English and Modern Languages & Cultures BA
2025-26 entryThis degree will give you a deeper understanding of the crucial relationship between language, culture and society, both within Europe and beyond. Explore the realms of poetry, prose, theatre and film in English and other languages, whilst at the same time learning and applying practical skills in your study of either one or two modern foreign languages.
Key details
- A Levels ABB
Other entry requirements - UCAS code QR50
- 4 years / Full-time
- September start
- Find out the course fee
- Dual honours
- Foreign language study
- Industry placement
- Study abroad
Explore this course:
Course description
Why study this course?
Understanding language and literature from around the world leads to a deeper appreciation of all cultures.
Choose from 10 languages (German, French, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Czech, Catalan, Italian, and Luxembourgish) to enhance your literary studies.
A variety of assessment methods that stimulate learning and creativity, supporting diverse students and encouraging professional development.
The year abroad in third year enables you to immerse yourself in the language, culture and society of the language or languages you study.
Cultivate your understanding of the intimate relationship between language and culture, and how it shapes the literature – and the lives – of modern European societies.
As a dual honours student, you'll divide your studies between the School of English and the School of Languages and Cultures. Delving into the history, literature and culture of your chosen countries, you’ll see how the fabric of those societies is woven by the literary arts.
This is a degree that allows you to pursue and develop your own interests. Choose from a variety of modules as diverse as animal studies, the history of the Gothic, American literature and the analysis of film. Engage with diverse texts from all over the world, both in English and in translation. Learn languages to an advanced level and refine them in your third year abroad, when you can study at a leading European university, carry out an approved work placement, or take part in exciting volunteering opportunities.
Dual and combined honours degrees
Modules
- You can find a comprehensive list of all of our languages and cultures modules broken down by language on the School of Languages and Cultures website
- Examples of the English modules on offer are listed below
UCAS code: QR50
Years: 2022, 2023
English
In your first year, all students take the core module Renaissance to Revolution (40 credits). The remaining 20 credits can be used on modules from the list of optional English modules listed below, all 20 credits.
Modern Languages & Cultures
You can find a comprehensive list of all of our languages and cultures modules broken down by language on the School of Languages and Cultures website.
Core English modules:
- Renaissance to Revolution
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This module surveys the poetry and prose from the early modern period in England, i.e., that written between the beginnings of the sixteenth century through the seventeenth century to the late eighteenth century. We will look at different genres, from court complaint to sonnets, prose fiction, erotic verse, restoration drama and the works of writers such as Donne, Herbert, Spenser, Marlowe, Dyrden, Milton and Pope. The texts studied will be related to critical methods that help us understand the relationships between literature and the culture, society, and politics of the period in which it was produced.
40 credits
Optional English modules:
- Early Englishes
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Early Englishes works backward over a whole millennium of English, 1600 to 600. Each week's lectures and seminar focus on one century and one text representative of that century (for example, Beowulf and Piers Plowman). We will use a variety of techniques , literary, linguistic, anthropological, cultural historical, to analyse each text, thereby opening up discussion of the issues that preoccupied the English of the time, from glorious monster-slaying to the slow surrender of pagan belief to terror at the imminent arrival of Antichrist and on to the first expressions of love and desire. Texts will initially be studied in translation so no prior knowledge of Old or Middle English is necessary, but students will also be given the opportunity to examine texts in the original language.
20 credits - Foundations in Literary Study: Biblical and Classical Sources in English Literature
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This module provides foundational knowledge about the treatment of Biblical and Classical sources in English Literature. It is an important unit for the study of literature and the Humanities, preparing students for work at higher levels. Typically a Biblical or Classical source and a literary text will be discussed together, to expose a range of meanings and to prepare participants for their own research about both the Bible and Classical material as literature and the treatment of Bible and Classical material in Literature. It will also prepare students for independent research. It is recommended that all students of English take this module.
20 credits - Contemporary Literature
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This module introduces students to a diverse range of texts in English (prose, poetry, and film) with a focus on texts published since 2000. Texts will be chosen to provoke thinking and debate on urgent and controversial topics that might include: globalisation and neoliberalism; ecology and animal lives; artificial intelligence and the posthuman; political activism and social justice; migration and displacement; state violence and armed conflict. We will discuss formally and conceptually challenging works, raise ethical and philosophical questions and begin to discover how current critical and theoretical approaches can help us to engage with contemporary texts.
20 credits - Studying Theatre: A History of Dramatic Texts in Performance
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Covering classical, contemporary and popular texts, Studying Theatre; A History of Dramatic Text in Performance aims to turn an interest in theatre and theatre-going into a more thorough appreciation of the ways in which playwriting, acting, design and performance have shaped theatre's development. Each week students will study a particular play and the historical context that informed its first performances and its theatrical afterlife. The course emphasis is on theatre as a social practice and practical discipline. Seminars and lectures will focus on the play in performance, and the processes that underlie production. Students do not need previous knowledge or experience, but should be prepared to try some new approaches to texts, for example through practical workshops.
20 credits - Darwin, Marx, Freud
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This course is structured around the writings of Darwin, Marx, Freud. We will consider selections from all three philosophers' writings, such as, for example, Darwin's The Origin of Species; cover key concepts from Marx's work—commodity fetishism; alienation—and investigate Freud's philosophy of the subject through selected readings from his writings. We will dismantle cultural prejudice and engage with, and in, revolutionary thinking. This course will prepare you for modules like Critical and Literary Thought but, most importantly, it will help you become critical, potentially revolutionary, thinkers.
20 credits - Exploring Literary Language
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This module explores the language of literary texts. We will look at how different literary styles create particular effects and describe these styles and effects using linguistics. The course aims to provide students interested in English literature with a practical introduction to language, and to provide students interested in language with experience of applying linguistic analysis to literary texts. The emphasis is on a hands-on approach, and topics covered will include sentence structure, register, narrative structure, conversation analysis (with reference to drama and dialogue) and point of view in narrative fiction. The texts studied will be predominantly literary and twentieth century, and will include extracts from novels, plays, poetry and short stories.
20 credits - Hybrid Forms? Comedy and Tragedy
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This module gives you the opportunity to study developments in comedy and tragedy from classical antiquity to the present day. This focus on genre enables you to take a broadly comparative approach, setting, for instance, works of classical antiquity alongside those of the early modern, modern, and contemporary worlds. As such, the module equips you to draw connections between periods studied separately at different points of your degree and between disparate forms, e.g. drama and the novel. Over the course of this module we will consider questions such as: what is genre, and why is it important? How does genre reflect or respond to historical change? Is there any such thing as a ‘pure’ genre or is hybridization a defining feature of genre itself? We will answer these questions by reading texts by authors such as Angela Carter, Noel Coward, Plautus, Shakespeare, Sophocles, and Wole Soyinka.
