Category: Offer Holders

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English Language & Linguistics – Email 2

Hello Everyone,

Congratulations once again your offer of a place to study at Newcastle University! My name is Christine Cuskley and I’m a Lecturer in Language and Cognition. Following the UK government announcement regarding 2020 Exam results on Monday 17 August, we wanted to reassure you that your offer still stands and we are looking forward to welcoming you to the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics in September. If you do want to find out more about the University’s approach please read our statement and our offer holder FAQs.

Your Induction
Our flexible and enhanced University Induction programme for new students will provide you with a warm welcome and introduction to Newcastle University and Newcastle University Students’ Union (NUSU). 

From Monday 28 September you’ll be able to access our Induction programme on Canvas – our Virtual Learning Environment. All information and activity will be offered online and we’ll send you full instructions on how to access Canvas the week before term starts. Some activities may include on-campus opportunities, but these will be dependent on physical distancing requirements at the time and will follow Covid-19 safety guidelines.

You’ll also receive school-specific induction information in the near future, designed to introduce you to the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics and your degree programme. This will include everything you need to know before starting, including selecting optional modules, accessing your timetable and reading lists.

Frequently asked questions and COVID-19 
We’re regularly updating both our COVID-19 FAQs and our Student Experience 2020 guide with all the latest information you need about starting your course as the Covid-19 situation continues. 

Pre-arrival activities 
Lecturers and Professors here in English Language and Linguistics are hard at work updating our teaching programme for the autumn. We have a few things for you to check out in the meantime to get you excited about starting your studies.

Did you know that Newcastle University is one of only two universities in the UK where undergraduates can take a dedicated course on language evolution (the study of how humans came to have the most complex, expressive communication system in the known universe)? This course won’t be on your radar until a few years into your degree, but the questions surrounding language evolution will come up in your earlier courses, from language structure to multilingualism.

If this subject sounds interesting, check out this workshop on language evolution for budding authors in science fiction – it’s part of a short story competition and you can sign up for free! This will allow you to learn a bit about language evolution and maybe dabble in some creative writing in the process. The workshop is run by my collaborator Dr Séan Roberts (Anthropology, Cardiff) and Dr Catriona Silvey, who currently researches language evolution at UCL, and will debut her first novel next year.
Newcastle also specializes in experimental approaches to studying language – we have researchers who use carefully designed tasks to try and figure out more about how language works in the brain, and how both children and adults learn and use language. Right now, one of our postgraduate students is working on a project that looks at how people remember words. It takes about 20 minutes to complete – you can try it out here if you’re curious. If you’re intrigued, you can read some more about our research questions and the larger project the experiment is a part of.

If you enjoy our experiment, you can also look into other behavioural experiments on a site called Prolific Academic, where you can earn some cash for doing longer experiments that span not only linguistics, but psychology and behavioural economics (no expertise required!). Particularly in the current climate, lots and lots of research in linguistics and beyond is going online!
We’d love to hear from you if you’re signing up to the language evolution and sci-fi workshop, and let us know if you find any cool online experiments!

Best,
Christine Cuskley
Lecturer in Language and Cognition
School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics

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English Language & Linguistics (Q300) – Email 2

Hello Everyone,

Congratulations once again your offer of a place to study at Newcastle University! Following the UK government announcement regarding 2020 Exam results on Monday 17 August, we wanted to reassure you that your offer still stands and we are looking forward to welcoming you to the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics in September. If you do want to find out more about the University’s approach please read our statement and our offer holder FAQs.

Your Induction
Our flexible and enhanced University Induction programme for new students will provide you with a warm welcome and introduction to Newcastle University and Newcastle University Students’ Union (NUSU). 

From Monday 28 September you’ll be able to access our Induction programme on Canvas – our Virtual Learning Environment. All information and activity will be offered online and we’ll send you full instructions on how to access Canvas the week before term starts. Some activities may include on-campus opportunities, but these will be dependent on physical distancing requirements at the time and will follow Covid-19 safety guidelines.

You’ll also receive school-specific induction information in the near future, designed to introduce you to the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics and your degree programme. This will include everything you need to know before starting, including selecting optional modules, accessing your timetable and reading lists.

Frequently asked questions and COVID-19 
We’re regularly updating both our COVID-19 FAQs and our Student Experience 2020 guide with all the latest information you need about starting your course as the Covid-19 situation continues. 

Pre-arrival activities 
We have two activities for you. First, one that spans Language and Literature:
Did you know that Newcastle University is one of only two universities in the UK where undergraduates can take a dedicated course on language evolution (the study of how humans came to have the most complex, expressive communication system in the known universe)? This course won’t be on your radar until a few years into your degree, but the questions surrounding language evolution will come up in your earlier modules, from Language Structure to Multilingualism. 

