Helicopters, Jigsaws, and Plaits: Revealing the Hidden Language and Literature Curriculum

Abstract

In the United Kingdom, programs that allow students to study both English literature and English language (such as Combined BA, but also a number of other English degrees) are increasingly popular with applicants for a number of reasons, including the joint English language and literature A level, the marketing of such degrees as a pathway to a teaching qualification (a response to widening participation, introduction of top-up fees, and employability agenda), plus a belief that these subjects complement each other. For pedagogic reasons, and increasingly for employability reasons as well, the language and literature subject teams at the University of Central Lancashire hold that their third-year students should be given the opportunity to use classroom activities and assessment to reflect on their program of study (in ways that move beyond describing what they did in previous modules) and to articulate the skills they have developed as students of language and literature (in a more meaningful way than in merely generic and general terms). This core module, named the English Language and Literature Seminar, was designed largely to distinguish the BA in English language and literature from language and literature studied on the Combined Honours Programme. Its aim is to provide “a focus on the interface between language and literature,” as well as to enable students to compare and reflect critically on the underlying assumptions and intellectual structure of their studies of language and literature at earlier stages of their program and to relate this to the historical development of language and literature as academic subjects. As a tutor for the last three years, I have increasingly conceived of this seminar as an opportunity to expose the hidden curriculum of the language and literature program and to find out from students how they experience their degree and the relationship between these two interrelated yet often quite specific disciplines.