In-sessional English courses

Improving your skills

Derby Language Centre (DLC) provides free, in-sessional language classes to help you perform better in your studies. You can take them at any point during your time at Derby, whether you are studying for an undergraduate degree or a postgraduate degree.

These sessions will boost your academic English skills and build your confidence, as well as helping you navigate the expectations of UK study. We can support you to give better presentations, improve your academic writing skills, help you to produce reports, essays and literature reviews or provide help with communication skills.

Courses and sessions run throughout the year to help you fully develop your skills. The courses are made up of blocks of one to four sessions.

Certificates are available on completion of each course. These courses are available for international students and/or any student whose first language is not English. Free individual support sessions for help with assignments and coursework can be booked in on Friday mornings, for either a face-to-face or online meeting.

Communication skills and writing courses

Communication skills

The content of our communication skills classes includes a general overview of good communication skills for study and employment, conversation and discussion to improve spontaneity and fluency of spoken interactions, seminar skills and presentation skills.

Academic writing

We offer courses at two levels: Introductory Academic Writing and Advanced Academic Writing.

Introductory Academic Writing

The content of these courses includes referencing, citation, paraphrasing skills, improving academic vocabulary, and writing style, writing structure, common grammar errors and developing a critical voice.

Advanced Academic Writing and Independent Study Support

Content will include further development of referencing and citation, paraphrasing, academic vocabulary, and style, as well as further developing a critical voice and style, and writing abstracts and sections of your research report.

Join us at our Kedleston Road campus this summer for face-to-face in-sessional English courses. Further information including how to book will be shared soon.

Online class timetable for summer 2026

Course	What you'll learn	Details
Referencing, citing and paraphrasing	Develop basic referencing skills so that evidence and paraphrasing don't just appear in your work but guide the arguments forward.	Tuesday 2nd June 4-5pm
Structuring arguments and ideas (sentences and paragraphs)	Review how to structure arguments and ideas, so you are sharing information in a logical and evaluative manner.	Tuesday 9th June 4-5pm
Academic Style	Review how to ensure that your language and structure are academic in style.	Tuesday 16th June 4-5pm
Becoming critically evaluative in what you say and write	Review how to move forward from thinking critically about what you have read to presenting the critical evaluation in your written and spoken assignments.	Tuesday 23rd June 4-5pm
Communication Skills (Presentations, poster presentations, discussion and overall communication skills)	Improve and develop your discussion, presentation and overall communication skills	Tuesday 30th June 4-5pm
A review of academic skills including structure and criticality	Review academic skills to act as a checklist before you submit your assignments.	Tuesday 14th July 4-5pm

Book your place

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Individual support

Individual support is available to ask questions or for guidance with assignments.

Fridays 10am - 1pm

Either face-to-face, in the Language Centre (South Tower S203) or online.

Email englishsupport@derby.ac.uk to book an appointment.

More information

For more information, email englishsupport@derby.ac.uk

Please note that we are an advisory and support service and not a proofreading service.

We can offer feedback on things like structure, style and development of arguments and part of this could include some feedback on grammatical use and language accuracy. To do this, we will look at 1-2 pages of work. To get the most from this service, you should indicate which section you want us to focus on and highlight specific questions for us.