20 credits - History of English
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This module traces the history of the English language of the Fifth century AD through to the present day. Students will learn about the development of English over this period, looking at the factors which have shaped the language, and learning a variety of techniques for studying the language. The module will also introduce students to the range and variety of the English language at all periods, and to the ways in which English influences, and is influenced by, other languages.
20 credits - Introduction to Creative Writing
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The aim of this unit is to help students to develop their expressive and technical skills in writing poetry and prose and to improve their abilities as an editor and critic of their own and other people's writing. Students will be guided in the production of new work and encouraged to develop an analytical awareness of both the craft elements and the wider cultural and theoretical contexts of writing. This module explores poetic techniques for creating new poems and narrative techniques for generating some prose work through the critical study of published examples, imaginative exercises, discussion and feedback on students' own writing. This exploration will help students to develop their own creative work while sharpening critical appreciation of published poetry and modern and contemporary fiction. The course is designed to give students the expereince of being workshopped as well as to establish basic creative writing techniques on Level 1 to preparing students for the challenges of Creative Writing Level 2.
20 credits - Introduction to Cinema
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This module aims to study a cross-section of the most important American films up to the present day and to develop both a formalist and an institutional analysis of these works. Its intention is to study the growth of the classical Hollywood style, a matter of a sophisticated range of technical stratagems as well as of a genre-based cinema, and of the institution of Hollywood itself, the most significant force in cinema to-day.
20 credits
Try a new subject:
The flexible structure of your first year at Sheffield means that you also have the chance to experience modules from outside of English and Modern Languages & Cultures - you can choose up to 40 credits of modules from a list approved by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. A final guided module list is made available to new students when you select your modules as part of registration.
English
A maximum of 80 credits can be selected from English modules, which includes a minimum of 40 credits worth of core modules from within the School of English. You might choose to take one or both of the following core modules in their entirety, or you might take 20 credits from each core module in the Autumn semester.
Modern Languages & Cultures
You can find a comprehensive list of all of our languages and cultures modules broken down by language on the School of Languages and Cultures website.
Core English modules:
- Literature and Critical Thought (a)
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This course introduces writers, concepts and approaches fundamental to contemporary literary theory, and explores their application to diverse relevant texts. You will engage in a transhistorical study of the formal, literary and cultural functions of genre (e.g. in the forms of comedy and tragedy). You will also encounter theorists such as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Ferdinand de Saussure, Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Michael Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan and Jean Baudrillard. Lectures will introduce and explain this material, and seminars will discuss and apply it to the study of literature. This module helps you develop your academic writing, critical thinking and research skills while studying the work of major theorists.
40 credits - Romanticism to Modernism (a)
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This module focuses on a diverse range of texts (including poetry, prose, drama and film) produced between the late eighteenth to the late twentieth century. It pays detailed attention to the varied styles, issues, and movements produced by the rapid technological, political and cultural shifts that characterise these two centuries. Drawing on the expertise of the teaching team, the module introduces cutting-edge research carried out within the department in areas such as romanticism, the Gothic and science fiction, experimental literature, colonial and postcolonial contexts, war studies, and animal studies
40 credits - Literature and Critical Thought (b)
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This course introduces writers, concepts and approaches fundamental to contemporary literary theory, and explores their application to diverse relevant texts. You will engage in a transhistorical study of the formal, literary and cultural functions of genre (e.g. in the forms of comedy and tragedy). You will also encounter theorists such as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Ferdinand de Saussure, Mikhail Bakhtin, Roland Barthes, Michael Foucault, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan and Jean Baudrillard. Lectures will introduce and explain this material, and seminars will discuss and apply it to the study of literature. This module helps you develop your academic writing, critical thinking and research skills while studying the work of major theorists.
20 credits - Romanticism to Modernism (b)
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This module focuses on a diverse range of texts (including poetry, prose, drama and film) produced between the late eighteenth to the late twentieth century. It pays detailed attention to the varied styles, issues, and movements produced by the rapid technological, political and cultural shifts that characterise these two centuries. Drawing on the expertise of the teaching team, the module introduces cutting-edge research carried out within the department in areas such as romanticism, the Gothic and science fiction, experimental literature, colonial and postcolonial contexts, war studies, and animal studies.
20 credits
Optional English modules:
- The History of Persuasion
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This module focuses on why some written texts seem more persuasive (or authoritative) than others. To answer this question we will look at non-literary writing from a range of different contexts: journalism, advertising, political speaking, science writing, and religious communication. You'll look closely at the language used in each context, think about what constitutes persuasive writing in each, and talk about why this differs from context to context. You'll also have a chance to look at the histories of these different kinds of text. Examples from earlier periods look different from what we are used to in the 21st century and it is fascinating to explore how journalism, for example, has come to look as it does today. All these types of writing are associated with powerful institutions: journalism with the national press, advertising with big corporations, political speaking with the major political parties. But we will also explore how people with more marginalised identities use them, resist them, and are represented through them. The overall aim is help you become more critical in your response to the different kinds of written communication that surround us and this is valuable in many of the careers that English graduates go into.
20 credits - Crime Writing: from the fin de siècle to the Golden Age
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How did the genre of crime writing become so influential? This module will examine the cultural history of crime writing from 1890-1950, in a range of genres including detective novels, short stories, plays and films, and true crime writing or reportage. By focusing on a number of narratives of crime, the module will invite an analysis of how this genre is engaged with and subverted by writers wrestling with a modernity that included developments including two World Wars, imperialism and anticolonial movements, women's suffrage and presence in the workplace and a hugely increased use of technology, alongside the rise of criminology and psychoanalysis.
20 credits - Exiles and Monsters: An Introduction to Old English
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This module explores the language and literature of Anglo-Saxon England, enabling you to read and understand the earliest English literature. You will learn how to read Old English, developing a good understanding of Old English grammar and gaining familiarity with the language and literature through translating a range of texts. We will examine the historical background and cultural contexts of these texts, introducing you to the breadth and variety of Old English texts, and to differing critical approaches to them.
20 credits - Good Books: Intertextual Approaches to Literature and the Bible
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Literature, film and television constantly return to the Bible as a source of narrative, character and image. Biblical texts are translated, rewritten, transposed and radically challenged by literature from the medieval period to the present day and so intertextual readings of the Bible and literature provide insight into the ways authors engage with politics, philosophy, and tradition. Our module explores a range of intertextual relationships, from medieval dream poetry through to contemporary writing and cultural representation, including a range of genres and approaches. We will analyse film, TV and visual media as well as literary forms, to explore the ways in which creative writers interpret and re-imagine biblical narratives and tropes.
20 credits - Creative Writing Prose Fiction 2
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The aim of this unit is to help students to develop their expressive and technical skills in writing prose fiction at Level 2 and to improve their abilities as an editor and critic of their own and other people's writing. Students will be guided in the production of new work and encouraged to develop an analytical awareness of both the craft elements and the wider cultural and theoretical contexts of writing. The emphasis throughout will be on reading as a writer and writing as a reader.