If this subject sounds interesting, check out this workshop on language evolution for budding authors in science fiction – it’s part of a short story competition and you can sign up for free! This will allow you to learn a bit about language evolution and maybe dabble in some creative writing in the process. The workshop is run by Christine’s collaborator Dr Séan Roberts (Anthropology, Cardiff) and Dr Catriona Silvey, who currently researches language evolution at UCL, and will debut her first novel next year.

And, second, a more literary set of tasks:
In the second semester at Newcastle University, we will be teaching a module called Introduction to Literary Studies 2. A key question on this module is: how can we meaningfully engage with texts which seem culturally and aesthetically distant from our own context? To start your thinking about this question, here are three things we would like you to take a look at:

1. Geraldine Heng’s The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (2018) is a recent and important text which questions the common assumption that concepts of race and racism only began in the modern era. To find about more about this important argument, do read this exhibition by Heng. 

2. For an excellent demonstration of how two twentieth-century writers (J.R.R. Tolkein and Toni Morrison) approached the issue of race in Beowulf (one of the texts we’ll study together), read this short article by Dorothy Kim (2019).

3. For a great introduction to the topic of studying Shakespeare and race, listen to this podcast from the Globe Theatre with Farah Karim Cooper, Ayanna Thompson and Noémie Ndiaye. In this podcast they focus on one of the texts we will be studying together (Titus Andronicus).

We would love to hear what you thought about any of the material we’ve shared with you here. You can in touch with us about these matters, or anything else, through email or on social media. You can also find even more tips and resources on our Twitter page, or by searching the hashtag #NCLReady.

Best wishes,
James Harriman-Smith and Christine Cuskley
School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics

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English Literature & Language (Q300), Email 1

Hello Everyone

Congratulations on your offer of a place to study English Language and Literature (Q300) at Newcastle University! This email comes to you from two lecturers who hope to welcome you to our department this autumn: Cristine Cuskley is a Lecturer in Language and Cognition and James Harriman-Smith is a lecturer in Eighteenth-Century Literature. 

Everyone at Newcastle University is currently hard at work updating our teaching for the autumn, and module-specific reading lists for you will be available later in the summer. However, in the meantime, we encourage you to delve into some more general material to get you excited about getting started in your studies. To help with this, we have two recommendations for you, one for language and one for literature. 

First, for English language: 

We would like you to listen to an episode of BBC sounds on The Future of English: Dialects and Evolution. They look at varieties of English all over the world – have a listen and think about the differences they discuss. You might then want to read this long article on English dominating the internet and this video on the weirdness of English. What do you think about the future of English? 

Second, for English literature: 

We would like you to make a list of every book you remember having studied in your English (or ‘English Literature’) classes, and then think about what this list might show you.  

  • What do these books have in common?  
  • Are they mainly novels, plays or poems?  
  • When were they written? 
  • What kind of things are they about? 
  • Where do their authors come from?  
  • What class, gender, age (etc.) are those authors?  

Once you have answered these questions, and others of your own devising, the next step is two-fold. First, identify a work of literature that has nothing in common with anything on your list. Perhaps that might be a book of poems by a working-class woman who lived in the eighteenth century and wrote about domestic servitude; perhaps that might be a play written and performed in the last two years. Why not read (or watch) that thing? As you engage with it, think about how you might write about it: can you analyse it like you analysed the texts you studied this year? What else do you feel you need to know? 

We would love to hear what you thought about the future of English, and what you realised about how you’ve been taught English Literature. You can in touch with us about these matters, or anything else, through email or on social media (links below). You can also find even more tips and resources on our Twitter page, or by searching the hashtag #NCLReady. 

Best wishes, 

James Harriman-Smith and Christine Cuskley 

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English Literature & History (QV31), Email 1

Hello Everyone,

Congratulations on your offer of a place to study English Literature and History (QV31) at Newcastle University! I am a Reader in Modernist Print Culture and Programme Lead on the QV31 degree. My colleagues and I hope to welcome you to our department this autumn.

We will send out reading lists for all our modules in the Autumn once we have updated our teaching to take the latest research into account. For now, we have prepared more general material to help you get ready for university study. This email contains some of that material, and will be followed by others, each one written by a lecturer at Newcastle. If you have any questions about the material in these emails, or want to receive even more, please do get in touch with us through social media or email.

Here are a few things to get you thinking about the study of Literature and History at University level.

FOR LITERATURE

Make a list of every book you remember having studied in your English (or ‘English Literature’) classes, and then think about what this list might show you.

