English Literature and International Relations

During the course of their studies at Reading, all students will be expected to enhance their academic and personal transferable skills. In following this programme, students will have had the opportunity to develop such skills, in particular relating to communication, interpersonal skills, learning skills, numeracy, self-management, use of IT and problem-solving and will have been encouraged to further develop and enhance the full set of skills through a variety of opportunities available outside their curriculum. International Relations and English Literature are disciplines that lend themselves to critical judgement and problem-solving, both through personal engagement with issues and through dialogue and groups discussion. Students are encouraged to defend and to challenge established positions through the collection, collation and analysis of substantial quantities of material, the rigour of argument, and effective communication and presentation. The disciplines also prompt an awareness of numeracy through chronology, periodisation, and basic quantification. The programme develops students; familiarity with information technology in the production and presentation of their work and develops their skills in using computers for the location and retrieval of bibliographic and source material, accessing sophisticated databases and exploiting the internet. In addition, students will develop a range of intellectual skills including the ability to synthesise, analyse and evaluate information and ideas; the ability to formulate independent arguments and to appraise and improve their own performance; and the ability to translate subject-specific knowledge and skills to new environments.