The Academic Language Centre provides a wide range of English courses. The courses differ with regard to level, content and frequency.

Tracing Transitional English in the Twelfth Century

The Academic Language Centre Leiden offers English language courses at different levels, intensive summer courses, tailor-made language training and various courses such as academic English, legal English, and financial English. More information can be found here >

English Language and Linguistics at Leiden University focuses on English language usage and linguistics around the world, including in countries where English is spoken as a second language or as part of a mixed language.

For admission to the Graduate School you will be asked to demonstrate you proficiency in English by means of an IELTS or TOEFL test. The certificates must be recent (not older than two years).

Clear English Pronunciation provides students with the tools to effectively communicate in English without centring solely on native-speaker pronunciation models.

Publishing about your research is a key aspect of your career as a researcher; the majority of research publications are written in English. When applying for research funding, too, it is very important to ensure that your application is written in clear, accessible English. Maria Sherwood-Smith, Academic…

To help you improve your skills in communicating about your research in English, the Graduate School has an in-house Academic English Lecturer.

On this page you can find answers to frequently asked questions.

From Great-Britain to the United States and from Australia to South Africa: people around the whole world speak and write English. In Leiden you will broaden your knowledge of the English language and the rich Literature and culture of the global English world on academic level.

A contrastive English grammar with the focus on the differences with Dutch.

The one-year, English-taught master's programme in English Literature and Culture focuses on the interaction between literature and key political and social issues such as identity, migration, memory and the metropolis, but also between literature and the literary tradition, and literature and film.

The Academic Language Centre has developed 19 video clips on Academic Skills. The videos are divided into three categories. Watch them below for a good start to your studies!

The presents thesis investigates the extent to which Chinese, Dutch and American speakers of English are mutually intelligible. Intelligibility of vowels, simplex consonants and consonant clusters was tested in meaningless sound sequences, as well as in words in meaningless and meaningful short sent…

The Leiden University Old English ColloQuest is a digital, dynamic edition of an Old English text that adapts to each different learner to offer an appropriate level of challenge. The nature and number of glosses (translation aids) on the text adjust for each individual user based on the user’s answers…

Leiden University has introduced the training program for the Basic Qualification in Education (BKO). This is mandatory and has been made available for (university) teachers and professors to obtain a BKO certificate, depending on the timing, scope, and duration of their employment.

On the 14th of June, Yliana Rodriquez successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Yliana on this achievement!

Are you planning to register for an English taught Master’s Degree Programme after your Bachelor’s programme? In order to assess what your current level of English is, you are invited to complete an Online Oxford Quick Placement Test.

Exploring the language of the lower classes in the nineteenth century

Study information, Online Experience

This dissertation assesses the influence of British Celtic on the phonological development of English during and shortly after the Anglo-Saxon settlement period, ca. AD 450-700.

Are you thinking about studying English Literature and Culture? Learn more and watch the introduction video and the programme presentation.

The second major collection of papers from the Bridging the Unbridgeable project.

This volume provides a sample of the most recent studies on Spanish-English codeswitching both in the Caribbean and among bilinguals in the United States.

This special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik (Brill, 2021) brings together articles that explore new digital ways of analyzing and annotating Old English vocabulary.

On the 23rd of February, Adrian Sydney Gomes successfully defended a doctoral thesis. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Adrian on this achievement!

The English language and culture study programme also exists in the form of a part-time programme.

How did the life course, with all its biological, social and cultural aspects, influence the lives, writings, and art of the inhabitants of early medieval England?

On January 30th, Lennart van der Velden succesfully defended his doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Lennart on this great result.

Arts and leisure, Arts and leisure

This dissertation reports on the requirements for the design and development of teacher assessments, and examines the possibility of developing an assessment procedure that complies with the formulated requirements.

This dissertation provides a systematic description of English and Afrikaans verbal pseudo-coordination and a formal analysis couched in the Minimalist program.

This dissertation aims at discussing the nature and the linguistic factors assumed responsible for speech intelligibility problems of Sudanese learners of English.

On February 19th, Arum Perwitasari succesfully defended her doctoral thesis and graduated. The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics congratulates Arum on this great result.

An exploration across thirteen essays by critics, translators and creative writers on the modern-day afterlives of Old English, delving into how it has been transplanted and recreated in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Teachers of English as a foreign language in China and the Netherlands have different notions of themselves as teachers in relation to cultures associated with the English language.

This dissertation the role of the English dissenting minister Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) as a grammarian is studied.