20 credits - Satire and Print in the Eighteenth Century
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Against a background of political, religious and cultural ferment, new ideas of the individual's relationship to the state emerged in the early-eighteenth century. New kinds of readers, authors, and an increasingly powerful book trade reshaped the literary map of Britain. Those fraught relationships are captured in the prose and poetry of the satirists upon this course. The political, religious and economic satires of writers including Defoe, Pope, Swift, Ramsay, Finch, Gay, Leapor, Montagu, Addison and Steele will be read as a new and troubled relationship between the individual and the state emerged alongside a vigorously contested idea of 'Britain' in literature.
20 credits - The Novella and the Uncanny
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This course will explore novellas from across the last 150 years which represent uncanny experiences of haunting, madness, obsession, and psychological and political disorientation, with these intense experiences often refracted through the consciousness of a central character. We will consider whether the particularities of this literary form lend themselves to representing experiences at the 'limits of reason'. Texts will include works by Kafka, Camus, George Eliot, Ayn Rand, Pynchon and others. The course will encompass the study of some relevant theory, including Freud's essay 'The Uncanny' - which itself contains an analysis of Hoffman's bizarre short story 'The Sandman'.
20 credits - Shakespeare: Page, Stage, Screen
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This module focuses on the poetry and plays of William Shakespeare. You will read a wide range of his works and analyse them in the context of the cultural and historical energies of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, as well as exploring how they have been reinvented and reimagined through performance and as texts which have been refashioned through editorial intervention or adaptation. The module considers the range of dramatic styles and genres that Shakespeare uses, alongside the conditions of performance, kinds of publication, and the characteristics of the language in which he worked. It also relates the texts to critical methods that help illuminate the relationships between drama and the culture, politics, and religion of the period and the ways in which Shakespeare's works have been remade for different times and contexts.
20 credits - Introduction to Interactive Digital Narrative
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Interactive digital narratives are stories designed (a) to be read on screen and (b) to give the reader choice about how to navigate them. For example, you might have come across digital adventure stories that read like this: 'You are walking through the woods and hear a horrible noise coming from up ahead. Do you run forward to investigate or do you hide in the bushes?' Here both 'run forward' and 'hide' will be links so that you can choose what you want to do and find out what happens when you do it. The module includes both critical and creative work. You will read digital narratives - not just adventures but explorations of a wider range of experience - and think about how they are structured, how they evoke virtual spaces, and their relationship with games and gaming. You will also make a narrative of your own, using the creative process to learn more about the nature of digital stories. You don't need any special knowledge of computers or coding - everything necessary is taught in the module. Students from previous years have found it extremely helpful to be able to talk about their projects in interviews for jobs involving digital communication and content creation.
20 credits - Black Lyric: Poetics and Politics of Hip Hop
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This module introduces students to Hip Hop as a musical, cultural and literary phenomenon. Both extremely popular and highly controversial, we will explore the history of Hip Hop from its early developments to the present. The module is organised around two principal ideas. The first is that, largely as a consequence of social, economic and racial oppressions experienced by so many artists working in this mode, Hip Hop is inherently political.
20 credits
The second idea: Hip Hop is poetical. That is, its lyrics are bona fide literary, hiding almost in plain sight. The genre's best MCs are also some of our finest contemporary poets. Rappers' work deserves and actually requires critical attention. Working mainly in a North American context, over the course of the module, we will reflect upon the various ways in which Hip Hop combines aesthetic innovation with radical social commentary.
Each week, we will focus on a specific artist or group, and attend carefully to 1-2 albums. Expect to study some 'mainstream' work (e.g., Fugees, Cardi B but NOT Vanilla Ice). You will also study underground, 'conscious' and alternative artists.
Throughout, radical forms (rhetorical, prosodic, intertextual, figurative) collide messily with explicit contents (racism, misogyny, violence, protest). Our aim is to start understanding Hip Hop in its troubling, ingenious complexity.
- Hollywood Cinema
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This module introduces you to the study of Hollywood's films, methods, meanings and creative figures, and the history and significance of American filmmaking in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. You will examine key examples of films and filmmakers from the period of silent cinema up to the present day. You will learn about the characteristics of Hollywood style and narrative, the evolution of film genres such as the Western, the Musical and the Horror film, the progression of the cinema's treatment of subjects such as race, gender, politics and war, and developments in business and technology which have underpinned the international dominance of Hollywood film. As well learning to analyse the details of film form, and gaining understanding of aspects such as editing, lighting and shot composition, you will also engage with the political and cultural readings of popular entertainment cinema, and the history of film theory and criticism. Watching and discussing film texts from different eras will equip you with the analytical and communication skills to debate controversial subjects, to understand the contexts of diverse representations, balance and evaluate differing opinions on challenging subjects, and appreciate the importance of popular cinema.
20 credits - Writing the Real
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In both fiction and drama, there is an approach to writing called 'realism' (or, in the case of theatre, 'naturalism'). Realist writers make a commitment to telling their readers about the world as it actually is and this means avoiding supernatural or speculative material and instead focusing on the experiences of ordinary people in a world that is recognisably like our own. The hey-day of realism was the nineteenth century but, since then, virtually all writers have had to take up a position in relation to it and decide whether to write about a world in which people have guardian angels and animals can talk or focus instead on 'real life' in contemporary London or New York City or Lagos. The module examines how realist and non-realist styles work linguistically and you will learn to analyse both kinds of text in a fine-grained way. You will read examples by British authors from different backgrounds as well as writers from other parts of the world. Narrative is central to how we define ourselves and understand the world around us, so the module looks beyond the strictly academic and helps you understand more about how we respond to the world through story-telling.
20 credits - Victorian Women Poets: Stressing Sex
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This module will introduce you to a range of Victorian women poets and the critical and ideological debates that surround their work. Reading the poetry of canonical writers, such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti alongside less familiar works by, for example Mathilde Blind and Amy Levy, you will engage with questions of gender and genre and to think about how women employed different poetic forms and voices to respond to the political, scientific and religious upheavals of the nineteenth century. We will also also explore the gender politics of the literary canon and consider how a focus on women writers from diverse class, national and ethnic backgrounds might resist powerful narratives about Victorian literature and culture.
20 credits - Representing the Holocaust
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This course will examine fictional and non-fictional, literary and filmic, representations of the Holocaust, and considers the use and extension of conventional textual forms to do so, including documentary film, memoir, short story and cartoon. Texts covered will include Elie Wiesel's 'Night', Claude Lanzmann's film 'Shoah', Martin Sherman's 'Bent', Martin Amis's 'Time's Arrow' and Ida Fink's stories in 'A Scrap of Time'.
