The Department of English and Classical Languages at the University of the Free State has the following mission:

• to foster scholarship and critical thought in its staff and students,
• to serve the language needs of the culturally-diverse communities in the Free State region and beyond in its commitment to language teaching, research and community-based work; and
• to pursue an entrepreneurial focus in our teaching, research and community-based work.

Our research and teaching focus on the following fields:

• Literary theory
• Literature studies
• Creative writing
• Applied Language studies, pragmatics, discourse analysis and conversation analysis
• Language acquisition
• Teaching English as a Foreign language (EFL) and English as a Second Language (ESL)
• Language teaching studies
• Academic skills development
• English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Specific Purposes (ESP)
• Language testing