• What do these books have in common?
• Are they mainly novels, plays or poems?
• When were they written?
• What kind of things are they about?
• Where do their authors come from?
• What class, gender, age (etc.) are those authors?

Once you have answered these questions, you might want to think with your history student hat on to reflect on how important knowing something about historical context has been to your appreciation of these texts or might improve your understanding of them. With that in mind, the next step is two-fold. First, identify a work of literature that has nothing in common with anything on your list. Perhaps that might be a book of poems by a working-class woman who lived in the eighteenth century and wrote about domestic servitude; perhaps that might be a play written and performed in the last two years. Why not read (or watch) that thing? As you engage with it, think about how you might write about it: can you analyse it like you analysed the texts you studied this year? What else do you feel you need to know?

FOR HISTORY

My colleague in the School of History, Rachel Hammersley, a Senior Lecturer in Intellectual History, has suggested the following readings for how history has a relevance for thinking about the present. This issue has been raised a lot in the past few years as we commemorate 100 years since WW1, as we witness the social and political divisions engendered by Brexit, and as we grapple on a global scale with COVID-19, to mention only a few of the pressing issues that lead us to look to history for context and guidance. Here are some articles to get you thinking about these issues:

What Can History Tell us about epidemics?
On Historians, Politicians and Their Duty to History
And here, a slightly older article from the Guardian on the same topic.

BRINGING LITERATURE AND HISTORY TOGETHER

While in your first year, you will be studying the subjects separately, your work at Stage 2 and 3 will ask you to think across subjects in an interdisciplinary way. It is never too early to start thinking in this way and I encourage you, in your first year, to keep the following kinds of questions in the back of your mind as you are studying: How is historical context relevant to the study of this work/this literary period and how is this context important for understanding how literary texts convey meaning? How might a literary text or an analytical or theoretical approach I have learned in literature be applied to a historical text or topic to provide new insights?

My colleagues and I would love to hear what you discover this way. These tasks are intended to make you think in general terms about what constitutes ‘English Literature’ (and what does not seem to) and why History is relevant to thinking through our current moment. You can get in touch with us through email or social media.

Alternatively, you can find even more tips and resources on our Twitter page, or by searching the hashtag #NCLReady.

Best wishes,

Kirsten MacLeod

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English Literature & Creative Writing (QW38), Email 1

Hello Everyone,

Congratulations on your offer of a place to study English Literature and Creative Writing (QW38) at Newcastle University! I am the Subject Head for Creative Writing and my colleagues and I hope to welcome you to our department this autumn.

We will send out reading lists for all our modules in the Autumn once we have updated our teaching to take our latest reading and research into account. For now, I have asked some of my colleagues to suggest some books and exercises that may help you learn more about the craft of creative writing.

First the books, which should be available through your local library. Preti Taneja told me Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird would be helpful to anyone who wants to write creative prose in general. She found Alexander Chee’s How to write an Autobiographical Novel very useful too. Sinéad Morrissey is an advocate of Glyn Maxwell’s On Poetry. Tina Gharavi said she thought Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat was an excellent resource for budding screenplay writers. And now the exercises. Tara Bergin would like you to try the following task, which asks you to make a poem by following instructions, rather than waiting for inspiration to strike.

First, get a pen/ pencil and paper. Now write down the following:
• Two colours you like and why
• Two words you like and why
• Something you’re afraid of and why
• Something that makes you laugh and why
• Something you want (but don’t say why).

Now, using only this information, in any order, compose a short poem. Next, type it up, adjusting as you see fit. Give it a title.

If you want to experiment further, see what happens to your poems if you change the perspective (e.g. change it from the first person (I’) to the second person (‘You’).

Rachel Hewitt invites you to start thinking about non-fiction prose by reading the article ‘Chalk and Bone’ by Sinéad Gleeson.

Ask yourself:
• What sort of stories could be told by writing about the body and its experiences?
• Is language adequate to describe physical experiences?
• If you can’t find the right words, why might that be?
• Why might you want to write about the body?

As you’ll see from reading this essay, Gleeson doesn’t always spell out the emotions that are linked to her physical experiences. She doesn’t directly tell us how she felt emotionally about her experience of living in her body. She shows us her bodily experiences – and leaves us to work out how we feel about them – instead of telling us. Can you do something similar? Try to focus on what happened, instead of the emotions that it conjured up. And, as an experiment, try to do this without using any metaphors or similes.

I hope you found these exercises useful. Please do not worry if you found them challenging; we do not expect you to have studied creative writing before. For most of you it will be a completely new subject, even if you have done some creative writing on your own. Our recommendations should simply give something for you to think about over the summer.

If you have any questions about the material in these emails, please do get in touch with us through email. Alternatively, you can find even more tips and resources on our Twitter page, or by searching the hashtag #NCLReady.

