The Department of English arose from the English section of the then Department of Social Sciences and Languages. Right from the start, it had a distinctively international character. At that time, it was taught by three Czech teachers and otherwise by foreign lecturers from organizations such as the British Council, the United States Information Service (USIS), the East European Partnership and the Peace Corps. Some foreign lecturers have made significant contributions to the department’s profile. Elements of the teaching program for academic writing by American lecturer Donna Sarvay are still used by the department today. Back in 2003, another American lecturer - Kevin Mactavish - was already using Moodle extensively, and, thanks to his inspiration, the department was one of the pioneers of this electronic form of teaching at the university. Nowadays, too, the department’s staff is very international.
During its existence, the department has organized a large number of linguistic, literary and methodologically-oriented seminars, one-day conferences, as well as Culture Talks, which focus on English-speaking countries. In cooperation with the Association of Teachers of English in the Czech Republic, the department was the main organizer of three large multi-day international conferences, which were all attended by hundreds of teachers of all levels from a host of countries. The Mystery of Creativity conference was held in 1994 and ELT Horizons in 2002. This conference resulted in a book published two years later in the UK by Cambridge Scholars Publishing entitled ELT Revisited: Some Theoretical and Practical Perspectives.
