If English Studies is your chosen course for study you will find it one of great enjoyment. To many people, days spent reading, for enjoyment, can hardly be termed 'hard work', but this is what much of the course involves. Set texts will include poetry, plays and fiction but, as a student, you will also enjoy being able to read widely around the chosen genre. The opportunities are there for you to formulate your own opinions and valuations, which you will then be encouraged to back-up with references to other works of criticism or literature. English Studies also affords the student the opportunity to explore the ideas and aspirations of the society and time of which the author is a product, and to evaluate, and come to an understanding of, the pressures that motivated the writer at that particular time in history.