ÃÛÌÒapp

English as a subject is all about us as human beings and our lives, as expressed through the language we speak and write, the texts we read and the ones we create ourselves. It’s about the ways in which we hear and read them and communicate with each other about them. In studying English, both Language and Literature, we become more skilled at reading our world through language of all kinds, verbal and visual, spoken and written.

We think and feel in English and make meaning out of language. We relish debating and disagreeing about uncertainties and ambiguities, rather than dealing in absolutes and truths. English is about teasing out connotations, implications and responses that are rooted in our personal histories, our cultural histories, our communities and wider society. We explore how our language and our making of meaning are both highly individual and socially constructed.

English is for everyone. As a discipline it benefits from conversations across cultures, genres, time periods and worlds, allowing students to discover points of connection, archetypes, distinctions and differences which bring any one text or any individual example into sharp focus. It’s about discovering the specialness of language use, with an understanding of what is also shared.

Our explorations of texts and our own linguistic development can never be said to be complete, the final word, finished, mastered. English is unusual in being a creative, aesthetic, affective, knowledge-based, analytical, academic and communicative subject all at the same time. It is a subject in conversation with itself and with other disciplines. It crosses boundaries, encompasses all human experience, and is all the richer for that. The teaching of English needs to take account of all of this – all of the things that make it special.