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Oxbridge supercurriculars

Hi, I'm a year 12 student hoping to apply for English at Oxford. I was just wondering if anyone had any advice on what supercurriculars, things beyond the curriculum I could do to help my application? I'm already apart of my school newspaper but I'm aware that's not really English literature based and more journalism.

Reply 1

steamedclams

write some things. short story comps or essay comps

Reply 2

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

Original post by hermi_1_

Essay competitions, or just wider reading.

Look at bit at some critical theory as well.

Reply 3

The_Lonely_Goatherd

Original post by artful_lounger

Essay competitions, or just wider reading.

Look at bit at some critical theory as well.

You beat me to it :colondollar:

Reply 4

hermi_1_

Original post by artful_lounger

Essay competitions, or just wider reading.

Look at bit at some critical theory as well.

Sorry i may sound like a bit of an idiot for asking but what do you mean by critical theory? Like critical analysis of texts?

Reply 5

artful_lounger

Universities Forum Helper

Original post by hermi_1_

Sorry i may sound like a bit of an idiot for asking but what do you mean by critical theory? Like critical analysis of texts?

I'd recommend looking at a book on the matter which will explain better than I can! Terry Eagleton's 'Literary Theory: An Introduction' seems popular among English Lit students; for the little literary analysis I've had to do I liked Bennett & Royle's 'An Introduction to Literature, Criticism, and Theory' as an introduction to it. I've also heard people recommend 'Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory'.

Basically though it means the theoretical frameworks one can use to do readings of texts, e.g. queer readings, feminist readings, ecocritical approaches, postcolonial approaches, plus the usual structuralist, postmodern, poststructuralist, psychoanalytic approaches and such. Obviously it's not necessary or expected to learn all of these theoretical frameworks, but just to understand there are different ways you can approach text, as well as some of the more "core" ideas commonly used in literary analysis in general.