The English department staff seeks:

•    To provide students with a complete preparation course in all IELTS exam tasks and requirements.

•    To help develop students' language skills and linguistic knowledge to score 6.5 or above in the exam.

•    To help develop students' language skills and linguistic knowledge to make significant progress in any general English course they may follow.

•    To develop students' English and study skills (such as note-taking, planning and structuring work) to be of cross subject help.

Through working with A-level teachers, our English teachers also provide linguistic support in all of a student's A-level subjects. Their experience in teaching EFL (English as a Foreign Language), EAP (English for Academic Purposes) and ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) provides them with a range of teaching and learning skills which can be applied in all subjects.

All departments at the College are developing 'Content and Language Integrated Learning' (CLIL) capabilities through a co-ordinated programme of cross departmental co-operation.

IELTS (Academic)

For overseas students attending the College who do not yet have a formal English language qualification (a requirement of entry to a UK university) the College offers an IELTS (Academic) programme that is taught alongside a student's A-level programme.

Students for whom English is a second language who achieve a minimum score of IELTS 6.5 at the end of their first year at the College have the option to end their studies of IELTS English at this point. However, most overseas students at the College are aiming for universities such as the London School of Economics, Imperial College, UCL, Oxford, Cambridge and universities such as those listed generally require students to achieve IELTS 7.0/7.5 for many degree programmes. Consequently, many students continue with their IELTS programme for the first term of their second year at the College on a voluntary basis to achieve the standard required by such universities.

The Academic IELTS courses aim to provide comprehensive and tailored preparation for the IELTS exam, as well as the wider academic and general use of English at both the college and university thereafter.

With the exam tasks and required skills paramount (students must achieve a minimum of 6.5 before they have the option of leaving the course), varied topic based courses are run following an integrated skills approach. As much as possible, topic areas and materials used are chosen with both the exam level needs and students' interests taken into account.

Established IELTS materials are used alongside the creative use and exploitation of authentic resources such as television and radio programmes, the internet, newspaper articles and magazines such as 'The Economist', 'The Week' and 'Time'.

Varying the materials not only allows students to familiarise themselves with the exam requirements, develop their skills and build confidence but it encourages them to further their language abilities generally, allowing for a greater flexibility and ease of use.

For full details of IELTS (Academic) visit www.ielts.org

Pre-sessional English as a Foreign Langauge

For students who do not have an IELTS (Academic) qualification of 5.0 or above, the College offers a full-time pre-sessional programme of one, two or three terms duration dependent upon the amount of time that the student will require to reach level 5.0. Students are able to enrol for this pre-sessional programme at any point through the academic year. In addition to teaching English, the programme includes preparation for particular A-level subjects such as mathematics. Students who are of compulsory school age who enrol for this programme also have PE and PSHE built into their timetable.