Postgraduate Prospectus

Course Specific Facilities

This course draws heavily on the expertise of the Health Language Research Group, which co-ordinates multi-modal research in the field of health care communication and language.

HLRG works in partnership across a variety of health care contexts, universities and college sectors. As such it brings together a unique combination of leading researchers from medicine, pharmacy, community health, nursing, psychology, sociology and linguistics, with the aim of advancing the quality of language and communication performance in the NHS.

A distinctive aspect of this group is that several members have both clinical and linguistic expertise. As such, the Centre is perfectly placed to conduct research that is clinically relevant and can be applied to real health care settings.

Our ethos is to develop new ways of investigating language and communication in health care, not least by using computational analysis as a diagnostic tool for further detailed qualitative study, and in formulating randomised controlled trials of language and communication performance. The latter is timely in light of the robust emphasis on Evidence Based Practice in the NHS.

As a registered student of the University, you would be entitled to all of the benefits and facilities available to all students, as far as is practical within the constraints of your physical location.

The University has extensive web-based facilities and the School of English Studies’ web-page, University information and regulations, and library facilities can all be reached through the University website.

Much of the course material that you will need is gathered inside the special area devoted to Internet courses.

You will be invited to attend a voluntary ‘Summer School’ each year, enabling you to meet your fellow students and members of the academic staff.

The Hallward Library has excellent provision of books, periodicals and online resources in all aspects of English Studies. In particular, the University has holdings for research on DH Lawrence, medieval manuscripts, and the important Portland Literary Collection of late seventeenth and early eighteenth century manuscripts.