Welcome to... English Language

Join a community of 510 million people - and counting...

With 510 million English speakers in the world, improving your English Language skills is a great way to open doors. Most of our students are aiming to enter a British university and to achieve this they need to gain a recognised qualification in English.

The most widely recognised qualification is the IELTS examination, organised by the British Council and Cambridge ESOL. This is not only the key to university entrance, it also provides a good focus for our courses enabling students to learn the academic writing, reading, listening and speaking skills which they need for higher education.

During their course, students will:

• discuss a wide range of topics
• take notes from lectures and videos
• give presentations
• learn essay-writing skills
• sit the IELTS examination.

Other students may follow English language courses on the International Baccalaureate programme, where study includes literature and topic areas such as Media and Culture or Global Issues.

Our English courses

IELTS & Academic English for University Foundation students: runs alongside subject courses. 

Academic English programme: includes general English, study skills and introductions to subject areas. It is designed for students aiming to progress onto a University Foundation Programme. 

International Baccalaureate English B and English A2: these form part of the IB diploma programme.

IGCSE English as a Second Language: usually taken alongside other IGCSE subjects by Pre:Programme students.

Improve your English and your social life!

There are lots of ways outside the courses themselves to develop your English while at the college. For example:

• join our Debating Club
• join our Drama Club
• make friends among the community of international students and communicate in English
• use self-study periods in the IT lab to go online and do interactive activities.

Here are three of the sites which University Foundation students at CATS Canterbury find useful:

www.IELTS.org

Website of the IELTS examination. It gives information about the exam and also provides practice materials and advice.

www.uefap.com

A great site for any student wanting to study at university in English. There are exercises and advice on everything you need from essay writing to listening to lectures to avoiding plagiarism.

www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish

The BBC provides lots of interesting activities for EFL learners. This is a good place to develop your English and have fun at the same time.

 Interesting Language Facts

Number of living languages: 6912

Number of those languages that are nearly extinct: 516

Language with the greatest number of native speakers: Mandarin Chinese (1.051 billion!)

Language spoken by the greatest number of non-native speakers: English (350 million non-native speakers)

Country with the most languages spoken: Papua New Guinea has 820 living languages.

How long have languages existed: Since about 100,000 BC

First language ever written: Sumerian or Egyptian (about 3200 BC)

Oldest written language still in existence: Chinese or Greek (about 1500 BC)

Language with the most words: English, approx. 250,000 distinct words