Undergraduate Study
As in all the ancient Scottish universities, the standard Edinburgh undergraduate degree course is a four-year course leading to the degree of MA (Honours). We feel that this offers students an excellent opportunity to study their chosen subjects in real depth, and offers a much fuller undergraduate student experience than the three-year degree of most universities in England.
Our department teaches two distinct degree programmes, although many individual course options are
shared between the two:
English Language
Linguistics
In the first two years of the M.A. course most students take three different subjects. At the end of the two years, students admitted to an Honours M.A. programme go on to do two more years of coursework in a specific department or departments.
We take undergraduate teaching very seriously and consider it one of our strengths. In our first and second year courses there are weekly tutorials throughout the year, as well as a programme of lectures. Honours courses are taught in seminar groups and are assessed through a combination of coursework, which can include projects as well as essays, and final examinations.
Honours students participate fully in the life of the Department. They have access to departmental facilities for their academic work. In the single Honours and certain joint Honours degrees, students do a final-year dissertation on a research topic of their choice. In recent years, these have often been related to research projects in the department, which has enabled students to make a real contribution to knowledge and gain experience of research.
About half our graduates, particularly those who combine their study of Linguistics or English Language with another Arts subject, go on to traditional careers for Arts graduates in such fields as civil service and management. An increasing number make more directly vocational use of the degree, going abroad to teach English as a foreign language, working in speech therapy or adult literacy, or doing postgraduate work in fields like linguistics, speech technology, or cognitive science. For students with first-class undergraduate degrees, research studentships and scholarships are available in these fields, both in the UK and abroad.