Language is fundamental to humans thoughts, relationships, and civilizations. Through language, people transmit knowledge, from inviting someone for coffee, to promoting the latest scientific theory, to settling global political disputes.
This course at the University of Essex will allow students to explore a variety of aspects of linguistics up to a very high level of expertise. In the first year, students will be acquainted with some of the fundamental aspects of the study of language, such as the description and analysis of sounds, words and sentences, the investigation of language in its social setting, and how language is situated and develops in the mind and in the brain.
Students also have the opportunity to begin a specialism in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). In the second year, students begin to specialize towards those areas that they are most interested in and, if their specialism includes TEFL, they will learn how to design, deliver and evaluate language classes and assessments. Students then have the option of taking the third year to go abroad or do a placement year. In their third or fourth year, students will develop their specialism further and be acquainted with the cutting edge of current research in their area. Students will also do an independent research project under the guidance and supervision of one of our expert members of staff, and write a dissertation about this project.
In the final year, students take a number of modules from the Postgraduate offering, in order to further develop their chosen area of specialism. Students receive further training on research methods, to be able to conduct small-scale research projects, using the school's state-of-the art lab facilities (including eye tracking, EEG, sound analysis and reaction time paradigms).
Studying language and linguistics allows students to develop their research and IT skills by collecting and analyzing linguistic data using state-of-the-art technology, and a combination of team-work and independent projects enhances their communication, problem-solving, and management skills.
Graduates have gone on to have careers in a wide variety of fields, including teaching, journalism, advertising, marketing, travel, communications, publishing, speech and language therapy, and business administration.
