The English Language Institute was created in 1979 by the University of Delaware to provide intensive English instruction to foreign students who need to improve their language skills for personal or career reasons or to qualify for graduate or under-graduate study at an American university. The Institute is a self-supporting department within the College of Arts and Sciences, and our teachers are university faculty members.

We have trained well over 18,000 students from over 100 countries in a program that goes beyond language instruction to include cultural orientation and academic skill development.

Including our tutoring center and classroom faculty the overall faculty to student ratio is 8:1, permitting individual attention to each student.

The Institute has always attracted faculty who are dedicated and caring professionals, going far beyond their required duties to provide advisement, assistance, and friendship to the students.

This sensitivity to student needs extends to ELI staff as well–from the thorough assistance of the orientation team (from housing, to hosts, to instructions for laundering) to the helpful efforts of the office staff (from making doctor’s appointments to arranging car rentals, to explaining forms and bus schedules). It is the deep and abiding commitment to this mission of caring for students that best characterizes this Institute.

The program evolved out of an ESL philosophy recognizing the need for international students to learn English that will help them cope with the real world of social interaction, the academic world of examinations, note taking, and compositions and the business/professional world.

To meet these sometimes diverging needs, the Institute divides its instruction into two classes of very different orientation.