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BA SPANISH AND ENGLISH LITERATURE

  • UCAS code
    QR3K
  • Typical offer
    BBB
  • Year of entry
    2021
  • Course duration
     4 years
  • Year of entry
    2021
  • Course duration
     4 years
View all

COVID-19 update


Find out about how we'll be delivering our courses in 2020.

With this BA Spanish and English Literature course you can combine your study of English literature with learning the Spanish language and exploring the cultures in which it is central.

Join our friendly and dynamic Department of Languages and Cultures, which offers the opportunity to study in a lively, multilingual community with staff and students from all over the world. We offer a flexible and supportive approach to learning which allows you to tailor your degree to your interests, including the opportunity to learn other languages.

Through this course you will become confident and highly skilled in written and spoken Spanish. You will master the fundamental elements of the language, to the point where you will graduate with a near-native command of it. Direct access to expert staff for help and feedback ensures you develop your language skills to the best of your ability.

In Spanish, you will learn the language in the political, social and cultural contexts of the countries in which it is spoken. You can study a wide range of optional modules in Spanish and Latin American culture, history, literature, politics and film with staff who are internationally recognised experts. These include comprehensive first-year modules including Icons of Spain and Latin America and Introduction to Spanish and Latin American Culture; second-year narratives including Literature and Society in the Modern Hispanic World and Culture and Revolution in Modern Latin America; and final-year modules including Memory, Dictatorship and Cultural Resistance in the Southern Cone, Writers and Publishers in Spain and Testimonial Writing from Modern Latin America.

In your English Literature modules, you will read more of authors and genres that you already know (from tragedy to Gothic, from Shakespeare and Dickens to Plath and Beckett). But you will also encounter aspects of literary studies that may be less familiar to you, from children’s literature to publishing studies and the history of the book. Our academics have published research on everything from medieval poetry to contemporary Caribbean and American fiction. As you progress through your degree, your module choices become more diverse and specialised: you can do archive work on Studying Manuscripts, or look at the politics of literature in Class Matters. Everyone in the Department of English Literature, from new lecturers to professors, teaches at every level of the degree: this gives you the benefit of our expertise and makes you part of the conversation about our research and its impact outside the classroom. We place a strong emphasis on small-group learning within a friendly and supportive environment. In your first and second years, you will have a mix of lectures (which can be quite large) and seminars (which will never have more than 16 people).

An integral part of the degree is the opportunity for you to spend up to a year in a Spanish-speaking country, either studying at a partner institution through the Erasmus+ programme, undertaking a work placement or working as a British Council language teaching assistant. It enables you to directly immerse yourself in the culture and develop your language to a near-native level. The core language module in the second year will prepare you for your time abroad, equipping you with the skills and knowledge required to work and live in a different culture.

 

Overview

Join our friendly and dynamic Department of Languages and Cultures, which offers the opportunity to study in a lively, multilingual community with staff and students from all over the world. We offer a flexible and supportive approach to learning which allows you to tailor your degree to your interests, including the opportunity to learn other languages.

Through this course you will become confident and highly skilled in written and spoken Spanish. You will master the fundamental elements of the language, to the point where you will graduate with a near-native command of it. Direct access to expert staff for help and feedback ensures you develop your language skills to the best of your ability.

In Spanish, you will learn the language in the political, social and cultural contexts of the countries in which it is spoken. You can study a wide range of optional modules in Spanish and Latin American culture, history, literature, politics and film with staff who are internationally recognised experts. These include comprehensive first-year modules including Icons of Spain and Latin America and Introduction to Spanish and Latin American Culture; second-year narratives including Literature and Society in the Modern Hispanic World and Culture and Revolution in Modern Latin America; and final-year modules including Memory, Dictatorship and Cultural Resistance in the Southern Cone, Writers and Publishers in Spain and Testimonial Writing from Modern Latin America.

In your English Literature modules, you will read more of authors and genres that you already know (from tragedy to Gothic, from Shakespeare and Dickens to Plath and Beckett). But you will also encounter aspects of literary studies that may be less familiar to you, from children’s literature to publishing studies and the history of the book. Our academics have published research on everything from medieval poetry to contemporary Caribbean and American fiction. As you progress through your degree, your module choices become more diverse and specialised: you can do archive work on Studying Manuscripts, or look at the politics of literature in Class Matters. Everyone in the Department of English Literature, from new lecturers to professors, teaches at every level of the degree: this gives you the benefit of our expertise and makes you part of the conversation about our research and its impact outside the classroom. We place a strong emphasis on small-group learning within a friendly and supportive environment. In your first and second years, you will have a mix of lectures (which can be quite large) and seminars (which will never have more than 16 people).

