern reinventions of the genre. This module will explore the cultural contexts of American crime writing, prevailing conventions of the genre, as well as challenges to those conventions.

  • ENGL618 Features Journalism Workshop

    This module offers students an in-depth experience of professional writing. We will explore technique in features and literary journalism; music reviews, opinion columns and longer immersion features as well as other contemporary works of non-fiction feature writing, both short- and long-form, from sub-genres including profiles and interviews, autobiography and columns, travel writing, and reportage. We will learn to research and produce our own works of professional nonfiction and critically evaluate them.

  • ENGL622 Brave New Worlds: Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Politics

    Science Fiction seems to be a field or mode that is particularly difficult to define, in part because it crosses over with many other forms. But it is also one of the most popular types of literature easily ranging from the highbrow to the low. This module will explore SF writing since 1960, with a particular focus on the hybridity of the field and the ways in which it intersects with fantasy writing, to explore a range of political issues in the contemporary world. SF is ‘a wide-ranging, multivalent and endlessly cross-fertilizing cultural idiom.’ (Roberts, 2006, 2) But is it really concerned with the future, or in fact, driven by nostalgia to engage with the ways in which the past has constructed the present? The module will be thematically structured and will concentrate on Anglophone writing.

Every undergraduate taught course has a detailed programme specification document describing the course aims, the course structure, the teaching and learning methods, the learning outcomes and the rules of assessment.

The following programme specification represents the latest course structure and may be subject to change:

BA Hons English and Creative Writing with Foundation Programme Specification 2020 21 6434

UCAS tariff

32 - 48

Don’t have 32-48 UCAS tariff points? We will consider ‘non-standard’ applications on a case-by-case basis.

A levels: Typical offer 32 points from a minimum of two A levels.

18 Unit BTEC National Diploma/QCF Extended Diploma: PPP Refer to tutor, however BTEC are usually only considered with another qualification ie A level.

International Baccalaureate: 24 overall

All Access courses: Pass a named Access to HE Diploma (e.g. Preferably English, humanities or combined), including GCSE English and Mathematics grade C/4 or above or equivalent.

GCSE English: Grade C/4 or above, if your grade is lower then please refer to the institution for further advice.

We are looking for applicants with good potential including with non-standard qualifications and background, so will consider every application on a case by case basis.

Get in touch with our friendly admissions team on +44 (0)1752 585858 or email us at admissions@plymouth.ac.uk.

English language requirements.

We welcome applicants with international qualifications. To view other accepted qualifications please refer to our tariff glossary.

There are two ways to apply for the foundation course. 

Route 1: applications can be made through UCAS (Universities and Colleges Admissions Service). 

UCAS will ask for the information contained in the box at the top of this course page including the UCAS course code and the institution code.

To apply for this course and for more information about submitting an application including application deadline dates through this route, please visit the UCAS website.

Route 2: non-standard applications. If you come with other qualifications and/or do not have 48 UCAS tariff points, please get in touch with our friendly admissions team on +44 (0)1752 585858 or email us at admissions@plymouth.ac.uk. 

We will consider all applications on a case-by-case basis. 

International students: Support is also available to overseas students applying to the University from our International Office via our how to apply webpage or email international-admissions@plymouth.ac.uk.

Not quite got these qualifications, or you bring with you other relevant experience? We will consider ‘non-standard applications’.   

Get in touch with our friendly admissions team on +44 (0)1752 585858 or email us at admissions@plymouth.ac.uk.