How Accurate Your Assumptions Are About English Literature
- Nurul Azkya
- Feb 10, 2022
- 5 min read
When you hear “English literature student”, your mind may portray a spectacled bookworm with poetry books in their hands and you imagine how they spend most of their time reading classic books, or you predict they will become a novelist or a poet in the future. Well, if you think this way, you are not 100% right!
Even though your assumptions about English Literature may be right, do not let the assumptions block your mind from checking the truth!
“May I know the truth about it, then?”
Of course, you may! Without further ado, let’s check how accurate your assumptions are about English Literature by reading my personal experience as an English Language and Literature student
First Assumption: Read A Lot
By reading the first assumption, you may say “See? I am right! English literature students read a lot.” Yes, you are right, congratulations! But if you still think we, English Literature students, only read novels or poetry, then you are wrong. We do read fiction books, poetry, and also drama scripts in the literature course. However, we do not do reading in that course only because we also have a reading course.
“Reading course? I thought anyone could do it without taking a course.”
Yes, there is. In this class, we learn how to read properly by applying the right technique for reading particular text. We also have the opportunity to enrich our vocabulary by reading different kinds of text. Since reading is one of the four basic language skills, we get this course every semester. Nevertheless, the level will continue to rise every semester. For example, in the first semester we get reading in personal context, then reading for social interaction in the next semester, then reading in professional context in the third semester, and reading for general academic purposes in the fourth semester. We do not only read novels in this course. We mainly focus on the types of text and find the right approach to understand it better. You may think this skill is easy, but checking the facts, many people are still struggling when they read and not everyone can find a pleasure in reading. It is because they are not used to it and do not know the right technique. That is why this class is important. It can sharpen our minds, train us to think critically and make us know different perspectives.
Second Assumption: The Courses Are Identical With Literature Only
Well, from the name itself, people will know the courses of this major are identical with literature. For example, exploring fiction (both short stories and novels), poetry and drama. This is what differentiates English Literature from English Education major.
But do we only focus on literature? The answer is no! Some people still have no idea this major offers two degrees, which are literature and linguistics. Before we decided our degrees, we learn the general approaches to literary analysis and the theory of linguistics and its branches.
"What do you learn in linguistics?"
If literature exposes the art of language, then linguistics exposes the scientific of language. Simply, in this course we learn the structure of human language, how it is produced, how words are formed, etc. Since this course studies the human language, it has specific branches like sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, computational linguistics, etc.
Moreover, we also focus on improving our English skills. That is why we have a reading course, listening course, speaking course, and writing course we have to take every semester. Besides that, this major also has a translating course, interpreting course, grammar course and even a copywriting course, but actually, it depends on the university.
So, do you get it now that we are not always identical with literature?
Third Assumption: The Courses are Easy
Actually, there is no exact measurement of easiness, and you will say something is easy or difficult if you have experienced it. The courses in English literature may look easy in some people’s eyes. However, personally speaking, it is not that easy.
When we write, whether to write stories, essays, chapter reports, or reading logs, we have to write accurately and creatively. One difficulty we often meet when writing is when the writer’s block comes to us! Especially when our writing has not reached the minimum target words. Besides the writer’s block, the confusion about grammar often happens and it leads us to grammatically wrong or ambiguous sentences. As for writing poems, sometimes, we have to write a poem in a particular genre. For example, we have to write a haiku that is the form of the poem consists of three lines with the pattern of 5-7-5 syllables. It is really pumping the ideas in our mind.
When we translate, it is not as easy as taking a look at the dictionary. Dictionary is only a tool that helps us to decide. In reality, we have to produce a good translation that has the same meaning as the original text. So, it means we need to know the context, need to know which method we use, need to understand the culture, need to choose which word that has the closest meaning and we also need to maintain the structure while the two languages may have different structures, and these are not as easy as translating with Google translate. There are actually a lot of struggles and problems in translating.
When we interpret, it is not easy to remember the words and switch our brain from English to our native language and vice versa.
When we read fiction, we do not only read it as pleasure, but we need to analyze it. We also have to analyze the lines from the characters and their behaviors to find evidence.
When we learn linguistics, it is hard to understand it. It is because the nature of human language is complicated, and there are a lot of theories and branches in linguistics.
Well, there must be more difficulties that have not been mentioned. However, those difficulties help us to be more creative, critical, scrupulous and it trains us to express our opinion and to solve a problem.
Fourth Assumption: Become A Poet or A Novelist After They Graduated
I bet almost all people have this assumption in their minds. It is not wrong, but keep in mind that:
not all literature graduate become novelists or poets, and not all novelists or poets are from literature majors.
"Then what do you do after graduating? Is the perspective job promising?"
From the courses I have mentioned before, we get the ability to write both for academic writing and creative writing, to translate, to speak English well, and to analyze. So from these abilities, we can be a copywriter, content writer, journalist, translator or interpreter besides becoming a novelist or a poet. And of course, copywriter, translator and interpreter are promising jobs!
Actually, we can be anything we want as long as we study hard and work hard. By getting English as our second language and mastering it, we can explore more knowledge, so we can also be anything that is not really related to our majors. Just remember that our majors do not always determine what our jobs are in the future.
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