An integral part of the degree is the opportunity for you to spend up to a year in a Spanish-speaking country, either studying at a partner institution through the Erasmus+ programme, undertaking a work placement or working as a British Council language teaching assistant. It enables you to directly immerse yourself in the culture and develop your language to a near-native level. The core language module in the second year will prepare you for your time abroad, equipping you with the skills and knowledge required to work and live in a different culture.

 

Entry requirements A Level BBB | IB 30 pts overall

Select Reading as your firm choice on UCAS, and we will guarantee you a place if you achieve one grade lower than the published offer.

Typical offer

BBB, including grade B in A level English Literature or related subject.

Related subjects include: English Language, English Language and Literature, Drama and Theatre Studies, or Creative Writing.

No language qualification is required to study Spanish from beginner’s level. If you have studied this language up to GCSE, AS or A level you may be able to join our Intermediate or Advanced language groups; for more information on entry levels check out our website

International Baccalaureate

30 points overall including 5 in English at higher level.

Extended Project Qualification

In recognition of the excellent preparation that the Extended Project Qualification (EPQ) provides to students for University study, we can now include achievement in the EPQ as part of a formal offer.

BTEC Extended Diploma

DDM (Modules taken must be comparable to subject specific requirement)

English language requirements

IELTS 7.0, with no component below 6.0

For information on other English language qualifications, please visit our international student pages.

Alternative entry requirements for International and EU students

For country specific entry requirements look at entry requirements by country.

International Foundation Programme

If you are an international or EU student and do not meet the requirements for direct entry to your chosen degree you can join the University of Reading’s International Foundation Programme. Successful completion of this 1 year programme guarantees you a place on your chosen undergraduate degree. English language requirements start as low as IELTS 4.5 depending on progression degree and start date.

  • Learn more about our International Foundation programme

Pre-sessional English language programme

If you need to improve your English language score you can take a pre-sessional English course prior to entry onto your degree.

  • Find out the English language requirements for our courses and our pre-sessional English programme

Structure

  • Year 1
  • Year 2
  • Year 3
  • Year 4

Core modules include:

  • Spanish language (at beginner's, intermediate or advanced level)
  • Genre and context
  • Poetry in English
  • Research and criticism

Optional modules include:

  • Icons of Spain and Latin America
  • Introduction to creative writing
  • Persuasive writing
  • Twentieth-century American literature

Comparative modules include:

In addition to these Spanish modules, students may choose to take a module from our list of comparative modules. Comparative modules do not focus on one specific country or culture, but rather they contrast and compare different literary, cinematic or historical traditions.

  • The making of modern Europe: 1789 to the present
  • What is comparative literature?
  • Greats of European cinema
  • Introduction to linguistics
Please note that all modules are subject to change.

Core modules include:

  • Spanish language

Optional modules include:

  • Literature and society in the Hispanic world
  • Transatlantic exchanges: the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America in the nineteenth-century
  • Modern and contemporary Spanish narratives
  • The business of books
  • Chaucer and Medieval narrative
  • Contemporary literature: fiction, poetry and drama 1950-present
  • Critical issues
  • Early modern theatre practice
  • Introduction to old English literature
  • Lyric voices 1340-1650
  • Modernism in poetry and fiction
  • Renaissance texts and cultures
  • Restoration to revolution: 1660-1789
  • The Romantic Period
  • Shakespeare
  • Victorian literature
  • Writing America
  • Writing and revising
  • Writing, gender, identity
  • Writing, genre and the market

Placement modules include:

  • Communications at work
  • Literature, language and media
  • Literature, language and education

Comparative modules include:

In addition to these Spanish modules, students may choose to take a module from our list of comparative modules. Comparative modules do not focus on one specific country or culture, but rather they contrast and compare different literary, cinematic or historical traditions.

  • Society, thought, and art in modern Europe
  • Unity, nationalism and regionalism in Europe
  • Science, perversion, and dream in global fantastic literature
  • Love in Medieval Renaissance
Please note that all modules are subject to change.

You can choose from three options for your third year: studying at a partner institution through the Erasmus+ programme, undertaking a work placement or working as a British Council language teaching assistant.

Our Spanish partner institutions include universities in Alcalá de Henares, Bilbao, Oviedo, Salamanca, and Valladolid. You can also choose to study in Havana, Cuba or at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina or the Universidad de las Américas Puebla in Cholula, Mexico. The Department of Modern Languages and European Studies has a study abroad officer who can help you prepare for study at one of these universities.