20 credits - Road Journeys in American Culture: 1930-2000
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This module analyses the development of road narratives from the 1930s to the present, looking at the ways in which this narrative trope tells the story of American culture and society throughout the twentieth-century. The module aims to address some or all of the following questions. Do road journeys reflect or run away from political realities 'at home'? To what extent is the road journey a gendered space predominantly occupied by men? Are certain groups of people allowed to travel and other groups not? Is the road journey a metaphor for American colonization and expansion, or something else more ambiguous? Texts to be studied include films such as 'The Wizard of Oz', 'Bonnie and Clyde', The Straight Strory', and 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?' novels such as 'On the Road' by Jack Kerouac, 'Lolita' by Vladimir Nabokov, and 'The Music of Chance' by Paul Auster, and poems by Elizabeth Bishop and Amy Clampitt.
20 credits - Radical Theory
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The premise of this course is the necessity to re-interpret the university as a site for philosophical speculation and theory-based intervention. Run collectively, the course will address, to use Walter Benjamin's terms, the catastrophe of the status quo, and is structured around three aims, which are: 1) to address 'moments' of crisis such as, for example, climate change; the neoliberal, market-driven higher education system; the state of exception; the myth of the human; 2) to theorise these crises, and 3) to explore the relationship between theory and practice: in particular to explore theorised agency as enabling political activism.
20 credits - Voice, Body, Power: Forms of Resistance in Contemporary Drama
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Focusing on 21st century examples and contemporary debates, this module examines the ways that theatre today tackles highly charged themes like marginality and diversity, homeland and displacement, resources and accessibility, participation and exclusion. You will explore theatre in Britain, but our case studies aim to reflect and promote the diversity that a British context encompasses. Playwrights whose work we look at might include Sabrina Mahfouz, Antoinette Nwandu or Tatenda Shamiso, and companies might include Breach Theatre, Paper Birds or Talawa. By studying a range of plays, companies and contexts, you will develop a complex awareness of the strategies for representation and resistance that theatre can offer. This module will suit you if you want to broaden your knowledge of contemporary drama and you enjoy studying production materials as well as play scripts and critical reading. In addition, you will have the opportunity to practise original dramatic writing of your own, developed with the tutor's guidance and support.
20 credits
Try a new subject:
The flexible structure of your second year at Sheffield means that you also have the chance to experience modules from outside of English and Modern Languages & Cultures - you can choose up to 20 credits of modules from a list approved by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. A final guided module list is made available to new students when you select your modules as part of registration.
Modern Languages & Cultures
You'll spend the third year of your course abroad, speaking the language and living the culture of either one or two of your chosen languages.
Autumn semester:
- SLC Year Abroad
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This module is the assessed language-generic compulsory first semester module for the year abroad for all students studying degrees in or joint degrees with the School of Languages and Cultures. This module is for the first semester of the year abroad. This module is not language specific but it is related to the year abroad assessment. The assessment for this module will depend upon where students spend the first semester of the year abroad. For students who spend the first semester in: a Spanish speaking country, this module will be associated with the assessment for Spanish; for students who spend the first semester in Germany or Austria, this module will be associated with the assessment for German, etc. Full details of the assessments can be found in the year abroad handbook.
- French Year Abroad
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All students studying a language with the School of Languages and Cultures will spend their third year either studying and/or working abroad. The year abroad enables you to immerse yourself in the language, culture and society of the language or languages you study. As our languages are spoken both in Europe and worldwide, you have the opportunity to choose destinations not only in Europe but beyond.
40 credits - Germanic Studies Year Abroad
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All students studying a language with the School of Languages and Cultures will spend their third year either studying and/or working abroad. The year abroad enables you to immerse yourself in the language, culture and society of the language or languages you study. As our languages are spoken both in Europe and worldwide, you have the opportunity to choose destinations not only in Europe but beyond.
40 credits - Hispanic Studies Year Abroad
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Language work moves to advanced study of Catalan syntax and extends spoken and written expressive competence. Normativisation of the language in the early 20th century provides a focus for treatment both of linguistic and of politico-cultural matters. Representative literary samples from the modern period serve to illustrate the main trends in pre-Civil-War Catalan writing.
40 credits - Luxembourg Studies Year Abroad (Residency)
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The Residency Abroad aims to encourage students to engage productively with opportunities for improving their spoken language skills in Luxembourgish and written language skills in French or German, cultural awareness and personal development.
40 credits - Russian and Slavonic Studies Year Abroad
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All students studying a language with the School of Languages and Cultures will spend their third year either studying and/or working abroad. The year abroad enables you to immerse yourself in the language, culture and society of the language or languages you study. As our languages are spoken both in Europe and worldwide, you have the opportunity to choose destinations not only in Europe but beyond.
40 credits
Spring semester:
- SLC Year Abroad
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This module is the assessed language-generic compulsory second semester module for the year abroad for all students studying degrees in or joint degrees with the School of Languages and Cultures. This module is for the second semester of the year abroad. This module is not language specific but it is related to the year abroad assessment. The assessment for this module will depend upon where students spend the second semester of the year abroad. For students who spend the second semester in: a Spanish speaking country, this module will be associated with the assessment for Spanish; for students who spend the first semester in Germany or Austria, this module will be associated with the assessment for German, etc. Full details of the assessments can be found in the year abroad handbook.
- French Year Abroad
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All students studying a language with the School of Languages and Cultures will spend their third year either studying and/or working abroad. The year abroad enables you to immerse yourself in the language, culture and society of the language or languages you study. As our languages are spoken both in Europe and worldwide, you have the opportunity to choose destinations not only in Europe but beyond.
40 credits - Germanic Studies Year Abroad
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All students studying a language with the School of Languages and Cultures will spend their third year either studying and/or working abroad. The year abroad enables you to immerse yourself in the language, culture and society of the language or languages you study. As our languages are spoken both in Europe and worldwide, you have the opportunity to choose destinations not only in Europe but beyond.
40 credits - Hispanic Studies Year Abroad
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Language work moves to advanced study of Catalan syntax and extends spoken and written expressive competence. Normativisation of the language in the early 20th century provides a focus for treatment both of linguistic and of politico-cultural matters. Representative literary samples from the modern period serve to illustrate the main trends in pre-Civil-War Catalan writing.
40 credits - Luxembourg Studies Year Abroad (Residency)
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The Residency Abroad aims to encourage students to engage productively with opportunities for improving their spoken language skills in Luxembourgish and written language skills in French or German, cultural awareness and personal development.
40 credits - Russian and Slavonic Studies Year Abroad
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All students studying a language with the School of Languages and Cultures will spend their third year either studying and/or working abroad. The year abroad enables you to immerse yourself in the language, culture and society of the language or languages you study. As our languages are spoken both in Europe and worldwide, you have the opportunity to choose destinations not only in Europe but beyond.
40 credits
English
A maximum of 80 credits can be selected from English modules. There are no core module requirements. At least 40 credits must be used on optional English modules.
Modern Languages & Cultures
You can find a comprehensive list of all of our languages and cultures modules broken down by language on the School of Languages and Cultures website.
