BA English Literature with Creative Writing

Year 2

(Award available for year: Diploma of Higher Education)

Learning outcomes

On completion of the Developmental year of study, students will have development further a set of key subject-specific skills, namely:

• To write creatively. Evidence of this skill will take the principal form of two pieces of writing which students will submit over the course of the Semester Three module Developing Creative Writing,. Both will be 3,000 and 4,000 words in length, or will take the form of a sequence of works in another genre (such as poetry or drama) that the module tutors deem equivalent to that range. In line with QAA Benchmark guidance, both of these submissions will also include acts of personal reflection which will be determined by module convenors or tutors but which will incorporate a critical discussion of the process of feedback and review.

• To write critically. Evidence of this skill will take the principal form of the units of coursework and examinations which students will complete in the course of the other core modules and the option or discovery modules they choose to pursue.

• To not just to accept feedback, but to seek it: in line with QAA Benchmark subject-specific criteria, key evidence of their progression from a foundational to a development stage will lie in their ability to make deliberate and extensive use of their weekly seminar discussions with tutors and peers to develop their writing in all areas. This development will be assessed through Developing Creative Writing’s critical reflections.

* Their portfolio of critical and creative work will also stand as evidence of their development of the capacity to reflect on and articulate the purpose or the imperatives behind both individual pieces of creative writing and their production of it more generally.

• Submitted coursework will also demonstrate their capacity to inhabit themselves the bridge or linkage between the literary and creative elements of their degree, and to gain an independent and autonomous understanding of the relationship between their reading, their critical reflection on that reading, and their writing, and their critical reflection on that writing. In doing so they will also begin to acquire new knowledge of the contexts in which that writing sits: literary, cultural and personal; thus gaining an objective sense not only of the writing itself but its relationship to their own identity.

Transferable (key) skills

As students thus add to their portfolio of writings and begin to gain a new critical distance on their own creative work, they will also develop a greater capacity to identify their particular aptitudes in the general field of writing and communication (poetry versus prose; phrasemaking versus psychological analysis; rhetoric and persuasion versus empathy—although none of these are in fact necessarily opposed) and the diverse future paths that these will open up.

Assessment

Assessment of all the School of English elements which are set out in detail above will be carried out in close consultation with the School’s universal 0-100 marking criteria, but will also be based on the further development of the programme’s key learning outcomes. Thus they should move from a capacity to use to a capacity to control literary voice, idiom, idiolect, simile, metaphor, and other expressive devices, and to demonstrate critical awareness as they do so. Similar critical reflection and control should also evidence their capacity to build on their foundational ability to produce clear and sophisticated written work.