English & PhilosophyThe Tallis English and Philosophy Faculty offers four study pathways at KS5 – English Literature (OCR), English Language (OCR), Creative Writing (EPQ), and Philosophy (AQA).
In English Literature, students read and research texts from over the last 400 years. As a reader, students deconstruct technical and conceptual aspects of literary texts from William Shakespeare to Toni Morrison, as well as considering their own part in meaning-making. As a researcher, students apply critical theory – on class, gender, race, sexuality – to uncover residual, dominant, and emergent ways of thinking in those literary periods. Independent coursework allows students to read and research further, comparing a modern play to a prose text chosen by themselves as well as a close reading of poetry. Overall, English Literature students develop critical thinking and communication skills for further study and beyond. English Language combines social science approaches with the study of texts and talk. We pose questions from many fields: psycholinguistics (how does the brain acquire language?), sociolinguistics (does every group use slang?), historical linguistics (how will Large Language Model AI change language compared to other technologies?), applied linguistics (how do media frame narratives, represent groups and position readers?) and the philosophy of language (how do we do things with words?). English Language students are receiver-researchers, reading across text types and talking about language use in the modern world. Creative Writing workshops experiment with and share views on storytelling: how and why words and structures are used when creating meaning. Students then research, realise and review their own project – previous examples ranging from illustrated collections of folk tales to a screenplay on loneliness. Over the last decade, Creative Writing students have visited Arvon Foundation writing centres across England and had sessions from prizewinning writers such as Bernadine Evaristo, Joelle Taylor, and Patrice Lawrence. Students from the course have gone on to study Creative Writing at university as well as using the Extended Project Qualification to support their applications on other creative and academic courses. Philosophy is the oldest intellectual discipline our civilisation possesses, the mother of all sciences. Think of it as conceptual engineering, since it studies the deep structures and methodologies of thought itself. In beginning Philosophy, you will be introduced to many entirely open issues which have been continuously part of the human conversation for the last 2,600 years. For example: What’s knowledge? How do we acquire it? How do we perceive the external world and what is its essential nature? How ought we to act? How can we know the difference between good and bad deeds? Are values objective, or not? Are God’s purported qualities contradictory? Can God be proven to exist? Are minds reducible to matter? What is the essential nature of consciousness itself? This subject probably involves more completely open-ended discussion than any other. There is a good deal of reading of seriously hard, abstruse and odd material, and a good deal of writing about the same. You’ll need to be logical, open-minded, hard-working and imaginative, and to be very tenacious as well. You’ll also need to be at ease with very abstract ideas and very open questions. There are no easy answers in Philosophy, and plenty of titanic intellects whose ideas have shaped the whole of human civilisation. Humility and hard work are a must: philosophy is difficult but compelling. |
Subject Information
Tallis English and Philosophy Website
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