English

English is always a popular field of study because most of us start with the essential tool hardwired into us. English, that is. We speak it like natives. That's part of the reason, you may find your engineering or scientific friends looking down at you. They can read too (mostly) - and the idea that you spend your weeks immersed in novels is a seductive one.

Indeed, one of the great attractions of studying English is that most of it was written to give pleasure. The same cannot be said of - say - geography or sociology. The other great attraction of English is that it cultivates individuality' of response. In a maths class, all 30 students can come up with the same set of answers to a problem set and get A+. In an English class, 30 students can come up with wholly different essays and get A+.

But while conversing with some of the most imaginative minds in world history (the authors you're reading) is a fine way to pass a few years, you may find the transition from A-level or reading for pleasure difficult. For one thing, no book is duller than the one you have to read, and for another, you may well he daunted by the length of the reading list and the fact that you will be much more on your own than ever before, and much more so than most other students (the flip side of that individuality coin). You'll spend many lonely hours poring over books of theory, scholarship or literary criticism as you try to work through your own responses to the material.

Generally, you will be expected to attend three or so lectures a week. Some enthusiasts go to more, but there will usually also be four or five hours of discussion in seminars or tutorials, where you and a very few other students will read essays to a tutor and discuss a topic. At many institutions, up to 20 students gather each week, and one or two give a presentation followed by a group discussion - the exchange of views is absolutely central to the English degree.

English courses tend to cross-reference to politics, the broader arts, philosophy or psychology. There are few barriers to the interests you can develop: you are as likely to find yourself learning about Shakespearean theatre audiences as examining the influence of Trainspotting on contemporary Scottish dialect. You may discover, quite unexpectedly, that you find the Gawain-poet or sociolinguistics far more compelling than Sylvia Plath.

There aren't many subjects where the possibilities within it vary so much. English departments tend to prize their individuality - some try to acquaint students with the broad range of literature in English (ie British, American, translated) and cover a little of everything, while others tend to specialise, and even within that spectrum, there is a vast array of different theoretical frameworks and teaching styles to take on hoard. So you might touch on linguistics, cultural studies, the history of ideas and theory, as well as the different literary periods, such as Anglo Saxo...

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