Best wishes,

Lars Iyer

Reader in Creative Writing
Subject Head, Creative Writing

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English Language & Linguistics, Email 1

Hello Everyone

Congratulations on your offer of a place to study at Newcastle University! My name is Christine Cuskley and I’m a Lecturer in Language and Cognition here at Newcastle, where we hope to welcome you this autumn.

Lecturers and professors here in English Language and Linguistics are hard at work updating our teaching programme for the autumn – more specific reading lists for your modules will be available later in the summer. However, in the meantime, we encourage you delve into some more general – and even entertaining – material to get you excited about getting started in your studies.

There are some great podcasts about language and linguistics that you should check out – you could have a listen while taking your favourite walk or milling around the house! Dive into this great, exhaustive list of podcasts related to language and linguistics.

This list is so big that you may not know where to start – one good jumping off point is this episode of the podcast Lingthusiasm about the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The IPA is an important tool used in linguistics to describe the sounds in the world’s languages. The podcast delves into what the IPA is for, and digs deeper into the history of how it was developed. In your first year, you’ll learn lots more about how we study sounds in language – including how to understand and use the IPA. If the podcast piques your interest, you check out this interactive online IPA chart, or challenge yourself with this quick exercise from the UK Linguistics Olympiad.

You’ll also be delving into the study of language variation and change – how languages vary across space and time. Check out this episode of BBC sounds on The Future of English: Dialects and Evolution. They look at varieties of English all over the world – have a listen and think about the differences they discuss. What do you think about the future of English?

Let us know if you find any favourites among those podcasts, either by email or by social media. Alternatively, you can find even more tips and resources on our Twitter page, or by searching the hashtag #NCLReady.

Best,
Christine Cuskley
Lecturer in Language and Cognition

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English Literature (Q306) Offer Holder, Email 1

Hello Everyone

Congratulations on your offer of a place to study English Literature (Q306) at Newcastle University! I am the undergraduate admissions director for English and a lecturer in Restoration and eighteenth-century literature. My colleagues and I hope to welcome you to our department this autumn, where I will be teaching our ‘Close Reading’ and ‘Transformations’ modules to students.

We will send out reading lists for all our modules in the Autumn once we have updated our teaching to take the latest research into account. For now, we have prepared some more general material to help you get ready for university study. This email contains some of that material, and will be followed by others, each one written by a lecturer at Newcastle and tailored to this strange, unprecedented time that you and we find ourselves in. If you have any questions about the material in these emails, or want to receive even more, please do get in touch with us through social media or email.

So what do I have to recommend to you today? I have a task that will lead to some new reading. First, the task:

I would like you to make a list of every book you remember having studied in your English (or ‘English Literature’) classes, and then think about what this list might show you.

• What do these books have in common?
• Are they mainly novels, plays or poems?
• When were they written?
• What kind of things are they about?
• Where do their authors come from?
• What class, gender, age (etc.) are those authors?

Once you have answered these questions, and others of your own devising, the next step is two-fold. First, identify a work of literature that has nothing in common with anything on your list. Perhaps that might be a book of poems by a working-class woman who lived in the eighteenth century and wrote about domestic servitude; perhaps that might be a play written and performed in the last two years. Why not read (or watch) that thing? As you engage with it, think about how you might write about it: can you analyse it like you analysed the texts you studied this year? What else do you feel you need to know?

My colleagues and I would love to hear what you discover this way. This task is intended to make you think in general terms about what constitutes ‘English Literature’ (and what does not seem to) and connects to larger theories about what we call ‘canonicity’. You can get in touch with us through email or social media.

Alternatively, you can find even more tips and resources on our Twitter page, or by searching the hashtag #NCLReady.

Best wishes,
James Harriman-Smith
Lecturer in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature
Undergraduate Admissions Director

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Are you #NCLReady?

With many students having ended their school studies in an impromptu fashion, we know many of you will be looking for ways to prepare for university.

We will be sending out Reading Lists for all our modules in the Autumn once we’ve updated our teaching to take the latest research into account. So for now we’re preparing more general material to support you in your preparations for university. Here is what we have in store…

1. We’re sending out emails to all our Offer Holders with summer reading suggestions and tasks. These will be written by academics who hope to welcome you in the Autumn, and will be tailored to the programmes you’ve applied to.

2. We’re using #NCLReady on Twitter to signpost you to further free resources, interesting articles and more.

3. We’re planning some more blog posts – just like this one, but with even more content.

We’d love to hear how you find the tasks and resources so do let us know! Follow the blog. Follow our social media channels. Keep an eye on your emails. But most of all, keep safe and enjoy your summer.