Six things you will gain from a General English language course
The London School of English offers a wide range of options when choosing a general English language course.
Whether you are able to travel to London or not, an immersive language course is a great way to improve general communication skills.
Our Holland Park Gardens Centre in London is open for face-to-face training and welcomes new participants every week. Here, you will learn with the help of experienced trainers and immerse yourself in British culture, life and language.
Online courses are available for people whose work or life commitments mean they cannot travel to London. These courses are of the same standard and with many of the same activities as our face-to-face courses.
What General English language courses are available?
The LSE offers a variety of courses for both groups and individuals. The main group courses are:
- General English 20+ is for adults aged 20 years and over.
- General English 20+ for beginners; a new programme for adults who have just started learning English or who have a low level. This is a part-time course with classes held in the mornings.
Enrolling in an English language course is an investment
When you decide to study a General English language course you are making an investment in four things: time, money, expectations and hope. Time and money are easy to measure – time away from home or work, the money to study, travel and pay for food and accommodation. Expectations and hope are less easily measured. But they can be, as we will see below, especially if you think about what you can gain from studying.
Let’s use an analogy. If you think of a language course like a dish served in a restaurant, the menu might describe it as a “dish with a source and seasoning”. That is quite descriptive, but it doesn’t give you the whole picture. It uses fairly low-level English.
Now, imagine the description read: succulent pieces of boneless chicken marinated in ginger and garlic, spiced with freshly powdered black peppercorns, gramme flour and chargrilled with beaten egg yolk. That gives you a much richer and more detailed idea of what the dish is and how it will taste. This uses a much higher and more sophisticated level of English.
We can use the same language skills to describe an English language course. A typical school might say that its courses help participants “improve their fluency and accuracy to use in their work or study”. However, at the London School of English, we describe our courses like this: “This course involves a series of dynamic and changing communication sessions, where you laugh, talk, listen, exchange advice and opinions, exchange information, discuss and solve problems and experience a warm, welcoming and friendly atmosphere. And by the time the end of the course comes around, you're wishing you could stay on for a while longer.”
Let’s take a closer look at six things you will gain from enrolling on a General English course:
1) Gain Experience
A General English course is an immersive experience. To use another analogy, it is like learning to swim – if you want to learn how to swim better, then you don't read a book about swimming, you need to get into the pool. A course is an intensive experience. You jump in and learn to communicate with a group of people in many different ways. You work in groups, in pairs, as a whole class and in different contexts. You will be involved in discussions, exchanges of opinions and information and simulations. You will also work together, for example, in creating a presentation.
Andre from Switzerland:
“Very good experience. Excellent teachers, a good mix of grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary. And very glad for the chance to meet with eight people of eight different nationalities. Really good team. Although I could only stay for one week, I think I've learned a lot and improved my English.”
2) Gain friends
You will make many friends while at the London School of English. From different cultures and countries, of all ages and personalities. You share experiences and good times together, you learn together and create memories together. We organise a full social programme, while coffee breaks, lunch times and evenings are used for informal socialising. This might include visiting cafés, pubs and restaurants with your classmates and other students in the school. These are all wonderful opportunities to practise English language skills outside of class. And help to build lasting relationships between classmates.
3) Gain knowledge
The London School of English has been helping people learn the language since 1912. Our trainers are experienced and can personalise classes to meet the language learning needs of every individual in a class. But they can also pass on a great deal of knowledge and understanding about Britain and British culture.
A General English course isn’t just about improving your language skills, it is about broadening your horizons. You will learn about yourself and other cultures, which is very important in international communication. Your classmates will come from different countries and cultures and as you communicate and share your language learning, you will find out different ways of doing and thinking about things.
4) Gaining practice
Most people enroll because they want more practice in using and understanding English. Practice makes perfect. Our teachers are experienced and pay attention to the needs of the people they are teaching. Group sizes are kept small on purpose so that teachers can monitor the tasks being completed by participants, listening out for how they can help them make progress.
The course prepares you for using English in the outside world, whether as a tourist or as an employee.
You will be using situational language, learning new words and expressions and improving your pronunciation all the time. You will leave the course better able to understand and be understood by others. While on the course you will use English to talk about a wide variety of topics – for example, travel, news and views, leisure, the world of work and the different ways to communicate.
Classes will often role-play real-world activities. You might be asked to imagine you are in a meeting or planning an event. These activities involve meeting, planning, deciding something, problem-solving, persuading people to do something, sharing information with each other and presenting. All tasks that you might need to use English for when you have left the course.
The activities and scenarios explored are carefully chosen to fit the needs of each class. The school is committed to providing an experience which is as useful, professional, friendly and enjoyable as possible.
Anna from Russia
“Had a fantastic week. General English course lessons are full of energy and new expressions. The teacher listens to you carefully and doesn't interrupt you if you make mistakes. The staff are very friendly and attentive to everyone and everything that is going around. Lunch deserves a special separate applause.”
5) Gain cultural experience
The immersive element of the course includes the social programme or events calendar. On any given week you could visit a Japanese garden, or Shakespearean theatre, enjoy a walk around Notting Hill Gate or a themed Sherlock Holmes walk, or go for a traditional fish and chip dinner. All of these excursions are designed to immerse you in English culture. We want you to have fun, both inside and outside of the class.
A testimonial from one of our Chinese participants who hasn’t been able to travel over to the UK in recent months:
“It's a wonderful experience to study at the London School of English, both online and offline. The teachers are professional. The classes are interesting. I always feel I am being taken care of by the teachers and the staff. I will definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to improve their English and who wants to communicate with people from different parts of the world.”
6) Gaining confidence
Confidence is vital when learning a language. We offer a safe, supportive and encouraging learning environment that will give you confidence when speaking and understanding English. You will be encouraged to discuss and exchange information with your colleagues. You will work on projects together, and talk about your favourite places to visit, favourite foods, your hobbies and more. This might sound a little scary at first, but with the support of your classmates and your trainers, you will soon have the confidence to use your language skills to hold conversations in English.
You will return home from a General English language course with what is known as a wraparound experience, with the feeling that you have taken away much more than just an increased English vocabulary, better English grammar and a greater ability to communicate, you will have increased your self-belief.
Finally, to return to our earlier food theme. There is a good metaphor, an idiomatic expression in English which is: “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”. You only get proof of how good the pudding is by eating it. In the same way, you will only know how good the course is by enrolling and experiencing it.
Find out more:
www.londonschool.com/courses/general-english
Glossary:
Broadening your horizons: making an effort to try new things
About The London School of English
The London School of English has over 100 years of history teaching English and communication skills to adult learners. It is the joint #1 English language school in the UK according to the British Council inspections, the highest rated English language school in the world on Trustpilot, and the best value for money school according The English Language Gazette.
Our practical, individualised approach enables our clients to learn effectively and make rapid progress. Courses include General English, Individual English training, Legal English, Business and Professional English, IELTS preparation and Academic English. We also offer bespoke business solutions for staff training and assessment.
You can learn English with our expert trainers in our London centre at 15 Holland Park Gardens, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, or you can choose to study English online in groups or in individual classes.
Contact us online or via phone +44 (0) 207 605 4142.
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