Optional English modules:
- Exiles and Monsters: Reading Old English
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This module explores the language and literature of early medieval England (500-1066), enabling you to read, translate, and understand the earliest English literature. You will learn Old English, developing a good understanding of Old English grammar and applying that knowledge as you translate Old English texts. You will also gain familiarity with Old English literature through translating a range of diverse texts. We normally start translating Old English prose in Week 2 and move on to poetry after a few weeks. Texts studied on this module might include Wulfstan's famous sermon to the English (in which he goes on about how sinful the English are), The Battle of Maldon (about a real battle in 991 in which the Vikings defeated the English), Judith (about a woman who chops off the head of the general whose army is besieging her city), and Beowulf (about a hero and several monsters). The module will briefly examine the historical background, cultural contexts, and stylistic features of these texts, introducing you to the breadth and variety of Old English texts and to differing critical approaches to them. No prior knowledge of Old English language or literature is required.
20 credits - Narrative Style in the Contemporary Novel
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On this module you will consider how the contemporary novel experiments with narrative style and technique, and the effects of this on you as a reader. We will be looking at writing in English from all over the world, and from a wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives. We will be looking at key narrative concepts, such as point of view, in order to enable appreciation of the ways in which contemporary writers play with traditional styles. Some of the experimental features we will look at include: disruptions to chronological sequence; the use of second-person ('you') narration; the use of multiple narrators. We will look at how such techniques increase or hinder such experiences as empathy and identification with characters. You will get a chance to work extensively on a contemporary novel of your choice and deepen your enjoyment of it by looking at how it is written.
20 credits - Writing Fiction 3
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This module explores techniques and strategies for creating fiction through the critical study of short excerpts from a wide range of novels and short stories, imaginative exercises, discussion and feedback on students own writing. This exploration will help students develop their own creative work while sharpening critical appreciation of both classic and contemporary fiction. Subjects covered will include: narrative voice, character, dialogue, plot, mood, pace and style. Examples will include work by Laurence Sterne, Dickens, Joyce and Anthony Burgess, JG Ballard, Martin Amis, Irvine Welsh, Chuck Palahniuk and Michael Houellebecq.
20 credits - Crime and Transgression in Romantic Literature
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This course focuses on the literature of the period 1900-1945, in particular on Anglo-American and Irish Modernism, its origins around World War 1, and the texts of the 1920s and 1930s which register its impact in Britain and North America. While the Modernism movement will be at the centre of the course, represented by Joyce, Woolf, and Eliot for example, we will examine a full range of texts of that period and pay attention to the vast range of styles, issues, and non-modernists movements of the periods. The aesthetic revolution of Modernism will be changed
20 credits - Fin de siècle Gothic
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The module examines a range of Gothic texts and their fin de siècle contexts. Writers explored include R.L. Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, Vernon Lee, Oscar Wilde, M.R. James, Bram Stoker, and H.G. Wells. Students will explore a diverse range of contemporary contexts which will enable them to see how theories of degeneration, images of Empire, models of medicine, notions of decadence, and ideas about history can be applied to the fin de siècle Gothic. The focus on ghosts, vampires, and aliens will help identify how a language of 'otherness' articulated the culturally specific anxieties of fin de siècle Britain. Teaching involves a mixture of lectures and seminars.
20 credits - Contemporary Black British Writing
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This module will explore the diversity of Black British Writing from the Windrush Era to the present, paying particular attention to rewritings of earlier British texts and experiments with generic and cultural forms. We will use theoretical interrogations of race and colonialism from thinkers including Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall and Reni Eddo-Lodge to analyse works that radically reformulate key moments in British literature and culture from the Roman invasion to The Canturbury Tales, through the colonial hinterlands of Victorian fiction to the aspiration and culture clash of 1950s London.
20 credits - The Brontës
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'Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, nor ought it to be.' So advised Robert Southey, Poet Laureate, to a young Charlotte Bronte in 1837. Just ten years later she and her sisters, Emily and Anne, caused a sensation: their first novels, published under pseudonyms just weeks apart, were read and reviewed with astonishment, praise and censure. Now some 200 years since their births, the Bronte siblings (including their brother, Branwell) sustain a thriving industry of literary tourism and their works can be read and enjoyed via a multitude of editions and adaptations. This module will explore the art of the Brontës, their writings, drawings and paintings from collaborative juvenilia through to Charlotte's final novel, Villette. These works shed light upon the socio-cultural trends and political upheavals of the 1840s and 1850s, from the plight of the governess to machine breaking in the industrial North. This module will also ask how and why the Brontës have enjoyed such a varied and long-lasting cultural afterlife.
20 credits - Language and the Environment
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This module will introduce students to a range of research focused on language and the natural environment. We will begin by exploring the discipline of Ecolinguistics and the concept of an 'ecosophy', the ecological philosophy underpinning environmental linguistic research. Students will have an opportunity to define their own key ethical principles and design a small-scale research project around their personal ecosophy. We will examine a range of different linguistic theories and their application in the rigorous and systematic analyses of language and the natural environment. We will also explore different linguistic methodologies which might enable these analyses, drawn from disciplines including discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, and empirical stylistics. We will investigate a variety of different discourse types in our lectures and seminars, including political speeches, the language of environmental documentaries, literary texts, social media, marketing and advertising, and everyday conversation. Students will have the opportunity at the end of the module to use their knowledge and skills to execute their own research project, investigating the relationships between language and the natural world in a discourse of their choice.
20 credits - Beckett and Late Modernist Experimental Fiction
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The module will be looking at Beckett's short fiction and novellas alongside Caribbean, British and Irish experimental fiction of the 1960s and 1970s, and will be exploring the motivations and rationale for the experiments in narrative style and expression, looking at the techniques of experiment used by the writers, and at a range of topics the experiments shape and respond to, including gender, Global North/South relations, Cold War technology and systems theory, psychoanalysis, decolonization, radical and collective subject positions. The writers considered alongside Beckett may include Ann Quin, B.S. Johnson, Beryl Gilroy, Christine Brooke-Rose, Anna Kavan, Shelagh Delaney, Brigid Brophy, J.G. Ballard, Muriel Spark, Maureen Duffy, Wilson Harris
20 credits - Fear of the 'Other': Representation of Identity in Horror Cinema
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This module will explore the history of representation of identity in horror cinema, including analysis of gender identity, sexual identity, ethnic/racial identity and national identity among other potential topics.We will first establish the origins, history and formative elements of the genre, considering shared themes, stylistic and narrative traits, aspects of representation and trends within the history of horror cinema. You will then explore the issue of 'othering' through the medium of horror, analysing the representation of women through the predominantly male gaze as either monstrous, victim or 'final girl'; queer representation in horror in which the non-heteronormative has frequently been used as shorthand to imply deviancy/monstrosity; and the representation of people of colour in horror cinema - or rather their lack of representation/stereotyping (see the poster for 2023's The Blackening which showcases an all-black cast with the tagline 'We can't all die first!') Some key theorists that we might study include Laura Mulvey, Linda Williams, Carol Clover, Barbara Creed, Alison Peirse, Harry Benshoff, Tananarive Due, Ashlee Blackwell and Robin Wood. Films we might watch include Get Out, Slumber Party Massacre, The Blackening, Dressed To Kill, Psycho, Halloween, Black Christmas, Night of the Living Dead and I Walked With A Zombie
20 credits - The Beginning of the End of the World
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It is impossible to make sense of our world of pandemics, the climate crisis, economic instability, and violent, divisive rhetoric without an understanding of apocalyptic literature. While 20th and 21st century contributions to apocalyptic literature, such as Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, are far ranging in their examination of what the end of the world looks and feels like, they all have their origins in ancient notions of catastrophic ends and the hope for a new beginning. This module will guide you to explore the apocalypse's origins in texts left out of the biblical canon, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well as those that are more well known, such as Revelation. You'll learn to engage critically with a range of literature, including contemporary novels dreaming about the end of colonial violence, and cinematic interpretations about climate apocalypse. You will have the opportunity to apply their knowledge about apocalypses to a text and topic that are important to you.
