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English Language vs English Literature

In your opinion, which is better?
Literature is one of the facilitating subjects so for competitive entrance that would be better.

I do English (language and literature) which is what most top universities seem to be labelling their English degrees now (previously they'd be called just English literature)


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Personally I think language is so much better because you can be creative in what you write but it's about what you feel comfortable with, if you're creative and have a wide imagination language may be better but if you're stronger at writing about a piece of already written text literature may be more suitable there


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Are you asking about them as A-Levels or in general?
I dont study them but if I had to choose I would pick Literature because.... books.

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Reply 5
In terms of A-level:smile:


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Original post by rachelhart
In terms of A-level:smile:


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Yeah, books are more interesting to study haha, plus I am not creative at all! :biggrin:

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I'm studying both and I love English Literature but the exams can be quite challenging. First year was great because we studied Gatsby which I loved and the coursework wasn't too bad. The lessons are a lot of fun. Second year has Shakespeare and poetry dating back to the 1700's maybe 100 years earlier I'm not sure. It's a lot harder but still enjoyable if you can crack on.

English Language was so fascinating first year to me, if you love studying grammar and Child Language Acquisition. I'm on an AQA spec by the way, yours might be different. Second year is really cool too, you learn how English was formed and how it changes and varies. If you enjoy complex analysis then it's great.

They're both great but it depends on the type of person you are. A more creative person would go for Literature whereas someone who enjoys theoretical debate would go for Language. English Language has a better pass rate of people I know but it has a lot more to revise for exams where as English is just knowing how to interpret texts and look for meaning.
I'm doing both separately and hands down I prefer Literature because I like reading and writing. Language is very technical and sometimes boring at times although I'm at the beginnings of the course. Language out of the two is the biggest step up and goes backwards as we learn about word classes in depth like nouns and verbs etc.


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