English Language and Literature

English Language and Literature brings together two related but distinct ways of understanding how language works. Literary study asks what texts mean, how they achieve their effects, and what they reveal about the societies and minds that produced them. Language study examines the structures, systems, and social contexts of English itself, from historical change and dialect variation to the mechanics of conversation and the ways meaning is constructed in everyday speech.

Together, they give you a richer and more rigorous understanding of communication than either discipline offers alone.

At the University of Reading, you will follow this three-year, full-time programme, with the option of a placement year and a year abroad, both of which are available on this degree. The placement year gives you the chance to apply your skills in a professional setting, whether in publishing, media, education, or communications, while the year abroad opens up the experience of studying English in a different academic and cultural environment. Reading has a distinguished tradition in both linguistics and literary studies, and you will move across periods and genres in literature while also developing technical knowledge of how the English language operates at every level, from phonetics and grammar to discourse and pragmatics.

The programme welcomes students with a range of entry backgrounds, with a typical tariff of 120 UCAS points.

Studying English Language and Literature together sharpens your critical faculties in a particular way. You learn to read both intuitively and analytically, to ask not just what a text says but how it says it, and to understand how language shapes thought and social life. Writing clearly and persuasively becomes second nature.

Graduates work in publishing, journalism, education, the civil service, marketing and communications, research, and the law. The combination of close reading, analytical thinking, and confident writing that the degree builds is genuinely versatile. Many graduates also continue to postgraduate study in linguistics, literary criticism, creative writing, or teaching.