English actvities

Our English staff are available to support and enrich delivery of A-Level Literature and Language courses.

 Sessions include, but are not limited to:

• Shakespeare
• Creative Writing and Genre
• English Language: Society, Identity and Diversity

Please contact us to discuss your requirements.

Students will be given a presentation on storytelling for brands, and will then participate in creative copywriting exercises and develop some draft copy of their own in this interactive and inspiring workshop. 

The workshop will be run by our Senior Lecturer in Advertising Design, Molly Owens, who is an award-winning writer and creative director. Students will have the opportunity to receive feedback at the end of the session, and be given some resources to continue learning about this subject.

In this workshop, will share tips and tricks for using visual cues and exercises to start the creative writing process for professional purposes, whether it be for social media or for campaigns, and explain the crossover between creative writing and copywriting, art direction and creative direction. 

The workshop will be run by our Senior Lecturer in Advertising Design, Molly Owens, who is an award-winning writer and creative director, and who has had her creative writing published in literary anthologies and periodicals. Students will have an opportunity to participate in creative copywriting exercises, and produce some draft copy which they'll receive feedback for from the faciliator, and be given some resources to continue learning about this subject.

Generating Ideas

Where do ideas come from? How do I get started with ideas? What is my creative process? These are all questions that are addressed in this workshop, which will help students with techniques that they can use to begin to meet a brief. 

The workshop will be run by our Senior Lecturer in Advertising Design, Molly Owens, who is an award-winning writer and creative director. Students will participate in creative idea generation exercises and have a short brief that they will begin creative concepts for, and will receive feedback on these.

How to Write a Cover Letter

What are the elements of a strong cover letter, and where do I begin? This workshop will help students learn the basics of writing a cover letter for university applications and employment, and they will be given the opportunity to write draft letters and receive feedback on them. The workshop will be run by Senior Lecturer Molly Owens, who is an award-winning writer. 

So, how exactly do we read a script? First, we need to note what type of script it is. Radio? Film? Stage? They are all formatted differently from each other but have one thing in common – a story! 

Reading scripts is vital toward immersing oneself in character and the scripted world. Finding the main plot is easy but what about the sub-plot? Character relationships? Physical traits? Emotional highs and lows? Comedic moments? 

This workshop will guide potential student writers/actors/directors toward digging deep into a text to study its structure, characters, themes, style and so forth. 

Tools required for the workshop: pen, paper, and a sense of adventure!

An interactive seminar exploring one of your set plays, or a play of your choice. Explore themes, character, structure and performance possibilities with one of our playwriting experts.

Students will learn how to write a simple news story and publish it on social media, with a practising journalist and lecturer. All you need is a phone, and preferably a Twitter account. We will explain the basic structure of a news story, how to find a story, and get you writing and publishing one by the end of the session.

What’s fake news and how can we stop it? In an increasingly digital world, individuals need to be alert to the dangers of fake news and misinformation.

In this seminar, students will participate in a discussion centred on truth and lies, the media, and our responsibilities as consumers and potential publishers of ‘fake news’ every time we share information on social media. 

Often regarded only as a writer of realist novels such as North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell’s powerful short tales often use Gothic motifs and conventions – ghosts, bandits, witches, murders, madness.  This session will explore how Gaskell’s Gothic tales relate to the literary traditions of realism, the Gothic and historical fiction and consider how they are shaped by cultural and contextual influences.  

Written at a time of revolutions across Europe, Jane Eyre was also considered revolutionary for what it said about women and gender. This session will introduce the cultural and contextual influences within which Charlotte Brontë was writing and look at how she uses Gothic language and conventions (such as the supernatural)  in the novel. 

Two hundred years after her death, Jane Austen was chosen to feature on the new £10 note. Why does she have such popular appeal? And is what she says about love and money still relevant today? This session will look at the attitudes and values expressed in her texts and examine how she uses irony to offer social critique. It will focus on Sense and Sensibility, but a similar session may be available on another of Austen’s novels on request.

‘I shall thus give a general answer to the question, so very frequently asked me – “How I, then a young girl, came to think of and dilate upon, so very hideous an idea?”’ (Mary Shelley, Introduction to Frankenstein). 

How did a 19-year-old girl come to write one of the most famous Gothic novels? Starting from the conception of the novel, this session uses theories of the Gothic to explore Frankenstein as a novel about birth, parenthood and creation. 

Is ‘Goblin Market’ just a children’s poem? Or can we read it as a poem about religion, addiction, sexuality or even capitalism?  This session will look at some of the possible interpretations of Rossetti’s work and discuss how these relate to the cultural contexts within which she was writing. It will include a focus on close reading techniques in order to examine how Rossetti adapts structure, form and language for effect in her poetry. 

How do poems relate to one another? How are meaning and form shaped by poets? This session will help students develop their confidence in analysing poetry and making connections across works by different poets.  It will introduce literary concepts and terminology and consider how best to organise a comparative analysis of two poems.