20 credits - Radical Theory
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The driving force of this module is to change the world or, no less ambitiously, to re-interpret the university as a site for philosophical speculation and theory-based intervention. The course will address, to use Walter Benjamin's terms, the catastrophe of the status quo, and is structured around three aims, which are: 1) to address 'moments' of crisis such as, for example, the climate crisis; the neoliberal, market-driven higher education system; systems of privilege (whiteness; masculinity; heteronormativity; ableism, etc.) 2) to theorize these crises, and 3) to explore the relationship between critical theory and practice: in particular to explore theorized agency as enabling political activism.
20 credits - The Idea of America
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If you are interested in how and why contemporary (1950-present day) American writers revise myths of America, then this module will appeal to you. We explore how foundational ideas of America (such freedom, equality, democracy, self-reliance, the frontier, capitalism and American exceptionalism) are reimagined by its poets, playwrights and prose writers. You might read works by authors such as Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Cormac McCarthy, C Pam Zhang, Charles Yu, Arthur Miller and Ocean Vuong and the module is organised around a series of thematic strands that will help you to make connections between writers and key American mythologies. For example, the themes could include a focus on the ongoing legacies of slavery and settler colonisation and/or a study of the role of religion, region and place in shaping literary perspectives of America. You can expect to read a diverse range of works by Asian-American, Native-American, African-American and Arab-American authors and by the end of this module you will develop valuable leadership and employability skills including improved emotional intelligence and global awareness.
20 credits - Researching Readers
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Your studies so far will have given you many opportunities to think about how you interpret texts and how texts are discussed by professional critics. This module encourages you to engage with the responses of readers outside of University too, in the wider reading public. Academic discussions regularly make claims about the effects of a text on its 'readers' or 'audience', but these readers are often theoretical constructs rather than actual people. This module is a practical introduction to methods that can be used to collect data so that you can investigate the responses of real readers in a variety of contexts. Methods that we study might include experimental tasks, questionnaires, focus groups and internet resources. We focus on qualitative, verbal data: the things which people say or write about their reading experiences. You will learn how to use that data to test and develop your own textual analyses. For instance, we might use data to explore how readers engage with fictional characters, how they make sense of metaphors, or how they respond emotionally to patterns in language. You will be supported in designing, conducting and reflecting upon your own study of real readers, with free choice of the text you study and the method you use, so there is lots of scope for pursuing what interests you.
20 credits - Experiments in Interactive Digital Narrative
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This module offers the chance to learn about and experiment with the possibilities of interactive digital narratives. What are interactive digital narratives? In brief, they are stories designed (a) to be read on screen and (b) to give the reader choice about how to navigate them. For example, you might have come across digital adventure stories that read like this: 'You walk up to the house but the door is locked. Do you search for a hidden key or do you break the door down?' Here both 'search' and 'break' will be links so you can choose what you want to do and find out what happens when you do it. Stories like this are widely available online but writers and artists have used the same approach to explore a wider range of human experience than fantasy adventures. Early in the semester we will think about various issues relating to digital narrative: the relationship between material and virtual worlds, the relationship between author and reader, our fears about Artificial Intelligence. Then you'll create an experimental narrative of your own inspired by your critical reading. You don't need any special knowledge of computers or coding - all that will be taught in the module. The learning you experience as you develop your project will be invaluable if you go on to work in any field where you need to make digital content.
20 credits - Creative Writing Poetry Experiments: (De)Constructing Paper Selves
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This module offers a practical and theoretical workshop which is designed to look at current methods of creative writing exploring a wide range of forms of poetry and poetics, prose poetry, poetic prose and hybrid writing. During the term our core readings and discussions (critical and creative) will be focusing on producing new work, new texts while we will be revisiting, reconfiguring and deconstructing concepts of poetry, contemporary poetry and its various new, experimental formations, poetics of fusion and the hybrid while thematically and theoretically we will explore concepts of borders and boundaries of the contemporary poem while looking at complex concepts of identity, self, form and language, inner and outer landscapes, gender and politics, trauma, historicity and phenomenology. We will be focussing on the manifold ways in which language constructs and deconstructs self and selves, breaches old paradigms, looks 'behind' itself (in panic?) and yet audaciously ploughs on towards the 'unforeseeable'. During the module you will be given the opportunity to develop your writing in various contemporary formations of more established and currently forming conventions/experimentations; your critical thinking through a wide range of creative samples by currently published authors of both poetry and prose and other speculative genres of fusion; and through the weekly workshops to sharpen your editorial skills.
20 credits - Dissertation
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The Dissertation is a long essay of between 8-10,000 words, the result of a sustained period of independent study across both semesters where you work closely with an academic specialist in your area of interest. This module provides final year undergraduate students with an opportunity to build on work done in previous modules, or study a topic that has not been included in the degree. Students taking this module are expected to demonstrate a capacity both for independent research and for organising a long piece of work. In addition to writing a critical dissertation, you also have the option to work on a piece of creative writing that could include a collection of poetry, a piece of short fiction or theatre, or a video-essay.
40 credits - Reading, Writing and Playing with the Creative Essay
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This is the essay - but not as you know it. It is, more specifically, the creative essay: a space of play, experiment, criticality, creativity, risk, and sometimes failure. Through lectures delivered by staff from across the Department, you will engage with key examples of the form from different time periods and backgrounds, ranging from Michel de Montaigne to Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin to Teju Cole, Billy-Rae Belcourt and Rebecca Solnit, amongst others. In seminars, you will analyse the techniques writers use to produce essays which are at once personal and critical, giving insights both into the writing 'I' and the object at hand; you will also exchange constructive feedback on your own essays with your peers. Across the module and in the assessment, you will be encouraged to experiment, using this uniquely flexible (and fun!) form to creatively explore the topics, experiences and ideas that really matter to you.
