English Lit at University

Hey! I'm going to be studying English Lit and Publishing at Oxford Brookes and I've got a bunch of questions to ask current students of either or both theses courses.

1. Will i find it difficult to study English Lit at uni if I haven't already studied it for my A Levels or will first year basically act as an adjustment period and align me with everyone else?

2. How much reading should I expect to do? And how many hours a week would you say that amounted to?

3. What was your favorite module and why?

4. Any additional information you feel that I should be aware of?

Let me ask you a question honey, how did you get into uni if you never studied A-level Lit? Did you study something like A-level Drama, did a Pre-U course or something?

This thread should really be in the Oxford Brookes Uni Thread. But you're in luck as I study at this uni.

How much reading is dependent on you and what you need to do. One on the lecturers told my Shakespeare group for a 1500 essay, they expected 10 sources to be listed in the bibliography. So that should give you a rough idea of the demands Oxford Brookes expects from their 1st year students.

I honestly don't think I had a favourite module to be honest. Your question should be what was the least favourite. . The ones that I chose for Lit all came with positive and negatives really. Well apart from CCL2, that module sucked the living life out of everyone!

No addition information I can think of! I say get your books second hand. Don't buy any of them new. But like most Lit students especially first years, you probably don't wanna be the "cheap one" or whatnot. But at the end of the day, you won't EVER see some of these texts again. I also don't recommend you buy any at the bookshop on campus. They always say 3 for 2 on most books but still cheaper to buy them online 2nd hand. Especially the Poetry Anthology for CCL1 and CCL2. I would recommend you just print off the poems cause it will save you more money!
Furthermore, I suggest you be selective with your books. For example, I bought all the plays (the ones I already didn't have) for Shakespeare, but ended up never touching Richard II anyway and I bought it brand new for £8. So you honestly don't have to. You can ask me what books you should buy though. However, I only did CCL1, CCL2, Shakespeare and Critical Action in Theory. I am joint, but none of the optional modules looked interesting to be honest. And I picked two other modules outside of my course discipline which is Lit and Philosophy.

Happy to answer any questions I can help with!

Hey, thank you so much for the reply and all the helpful information, i really appreciate it x

I think the reason they accepted me into the university without having done an A Level in English Lit is because I studied English Language. However, I'm still really nervous that I'm going to be significantly behind everyone else who will have done English Lit. Would you say that this is a sentiment that you would agree with? What would be your advice to catching up with everyone else over the summer?

When you say that you were expected to complete a 1500 word essay, how long were you giving to research and write the essay? And am I correct in thinking that 10 sources equates to 10 textbooks?

Also, referring to your sentiment on being "selective" with regards to text books, which books would you say I should 1) borrow from the library 2) buy second hand 3) not bother with at all.

You are welcome .

Oh right, I studied A-level English Language too. Irony is, I was much better at Language than Literature, but preferred Literature. I think the only few things you might find trickier is that when you analyse a piece of literature, you can't focus too much on the language otherwise it will be a bit too linguistic. So you have to really know your literary terminology and how the writer uses language for the reader's understanding. This may sound very similar to analysing a language piece, but the style of writing and critique are very different.

I wouldn't say you'd be behind because you've done A-levels anyway. Plus, 1st year is to get everyone to the same level because of reasons such as yourself. You might struggle with understanding literature if you've never read literary criticism which A-level Lit students do at A2. Also, the amount of reading is new to every student, but what's different from A-level Lit to that of uni is that at A-level, students are used to analysing a book for months on end, regardless of its length. However, at uni, you will go through books every week, which makes it very hard. For example, we went through Shakespeare plays every two weeks and, that's just one module out of 4. So it's a lot. SO maybe, if you're not used to reading things and analysing literature until the last sentence or word level, you might fall behind on the analyses of books.

If you wish to catch up with people, I suggest you just read a few books to make you more culturally and socially aware of some of the problems literature often discusses. Which is things like society and religion, representation of gender, political and dystopian novels, madness and illness, etc. If you read a few popular A-level texts, it may make you more aware of the literary canon.

It depends. I think it was something like 2 or 3 weeks. But bearing in mind, you'll have other assignments due around the same time so you tend to be reading multiple things about 10 different things for 4 different modules. Well, when we say "sources", we refer to anything that is academically stimulating. It's anything from quoting Freud in his Dreams book to quoting Margaret Atwood at a lecture she's giving on feminism. It's good to use different types of sources though. But you need not be worried about that until after 1st year.

1) I don't think you should borrow any set texts cause they are only on loan for like a week or sometimes you're not allowed to take it out of the library cause other people might be using them. So things you should take out are all the secondary readings or anything on the indicative list

2) I would recommend you buy the most expensive books second-handed. That would be like Dracula the critical essay one cause that's like 20 quid brand new. No need. Get it pre-owned for a tenner. And DONT get the Poetry anthology for forty quid rip off. I was lucky cause I needed that for my 1st uni for a poetry module. And ended up using it for CCL1 and CCL2 at Brookes.

3) I personally wouldn't bother with the Poetry Anthology cause you can read/print off the poems from your own printer or the unis. MUCH cheaper as you hardly study poetry in 1st year (this uni doesn't offer a single module on poetry. They took the last remaining on off cause the lecturer retired [which was Romantic Verse Poetry]). I wouldn't bother with the Jane Eyre Norton Edition for Critical Theory. Any edition will do. I wouldn't bother with Brokeback Mountain. Try and find a pdf version online. Don't buy the Shakespeare Sonnets one. Can find ALL of them online. The plays studied: Merchant of Venice, Richard II, A Winter's Tale and Macbeth. It's 100% coursework with a group presentation. You pick one play to analyse an extract. And then you pick any two (that can't be from the extract essay) for a comparative essay based on a set question. So ideally, you'd analyse Merchant of Venice extract then do an essay on Kingship in Macbeth and Richard II, which means you didn't need to buy Winter's Tale, unless you were to actually read it. I haven't met a single Lit student who has read EVERY single book they were supposed to in any semester. It's hard and often quite unnecessary.
For CCL2, you don't need to buy the exact editions for To the Lighthouse and Silas Marner. Just buy the cheap ones. They're both horrendously boring but you'll need it for the exam! But I did pass the exam without having read either of them! (I'm not that kinda student but managed to score nicely on Section A which is unseen. I also scored highly on my coursework). So luckily I didn't fail the module. But yeah aha.

Hope this helps. Feel free to ask anything more!