The Single Honours English programme is aimed at students who love reading, who value literature and appreciate its fundamental role in shaping society and the individual. This  programme aims to attract students who wish  to specialise in a single subject and who wish to deepen and refine their critical engagement with a wide variety of English-language texts and cultures from the early middle-ages to the present. By concentrating on a single subject, students are educated in the history of literary and cultural production, in current theoretical methods and approaches, and in a wide range of generic, historical and national literatures. Through innovative teaching, learning, and assessment methods, we promote our core values – independence, creativity, collaboration, critical reflection, cultural engagement, and social and political consciousness.  Lecture, seminar, workshop, and small group work are at the core of our teaching. In these supportive learning environments students and their lecturer/tutor come together in the spirit of mutual inquiry, reflection, discussion, and debate.  Work is assessed by a variety of methods including exam, essay, reflective journals, presentations, worksheets, portfolios, creative writing, individual and group projects. Together these diverse modes of assessment foster the development of a range of important qualities and proficiencies.  We work to equip our students with the knowledge, skills, resources and inspiration useful for a range of professions and beneficial for life, and to produce graduates capable of fulfilling their highest potential as critically-minded and creative citizens. The challenges, experiences and opportunities provided in this educational environment prepare students for a variety of different workplaces.

• Advance to Postgraduate studies will all the necessary critical, writing and research skills
• Apply creative, innovative and idependent thinking in approach and response to complex issues, with a significant capacity to transfer skills and ideas from one intellectual sphere to another
• Apppy in-depth knowledge of literary production in a wide range of specific time periods and cultures, and capable of identifying aesthetic innovations and trends
• Articulate the value and radical transformative potential of literature and literary studies, and become an enthusiastic advocate for the discipline in wider society
• Benefit from the concentration on a Subject Strand and Situate a text within appropriate thematic, critical, historic and cultural contexts, and to interrogate it in the light of current critical debates and their own ideas
• Carry out effective research, and be able to identify gaps in knowledge and locate and evaluate appropriate sources of information, and having completed independently an extended research project
• Communicate ideas and concepts with clarity, precision, depth and style, while demonstrating an awareness of genre (e.g. essay, reflective journal, oral presentation), modes of argument, rhetorical skills, and audience
• Demonstrate an extensive command of literary terminology, and the ability to apply this knowledge to the analysis of texts in a range of genres and media
  
• Develop a proficiency in reading Old and Middle English language, and ability to critically analyse key works of medieval literature
• Express nuanced understanding of form, genre and mode, and an ability to connect ideas across different periods and cultures from the early middle ages to the present
  
• Generate a lifelong commitment to the value of reading with an ongoing desire to explore the rich variety of literary and cultural production and cultural history
• Illustrate refined and sophisticated skills in detailed textual analysis and close reading, and highly attentive to the tensions and ambiguity of texts and language
• Inform scholarship by appropriate academic and theoretical skills

Students of English study all aspects of language and literature from Anglo-Saxon to contemporary times.

If you have a particular interest in and enthusiasm for reading, discussing and writing about literature, you should read on and look at the single subject degree in English as a great education base for your future.  Refer to Arts Omnibus page for subject description.

It is recommended that you have at least Grade C3 in Higher Level Leaving Certificate English.

In your first year (called Stage 1) you take 12 modules over two semesters. You must study core modules in English and typically two or three other subjects including up to two modules from outside the BA Programme area

Stage 2 students progress with a major in English. Students also take foour elective modules from within or outside their main subject area at Stages 2 of their degree programme.

With up to 60 modules, English is one of the widest ranging subjects within the BA and as a result many students choose to take the degree as a single subject.

Stage 1 introduces you to a range of novels, poems and essays; you are shown how to deploy criticism in a dynamic way and to address the relationship between texts and the politics and history of their time. The emphasis is on raising your ability to read literature at a university level.

Stage 2 introduces the medieval world of Old and Middle English. You also take courses in contemporary Drama and contemporary Irish Literature. You can choose options from a wide variety of modules ranging from Shakespeare to Yeats; from Contemporary Fiction to Medieval Humour. Stage 2 expands on your core learning and lets you explore deeper or further across the spectrum of literary creativity with core courses on 19th Century Literature and Culture and American Modernism, amongst others, and a wide range of options from literatures of nations, single-author studies and specific modules dedicated to theory, genre and historical periods (e.g. on Canadian Fiction, Seamus Heaney, the Contemporary Novel and 17th Century Women's Writing).

You may apply to study abroad for either a semester or a year through the Erasmus programme or on a non-EU exchange. UCD has over 200 Erasmus partners in Europe and an increasing number of non-EU exchange agreements with universities in the USA, Canada, Australia, Japan and elsewhere.

Please click here to visit the Erasmus section of the International Office website.

The year abroad takes place when you have accumulated at least 110 credits and satisfied any subject prerequisites, adding a fourth year to the BA programme and turning it into a BA International.

While many go on to sparkling careers as writers and dramatists, graduates of English are found in every walk of life. The degree provides a wonderful education and grounding that can lead virtually anywhere.

Graduates have pursued careers in journalism and broadcasting, research and administration in the public and private sector, the civil service and second- and third-level education.