Keele Badge

ENG-10064 - Module Specification
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

For academic year: 2025/26 Last Updated: 04 December 2025

ENG-10064 - Voices and Audiences: Building Your Professional Communication Skills
Coordinator: Becky Yearling Room: CBB2.061 Tel: +44 1782 7 34282
Lecture Time: See Timetable...
Level: Level 4
Credits: 15
Study Hours: 150
School Office:

Programme/Approved Electives for 2025/26

None

Available as a Free Standing Elective

No

Co-requisites

None

Prerequisites

None

Barred Combinations

None

Description for 2025/26

This module introduces you to the many ways that your literary knowledge and communication skills will be useful in future employment. Studying a range of poems, speeches, and plays, you will learn how to employ effective rhetorical strategies to communicate professionally with different audiences, enabling you to give speeches, design lesson plans or exhibitions, or run social media campaigns. The module includes masterclasses from professionals working in, for example, museums, theatres, and social media.

Aims
This module is designed to develop students' communication abilities, and help them to begin thinking about how the knowledge and skills they are gaining through their literary studies will help them to engage with audiences in the real world. Part of the module focuses on developing a public voice, through public speaking and the use of social media. The other part of the module involves students being given the chance to explore how their literary skills and knowledge can be applied in workplaces such as theatres, heritage sites, and schools.

Intended Learning Outcomes

display confidence and skill in public speaking.
: 1
identify the goals and needs of specific workplaces (e.g. a theatre, a heritage site, a school) and show how their literary skills could be applied to fulfilling those needs.: 2
demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between communicative acts (e.g. a speech, a tweet, a label on a museum exhibit) and the audience that they are aimed at.: 2

Study hours

Active Learning 24 hours:
24: Workshops
Independent Study 126 hours:
80: Class preparation and set reading
10: Presentation writing and preparation
36: Final Assignment preparation and writing

School Rules

None

Description of Module Assessment

1: Presentation weighted 20%
Presentation
Students will have the choice of two options: 1) To recite a poem from a tutor-created anthology that will be made available to them and then explain what interests them about their chosen poem and why they picked it, or 2) To deliver a short speech on a subject of their choice, making use of appropriate rhetorical techniques. In both cases, the total length of the presentation will be 3-4 minutes. Marks will be awarded based on both delivery and content, and students will be provided with task-specific marking criteria in advance. The weighting for this assignment has deliberately been set relatively low, to reduce the sense of pressure that students often feel when asked to do oral assessments.

2: Assignment weighted 80%
Written assignment
Students will be given a choice of 3 assignments, all based on real-world scenarios. The precise assignment options may differ from year to year depending on which outside partners (e.g. theatres, museums) are involved with the module, but some options students may be offered are: 1) Plan a virtual exhibition, based on a text they have studied on the module; 2) Create a lesson plan for a secondary-school class, based a text they have studied on the module; 3) Create a mock social media campaign for an imagined production of a play studied on the module. Each assignment will be accompanied by a paragraph (c. 300 words) of reflection on the task and its challenges. The assignment will be 1500 words (+/- 10%) in total. Students will be given specific assessment criteria for each assignment, and also examples of completed assessments so that they can see what to aim for.

The University undertakes a continuous review of its teaching and research provision to ensure programmes are of a high quality and changes may be made to modules where it is necessary and reasonable to do so. Please be aware that minor changes to modules, such as a change to an individual assessment, can occur up until enrolment, although we endeavour to give you as much notice as possible of any changes. Details about the circumstance in which changes are made to programmes can be found in the Student Agreement, available at: https://www.keele.ac.uk/legalgovernancecompliance/governance/actcharterstatutesordinancesandregulations/studenttermsconditions/

Last Updated: 04 December 2025