​The department teaches three courses: ENGL 101 (An Introduction to Academic Discourse), which is a freshman composition course; ENGL 102 (An Introduction to Report Writing), which deals with freshman composition and basic research and report writing skills; and ENGL 214 (Academic & Professional Communication), which develops the students' research and report writing skills and teaches the language of recruitment and correspondence. Both ENGL 102 and 214 also include formal presentation skills.​

ELD faculty teach four sections each per semester and can expect to be responsible for between 90 and 110 students. The nature of the courses means that a significant part of the working week is taken up with preparing classes and quizzes and with marking written work. A set of course materials is available for download on Blackboard and teachers are encouraged to supplement them with their own materials. A published course textbook for ENGL 214 is also available.

Each English course is worth three credit hours for a student's GPA. In the freshman year, students tend to take ENGL 101 in their first semester and ENGL 102 in their second. They study around five subjects per semester including English but little or nothing about their major during this year. Instead, their freshman-year courses aim to bring them up to a suitable level in Math, Physics and Chemistry. Most students now take ENGL 214 in the first semester of their sophomore year, which is not ideal. ENGL 214 students have to write a technical report on a topic in their major but, at this stage in their academic careers, have only just started to study it. We normally recommend that ENGL 214 should be taken in the second semester of the sophomore year, or later.