Open University students reflect on studying English
Richard J. Jones (The Open University)
At The Open University, students of different ages and backgrounds study English Literature, Creative Writing, or Language Studies together. During the making of a new second-level module, Literature Matters, I interviewed some third-year students about their studies. What follows are some edited (and anonymised) highlights.
One student observed that his understanding had changed over time: ‘my understanding of what it is to study literature is very different to how I thought about it at the beginning’, he says. ‘What it’s come to mean to me now is that … a writer might try to understand the world that they’re in and provoke a thought in their reader to think about’. A second student commented that ‘studying literature has given me confidence’, especially as a dyslexic learner. This student wanted to go on ‘to help teach other people with a learning difficulty or dyslexia’. Another student focused on the wider ‘context’ in which she now thought about her study: ‘in the past’, she said, ‘I probably would have read a book and enjoyed it … I wouldn’t have thought much, possibly, about the author or the situation or the time in which they wrote or why they were writing and what their influences might have been’. In a similar way, another student observed: ‘It puts things into perspective’; another student added that they had ended up ‘kind of being more understanding and empathetic to other people because I’ve got more of an insight into their minds through the author’.
A panel discussion at a day school for the Arts and Humanities. The Open University
Following up on this, at a recent day school for new students, I heard from a retired teacher who had started a degree in Literature and Creative Writing. She had been motivated by her past love of reading: now she is retired, she says, she can explore the things that delight her. Perhaps unexpectedly, though, when asked what her studies had given her so far, she said: ‘I can tell you that returning to a study of literature has restored my confidence. I live in the north of England and wouldn’t have travelled to London a year ago but I did so on Saturday [to attend the day school]’. At first glance, it might not be obvious that studying literature can help you get on a train. But, of course, that’s exactly what it does! Literature takes us all out into the world.