You can also talk to the Department's specialist year abroad team, who can provide you with support in securing and preparing for a placement.

In English literature, you will have the chance to gain valuable first-hand experience in a workplace environment through our innovative placement scheme. This involves you undertaking an academic placement in commerce, industry or the arts. Alternatively, our unique "Communications at work" module enables you to combine the study of the practical use of English with a short placement. These placements are a great way to develop transferable skills that will benefit you in a wide range of careers.

Core modules include:

  • Advanced Spanish language

Optional modules include:

  • Spanish for management and business
  • Dictatorship, memory and resistance in the Southern Cone
  • Publishers and writers in contemporary Spain
  • Testimonial writing from modern Latin America
  • Dissertation
  • The African-American short story
  • Alfred Hitchcock
  • American graphic novel
  • American poetry: Bishop to Dove
  • Black British fiction
  • Children's literature
  • City of death and desire: Henry James and Venice
  • Class matters
  • Classical and Renaissance tragedy
  • Colonial explorations
  • Contemporary American fiction
  • Decadence and degeneration: literature of the 1890s
  • Dickens
  • Digital text: literature and the new technologies
  • Editing the Renaissance
  • Eighteenth-century novel
  • 'Eyes on the prize': literature of the US Civil Rights Movement
  • Family romances: genealogy, identity, and imposture in the nineteenth-century novel
  • Fiction and ethnicity in post-war Britain and America
  • Holocaust fiction
  • Holocaust testimony: memory, trauma and representation
  • Irish poetry
  • James Joyce
  • John Milton: poet of the English Republic
  • Literature and the railway
  • Margaret Atwood
  • Modern American drama
  • Modern epic
  • Modern Scottish fiction: from Jean Brodie to Trainspotting
  • Modern and contemporary British poetry
  • Modernism and politics
  • Nigerian prose literature: from Achebe to Adichie
  • Nineteenth-century American fiction
  • Packaging literature
  • Psychoanalysis and text
  • Restoration literary culture: drama and poetry, 1660-1700
  • Samuel Beckett
  • Science in culture
  • Shakespeare and gender
  • Utopia
  • Victorian and Edwardian children's fantasy
  • Victorian literature and medicine
  • Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury
  • The writer's workshop: studying manuscripts
  • Writing global justice
  • Writing women: nineteenth-century poetry

Comparative modules include:

In addition to these Spanish modules, students may choose to take a module from our list of comparative modules. Comparative modules do not focus on one specific country or culture, but rather they contrast and compare different literary, cinematic or historical traditions.

  • EU case studies
  • Cinemas of the world
  • 19th Century European novel
  • Language and power
Please note that all modules are subject to change.

Fees

New UK/Republic of Ireland students: £9,250* per year

New international students: £17,320 per year

*UK/Republic of Ireland fee changes

UK/Republic of Ireland undergraduate tuition fees are regulated by the UK government. These fees are subject to parliamentary approval and any decision on raising the tuition fees cap for new UK students would require the formal approval of both Houses of Parliament before it becomes law.

EU student fees

With effect from 1 August 2021, new EU students will pay international tuition fees. For exceptions, please read the UK government’s guidance for EU students.

Additional costs

Some courses will require additional payments for field trips and extra resources. You will also need to budget for your accommodation and living costs. See our information on living costs for more details.

Financial support for your studies

You may be eligible for a scholarship or bursary to help pay for your study. Students from the UK may also be eligible for a student loan to help cover these costs. See our fees and funding information for more information on what's available.

Careers

By the time you graduate, you will be able to write and speak fluently in Spanish – an immensely useful skill to have given that there is currently a great shortage of well-qualified linguists in the UK. The experience of studying or working abroad also distinguishes you from non-language graduates, providing evidence of self-reliance, adaptability and enterprise. You will also develop strong transferable skills in oral communication, research and writing, together with a high level of cultural literacy and critical sophistication.

89% of our students are in work or further study 15 months after finishing their course [1].

[1] Graduate Outcomes Survey 2017/18; First Degree and other undergraduate responders from Languages and Cultures.

Contextual offers


We make contextual offers for all our courses.