20 credits - Reading Animals
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Contemporary literature is filled with stories about animals, and told by animals, which provide astonishing perspectives on animals' experiences—their ideas and feelings, needs and desires; their sense of place, of past and future; their sense of community, loneliness, freedom or danger, or solidarity with humans. In literature, animals tell us what it is like to live in family homes or factories; to go on adventures or to go extinct; to be wild or captive, domestic or feral; to lose their home; to be owned, watched, admired, hunted, worshipped, medically treated, and more. This module looks at literary texts in which nonhuman animals' lives are the central concern. We will study works by writers such as NoViolet Bulawayo, George Saunders, Sabrina Imbler, George Orwell, Yoko Tawada, and Ceridwen Dovey. We will ask: in what ways have authors given voice to animals' experience? What are the most effective literary strategies for representing animals (both portraying and speaking for them)? How have writers re-imagined the fable and other genres in which animals conventionally appear? How are portrayals altered in authors of different race, nation, or gender? And, perhaps most topically, how does literary writing help us rethink animals' importance in an age of extinction and industrial-scale consumption?
20 credits - Privilege and Subversion in Early Modern Drama, 1580-1700
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This module surveys the theatre of early modern England, a cultural phenomenon that ranged from the scandalous and iconoclastic drama of Christopher Marlowe to the bawdy, urbane comedy of William Wycherley. We will interrogate the manifold ways in which the privileges and hierarchies of the period (relating, for example, to knowledge, power, gender, politics, sexuality and social class) were interrogated, subverted or upheld by dramatists such as Aphra Behn, John Dryden, Thomas Middleton and John Ford. We will read plays in a variety of genres and will analyse them in the context of landmark cultural and historical changes of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, such as religious conflict, colonial expansion, and the growth of London as a centre of pleasure and consumption.The module considers the changing conditions of performance in pre- and post-civil-war theatre, the kinds of publication that dramatists used, and the characteristics of the language with which dramatists worked. It also relates the texts to critical methods that help illuminate the relationships between theatre and the explosive cultural, political, and religious differences of the period.
20 credits - The Invention of Romanticism
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This module is about the birth and legacy of romantic-era writing. It studies famous figures such as William Wordsworth, John Keats and Emily Bronte alongside lesser-known writers such as Charlotte Smith, Charles Waterton and John Clare. It is taught by a team who use their research interests in fields such as environmental criticism, gender studies or colonial writing to think about how such authors inform our thinking about the world today. Over the year you'll write two essays and develop a proposal for an end-of-year module conference where, supported by your tutors, you can present your ideas and findings to the class. As well as helping you find your own critical voice and developing your academic writing and research skills, this module believes that the modern world and how we think of it was born and shaped by the literature of the Romantics and it encourages you to think critically about that legacy.
40 credits - Renaissance Literature, Modern Crisis
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This module considers early modern and Renaissance literature in relation to some of the pressing concerns of the modern world, e.g. the climate emergency, decolonisation, and gender identity (topics may vary from year to year depending on staff expertise and current events). It will combine historicism (looking at texts in historical contexts) with presentism (thinking about how we read texts in our own historical context). You'll write a critical essay relating early modern literature to a modern priority, and then work on a project whose nature and scope you'll decide in dialogue with your tutor(s): for example, an edited collection of texts based around a shared theme; teaching materials; or a magazine-style article. As well as helping you hone your academic writing and your research and critical thinking skills, this module encourages you to think about how literary texts can speak to problems in the wider world.
40 credits - Research Topics in Theatre and Film
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This module introduces you to significant research topics that cut across theatre and film studies, opening up the synergies and divergence between these art forms. Key themes such as Bodies, Identities, Memory, Site and Migration will focus our analysis of diverse historical and contemporary examples, positioned critically alongside notable remakings and sometimes radical adaptations. Research into these case studies will uncover important contexts of creation, production and reception that serve to deepen and problematise their meanings. You will also explore current approaches in theory and criticism that reframe theatre and film in exciting and challenging ways. The module's year-long structure allows substantial time to pursue individual research interests, guided by your tutors and inspired by and extending beyond work we undertake as a group. Reflecting the creative mediums we focus on, this module includes supported assessment options for video essays and project pitches, building skills in editing and audiovisual presentation, as alternatives to the traditional essay. Whether or not you choose to experiment with these formats, you will acquire sophisticated knowledge of film and theatre, deepen your understanding of cinematic and performance languages, and gain valuable skills in creative thinking and expression beyond the written word.
40 credits - Mod Cons: Exploring the Long 20th Century
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This module introduces you to current research in the study of literary and related forms of cultural text and practice, focusing on the modern and contemporary periods from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. With a curriculum adapted each year in response to the current research interests of academic staff, the module focuses on the ways in which literary and related works can be understood in terms of important aesthetic, cultural and socio-political concerns in the period. During this module you will be given the opportunity to develop your critical thinking and your writing and analytical skills through an indepth engagement with a variety of text from the modern and contemporary periods.
40 credits
Try a new subject:
The flexible structure of your fourth year at Sheffield means that you also have the chance to experience modules from outside of English and Modern Languages & Cultures - you can choose up to 20 credits of modules from a list approved by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. A final guided module list is made available to new students when you select your modules as part of registration.
The content of our courses is reviewed annually to make sure it's up-to-date and relevant. Individual modules are occasionally updated or withdrawn. This is in response to discoveries through our world-leading research; funding changes; professional accreditation requirements; student or employer feedback; outcomes of reviews; and variations in staff or student numbers. In the event of any change we'll consult and inform students in good time and take reasonable steps to minimise disruption.
Learning and assessment
Learning
You'll learn through a mix of lectures, seminars and language classes. Language teaching is in small groups, so you'll get plenty of tailored support and will get to know your tutors well.
You'll be taught by world-leading experts in both departments.
Assessment
We use a range of assessment methods during your course. In the language programme you will be given regular homework assignments and take a mix of coursework and exam assessments at appropriate points over the academic year. You will be assessed on the core skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing. Our assessment methods vary across our courses and include taking sit-down exams, developing a portfolio, writing essays, taking part in group projects or giving individual presentations.
Programme specification
This tells you the aims and learning outcomes of this course and how these will be achieved and assessed.
Entry requirements
With Access Sheffield, you could qualify for additional consideration or an alternative offer - find out if you're eligible.
