Creative Writing and English Language

Creative writing and English language is a degree that approaches language from both sides: as material to be studied scientifically and as medium to be wielded artistically. Creative writing develops your abilities as a maker of texts, requiring you to practise prose fiction, poetry, scriptwriting, or other forms with craft and ambition, and to read other writers' work with the close attention that good writing demands. English language brings systematic linguistic analysis to bear on how language actually works: its structure, its variation, its history, and its social life.

The two perspectives illuminate each other, and the degree develops both a practitioner and a thinker.

At the University of Chester, this three-year full-time programme includes a year abroad, giving you the opportunity to experience another cultural and linguistic environment and the creative stimulation that comes with it. Writers have always known that displacement and distance generate material, and a year spent abroad can be formative in ways that are difficult to replicate. Chester's creative writing provision combines workshop practice with a serious engagement with literary traditions, and the English language component offers linguistic analysis alongside sociolinguistics, discourse, and the study of language in use.

Workshop culture is central to creative writing education: you will share work in progress with peers and tutors, receive and give critical feedback, and develop the discipline of regular writing practice alongside the critical faculties that distinguish a skilled writer from a merely enthusiastic one. The English language component develops analytical precision and an evidence-based understanding of how language functions across social contexts.

Graduates in creative writing and English language work as writers, editors, journalists, copywriters, content creators, teachers, communications professionals, and in publishing, broadcasting, and the arts. The linguistic analysis skills are valued in roles involving language assessment, educational publishing, speech and language services, and research. Postgraduate study in creative writing, linguistics, publishing, or journalism is a well-trodden route for those who want to develop their practice or specialism further.