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Subjects A-B

  • Agriculture
  • Ancient History
  • Animal Science
  • Anthropology
  • Archaeology
  • Architectural Engineering
  • Architecture
  • Art
  • Biological Sciences
  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Biomedical Sciences
  • Building and Surveying
  • Business and Management, Accounting and Finance

Subjects C-E

  • Chemistry
  • Classics and Classical Studies
  • Climate Science
  • Computer Science
  • Construction Management
  • Consumer Behaviour and Marketing
  • Creative Writing
  • Drama
  • Ecology
  • Economics
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  • Environment

Subjects F-G

  • Film & Television
  • Food and Nutritional Sciences
  • Foundation programmes
  • French
  • Geography
  • German
  • Graphic Communication and Design

Subjects H-M

  • Healthcare
  • History
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  • International Foundation Programme (IFP)
  • International Relations
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  • Law
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  • Marketing
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Subjects N-T

  • Nutrition
  • Pharmacology
  • Pharmacy
  • Philosophy
  • Physician Associate Studies
  • Politics and International Relations
  • Psychology
  • Real Estate and Planning
  • Spanish
  • Speech and Language Therapy
  • Surveying and Construction
  • Teaching
  • Theatre

Subjects U-Z

  • Wildlife Conservation
  • Zoology

Subjects A-C

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  • Animal Sciences
  • Archaeology
  • Architecture
  • Art
  • Biological Sciences
  • Biomedical Sciences
  • Business (Post-Experience)
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  • Chemistry
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  • Climate Science
  • Computer Science
  • Construction Management and Engineering
  • Consumer Behaviour
  • Creative Enterprise

Subjects D-G

  • Data Science
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  • Energy and Environmental Engineering
  • Engineering
  • English Language and Applied Linguistics
  • English Literature
  • Environmental Science
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  • Finance
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  • Graphic Design

Subjects H-P

  • Healthcare
  • History
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  • Information Technology
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  • Law
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  • Management
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Subjects Q-Z

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Subjects A-B

  • Agriculture
  • Ancient History
  • Animal Science
  • Anthropology
  • Archaeology
  • Architectural Engineering
  • Architecture
  • Art
  • Biological Sciences
  • Biomedical Engineering
  • Biomedical Sciences
  • Building and Surveying
  • Business and Management, Accounting and Finance

Subjects C-E

  • Chemistry
  • Classics and Classical Studies
  • Climate Science
  • Computer Science
  • Construction Management
  • Consumer Behaviour and Marketing
  • Creative Writing
  • Drama
  • Ecology
  • Economics
  • Education
  • Engineering
  • English Language and Applied Linguistics
  • English Literature
  • Environment

Subjects F-G

  • Film & Television
  • Food and Nutritional Sciences
  • Foundation programmes
  • French
  • Geography
  • German
  • Graphic Communication and Design

Subjects H-M

  • Healthcare
  • History
  • International Development
  • International Foundation Programme (IFP)
  • International Relations
  • Italian
  • Languages and Cultures
  • Law
  • Linguistics
  • Marketing
  • Mathematics
  • Medical Sciences
  • Meteorology and Climate
  • Museum Studies

Subjects N-T

  • Nutrition
  • Pharmacology
  • Pharmacy
  • Philosophy
  • Physician Associate Studies
  • Politics and International Relations
  • Psychology
  • Real Estate and Planning
  • Spanish
  • Speech and Language Therapy
  • Surveying and Construction
  • Teaching
  • Theatre

Subjects U-Z

  • Wildlife Conservation
  • Zoology

Subjects A-C

  • Agriculture
  • Ancient History
  • Animal Sciences
  • Archaeology
  • Architecture
  • Art
  • Biological Sciences
  • Biomedical Sciences
  • Business (Post-Experience)
  • Business and Management (Pre-Experience)
  • Chemistry
  • Classics and Ancient History
  • Climate Science
  • Computer Science
  • Construction Management and Engineering
  • Consumer Behaviour
  • Creative Enterprise

Subjects D-G

  • Data Science
  • Economics
  • Education
  • Energy and Environmental Engineering
  • Engineering
  • English Language and Applied Linguistics
  • English Literature
  • Environmental Science
  • Film, Theatre and Television
  • Finance
  • Food and Nutritional Sciences
  • Geography and Environmental Science
  • Graphic Design

Subjects H-P

  • Healthcare
  • History
  • Information Management and Digital Business
  • Information Technology
  • International Development and Applied Economics
  • Languages and Cultures
  • Law
  • Linguistics
  • Management
  • Medieval History
  • Meteorology and Climate
  • Microbiology
  • Nutritional Sciences
  • Pharmacy
  • Philosophy
  • Physician Associate
  • Politics and International Relations
  • Project Management
  • Psychology
  • Public Policy

Subjects Q-Z

  • Real Estate and Planning
  • Social Policy
  • Speech and Language Therapy
  • Strategic Studies
  • Teaching
  • Theatre
  • Typography and Graphic Communication
  • War and Peace Studies
  • Zoology

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