The Department of English Language at the University of Sulaimani was founded in 1994, and it has been consistently ranked as one of the highly-demanded university departments in Kurdistan Region ever since. It offers a diverse range of undergraduate and graduate courses in Linguistics and Literature that prepare students for careers in academia and other professional fields. Since its foundation, thousands of BA and hundreds of MA and PhD students have graduated from it.

The department attempts to raise students’ capacities in writing across the curriculum. It focuses on providing students with linguistic and literary backgrounds so they can seek opportunities to pursue further academic endeavors. The department offers students a community of research and learning with the academics to develop their skills for diverse purposes, such as writing and editing, teaching, and developing careers. The academic staff is required to augment class work with innovative approaches to research development, service learning, internships and experiential learning. It also seeks to foster knowledge and a love of literature and languages in students. Within a coherent curricular framework, well-structured, relevant courses, the department teaches a variety of literary, analytical, linguistic subjects and skills. It also helps students think deeply and reflect on what they have learned.

The department intends to improve students’ knowledge and education of English Language and Literature and offer them adequate qualifications in the field. These are the significant themes which shape the department’s strategy:

• Enhancing the learners’ level of communication in the four skills of learning, namely listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
• Letting students have an acquaintance with English culture and history.
• Helping students use levels of rhetoric in forms of exploitation of figures of speech, diction, and syntax and helping them develop argumentation skills.
• Equipping students with the necessary research skills and using critical thinking techniques to become long-term learners after their graduation.
• Developing the love for and a deeper understanding of language and literature in students,
• Familiarizing students with the value of critical reading and effective writing and the richness of literature, past and present.

Graduates of this department will be able to demonstrate:

1. Professional command of oral and written English skills that allow them to communicate effectively in English-speaking contexts.
2. The ability to produce professional-level academic writing.
3. Extensive knowledge of various literary periods in English literature.
4. The ability to develop, interpret, and express ideas through written and oral communication.
5. The ability to identify literary techniques and exhibit a creative use of language in the analysis of literature.
6. The ability to think critically and interpret texts using literary theory.
7. The ability to understand how language works and the various schools and trends of linguistics.
8. The ability to conduct independent and original research in the fields of literature and present scholarly evidence to support arguments and research questions.
9. The ability to apply theoretical concepts to literary or other texts.
10. The ability to analyze and describe the English language using appropriate linguistic concepts and terminology.
11. The ability to understand the concepts, theories, and methodologies used by linguists in qualitative and quantitative analyses of linguistic structure and patterns of language use.

Apart from Professional Skills and University Work Environment courses, which incorporate practical work, all the other courses and modules at the department are delivered in class theoretically. Depending on the nature of the literature and linguistics classes offered, various teaching styles such as lecturing, demonstration, hybrid, and facilitator are used by the teaching staff.

The official language of instruction at the department is English. However, French and Kurdology modules are offered in Kurdish and French, respectively.

Each academic year comprises two semesters. To accomplish a BA in English Language and Literature, students must complete eight semesters successfully.