The A Level entry requirements for this course are:
ABB
typically including a modern foreign language
- A Levels + a fourth Level 3 qualification
- BBB typically including a modern foreign language + B in the EPQ
- International Baccalaureate
- 33 typically with 5 in a Higher Level modern foreign language
- BTEC Extended Diploma
- DDD in a relevant subject + an appropriate modern foreign language qualification
- BTEC Diploma
- DD + B at A Level typically in a modern foreign language
- Scottish Highers + 1 Advanced Higher
- AABBB + B typically in a modern foreign language
- Welsh Baccalaureate + 2 A Levels
- B + AB typically including a modern foreign language
- Access to HE Diploma
- Award of Access to HE Diploma in a relevant subject, with 45 credits at Level 3, including 30 at Distinction and 15 at Merit
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If you are not studying a modern foreign language, the department will consider other evidence of aptitude for language learning (such as a languages GCSE at grade 6/B, or an English language qualification for non-native speakers of English)
The A Level entry requirements for this course are:
BBB
typically including a modern foreign language
- A Levels + a fourth Level 3 qualification
- BBB typically including a modern foreign language + B in the EPQ
- International Baccalaureate
- 32 typically with 5 in a Higher Level modern foreign language
- BTEC Extended Diploma
- DDM in a relevant subject + an appropriate modern foreign language qualification
- BTEC Diploma
- DD + B at A Level typically in a modern foreign language
- Scottish Highers + 1 Advanced Higher
- ABBBB + B typically in a modern foreign language
- Welsh Baccalaureate + 2 A Levels
- B + BB typically including a modern foreign language
- Access to HE Diploma
- Award of Access to HE Diploma in a relevant subject, with 45 credits at Level 3, including 24 at Distinction and 21 at Merit
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If you are not studying a modern foreign language, the department will consider other evidence of aptitude for language learning (such as a languages GCSE at grade 6/B, or an English language qualification for non-native speakers of English)
You must demonstrate that your English is good enough for you to successfully complete your course. For this course we require: GCSE English Language at grade 4/C; IELTS grade of 7.0 with a minimum of 6.5 in each component; or an alternative acceptable English language qualification
Equivalent English language qualifications
Visa and immigration requirements
Other qualifications | UK and EU/international
If you have any questions about entry requirements, please contact the school/department.
Graduate careers
Our graduates are excellent communicators, confident and articulate, adaptable and culturally aware. They work in international development organisations, business and banking, translating, intelligence services, journalism, the charity sector, teaching, copywriting, publishing, theatre and television production, PR, and international sales and marketing. Many of our students go on to postgraduate study, research, and an academic career.
The academic aptitude and personal skills that you develop on your degree will make you highly prized by employers, whatever your chosen career path after university:
- Excellent oral and written multilingual communication
- Intercultural awareness
- Independent working
- Time management and organisation
- Planning and researching written work - Articulating knowledge and understanding of texts, concepts and theories
- Leading and participating in discussions
- Negotiation and teamwork
- Effectively conveying arguments and opinions and thinking creatively
- Critical reasoning and analysis
School of Languages and Cultures
At the School of Languages and Cultures you'll develop your linguistic skills to a very high level and deepen your understanding of the cultural context of the countries where your languages are spoken.
We offer a particularly wide range of languages - Catalan, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Luxembourgish, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
Right from the start, you'll work with the school's top specialists and native speakers who will help you realise your linguistic potential. Language teaching is in small groups, so you'll get plenty of support tailored to your needs and get to know your tutors well.
We're a leading centre for modern languages and cultures research. Our work spans identity, gender, linguistics, politics, migration and literary studies. This research informs our teaching, helping you to develop a global understanding of language and languages across cultures and countries.
You'll be able to study optional modules either in your individual languages, or across the school so you'll acquire an in-depth understanding of your chosen languages and their cultures, and how they relate to other languages and cultures across modern languages disciplines.
Our student-run language societies organise multilingual events, trips and creative projects. There are opportunities to volunteer in the community and in schools, inspiring others to try new languages.
School of Languages and Cultures students are based in the Jessop West building at the heart of the University campus, close to the Diamond and the Information Commons. We share the Jessop West Building with the Department of History and the School of English.
Facilities
School of Languages and CulturesSchool of English
We're a research-intensive school with an international perspective on English studies. Students can specialise in their chosen subject, whilst taking modules from other programmes, forging interdisciplinary connections. We are famous for our pioneering work with communities, locally and internationally. We encourage our students to get involved and to apply their academic learning, working in partnership with external organisations both within the city of Sheffield and beyond.
Our staff are researchers, critics, and writers. They're also passionate, dedicated teachers who work tirelessly to ensure their students are inspired.
We keep seminar groups small because we believe that's the best way to stimulate discussion and debate. Our modules use a range of innovative assessments and can include designing websites, writing blog posts, and working with publishing software, in addition to writing essays and delivering presentations.
We're committed to providing our students with the pastoral support they need in order to thrive on their degree. All students are assigned a personal tutor with whom they have regular meetings. You are welcome to see any of the academic staff in their regular student consultations if there's anything you want to ask.
The School of English is based in the Jessop West building at the heart of the university campus, close to the Diamond and the Information Commons. We share the Jessop West Building with the Department of History and the School of Languages and Cultures.
School of EnglishUniversity rankings
Number one in the Russell Group
National Student Survey 2024 (based on aggregate responses)
92 per cent of our research is rated as world-leading or internationally excellent
Research Excellence Framework 2021
University of the Year and best for Student Life
Whatuni Student Choice Awards 2024
Number one Students' Union in the UK
Whatuni Student Choice Awards 2024, 2023, 2022, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017
Number one for Students' Union
StudentCrowd 2024 University Awards
A top 20 university targeted by employers
The Graduate Market in 2023, High Fliers report
A top-100 university: 12th in the UK and 98th in the world
Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2025
Student profiles
Fees and funding
Fees
Additional costs
The annual fee for your course includes a number of items in addition to your tuition. If an item or activity is classed as a compulsory element for your course, it will normally be included in your tuition fee. There are also other costs which you may need to consider.
Funding your study
Depending on your circumstances, you may qualify for a bursary, scholarship or loan to help fund your study and enhance your learning experience.
Use our Student Funding Calculator to work out what you’re eligible for.
Placement/study abroad
Work experience
You can study our courses with the Degree with a Placement year option. This allows you to apply for a placement year during your degree where you'll gain valuable experience and improve your employability.
Study abroad
There are opportunities to study abroad, for a semester or a year, as part of a three or four-year degree programme. We have exchange agreements with universities in the USA, Australia, Canada, Singapore and throughout Europe.
Visit
University open days
We host five open days each year, usually in June, July, September, October and November. You can talk to staff and students, tour the campus and see inside the accommodation.
Subject tasters
If you’re considering your post-16 options, our interactive subject tasters are for you. There are a wide range of subjects to choose from and you can attend sessions online or on campus.
Offer holder days
If you've received an offer to study with us, we'll invite you to one of our offer holder days, which take place between February and April. These open days have a strong department focus and give you the chance to really explore student life here, even if you've visited us before.
Campus tours
Our weekly guided tours show you what Sheffield has to offer - both on campus and beyond. You can extend your visit with tours of our city, accommodation or sport facilities.
Apply
Contact us
- Telephone
- +44 114 222 2864
- slc-admissions@sheffield.ac.uk
The awarding body for this course is the University of Sheffield.
Recognition of professional qualifications: from 1 January 2021, in order to have any UK professional qualifications recognised for work in an EU country across a number of regulated and other professions you need to apply to the host country for recognition. Read information from the UK government and the EU Regulated Professions Database.
Any supervisors and research areas listed are indicative and may change before the start of the course.