Whatever your level of English, Britannia can arrange for you to attend an English language course that is right for you. Here is a selection of top recognized London schools.

City English

Designed summer courses to offer the best language experience in London. The program and associated worksheets are all produced with the aim of developing or practicing language as well as enabling the participants to discover London.

Language Studies International

Newly-redecorated, LSI is equipped with computer rooms with free Internet access, a library and a student lounge. It also organizes leisure and social programmes including discounted musical and theatre trips, museum and gallery visits, student parties and day trips. With its excellent Location in the very center of the city, you are never more than a short walk away from all the major attractions.

English Language Institute

Designed courses to offer maximum flexibility and rapid progress in the English studies.   ELI is conveniently located near Waterloo underground and national rail stations (SE1).

Frances King School of English

Frances King understands the importance of providing students with the personal attention and individual help so necessary in making progress when learning English. The school has two central London locations near South Kensington and Victoria underground stations (SW7 and SW1).

On a summer afternoon, Ciara Whelan, a teacher at a New York, City elementary school, visits one of her students in the Bronx, Sapphira, who fell behind in her reading.

This home visit is the beginning of a reading program called Springboard Collaborative. Springboard runs after-school and summer programs with struggling readers. Once each week, a family member — mom, dad, grandma, an old sibling (兄弟姐妹) — attends an hour-long workshop to help learn and practice the approaches students are learning in class. “Parent engagement (参与) is the beating heart of our programs,” says founder Alejandro Gibes de Gac. “It’s the spirit in the cocktail.”

Sapphira’s Springboard program is held in a classroom at a charter school in Manhattan. In the classroom, Sapphira’s dad, sits with his daughter, helping her mark her place in the book. After a few minutes of reading together, Whelan tells parents to ask students to summarize what is happening every few pages, to check comprehension.

In the past seven years, Springboard has collected a great amount of data to prove its effectiveness. For example: In just five weeks, on average, 3 out of 4 students get to the next reading level or even further. The program also gives books to each child. Backpacks full of school supplies and tablets are offered as encouragement for completing the whole program.

Springboard plans to increase the size by spreading its model, with a goal of reaching 100,000 children in the next four years. Currently it’s running tests in different cities to see which parts of the program are necessary and important and which could be cut if a particular school lacks money for them. For example, the free tablet and backpack, it has found, don’t seem to make much difference in the program’s success. The key instead is the promise that parents make to their children.

To see the future of high-speed railways, you need to go to China.

At the beginning of the 21st century, China had no high-speed railways. Slow and often uncomfortable trains ran across this vast country, with low average speeds making journeys such as Shanghai-Beijing a test of travel endurance (忍耐力). Today, it’s a completely different picture. The populous nation has the world’s largest network of high-speed railways.

With the highest speed of 350 kph on many lines, intercity travel has been completely changed and the dominance (主导地位) of airlines has been broken on the busiest routes. China’s ambition is to make high-speed rail the popular choice for domestic long-distance travel, but these new railways have a much great importance. They are a symbol of the country’s economic power, rapid modernization, growing technological skills and increasing prosperity (繁荣).

It’s hard not to be impressed by the size of some of the new stations, and by the efficiency (效率) with which the system moves vast numbers of people, all with a booked seat and increasingly without the need for paper tickets, just a scan of an ID card at the ticket gates.

Not satisfied with pushing the boundaries of speed, endurance and civil engineering, Chinese companies are among the first in the world to introduce new technology such as autonomous (driverless) train operation and advanced signaling and control technology.

The driverless “bullet trains” connecting Beijing and Zhangjiakou in northern Hebei Province are capable of hitting speeds up to 350 kph, making them the world’s fastest autonomous trains.

When I was about 5 or 6 years old, my mother set me down on a purple banana-seat bike. She _________held the back of the seat while I found my balance. Then she gave me a _________and let me go，calling，“Pedal(踩踏板)，pedal，pedal，glide(滑行)!”as I rode across the grass.

When I was older, I _________ a soccer team and I always rode my bike to go to _________. On my bike, my_________was my own. I can do what I want to. After a(n) _________ practice, I would pick an apple from a tree in the garden near the soccer _________ and eat it while I pedaled home, or _________ to the shop and go home with some of my favorite snacks.

Then I got married and had babies. _________ the house for a two-hour ride was no longer a(n) ____________. When my girls got older, my mom ____________ them to ride their own bikes. “Pedal, pedal, pedal, glide!” she’d ____________ as she used to. But this time it was me ____________ after them with my hand on the seat.

Last spring, my mother died suddenly. I was in deep ____________. Every morning, I’d leave my hotel and ____________ my bike to a bike path. She’s never going to teach us again. I wanted to cry.

On my trip to Dunhuang, Gansu province in December, I had an exciting experience of     36    (explore) Mogao Grottoes (莫高窟) in Dunhuang with 735 caves     37    (build) by believers from 366 to the Yuan Dynasty(1271-1368).

The guide     38     (random) opened one of the old caves at Mogao Grottoes and curious tourists began a journey of mystery. Following     39    tiny points of light from the guide’s small flashlight (手电筒), we learned stories of the past from the Buddhist statues and murals (壁画) in the darkness.

Some wall paintings represented musicians playing Chinese instruments, as well as complex gestures of dancers at parties in an ancient royal court. Others showed interesting and exciting scenes of hunting in the     40     (wood). The statues—even those     41     faces had turned black, and some having lost an arm or two to natural weathering(自然风化)—didn’t stop the solemn (庄严的) power.

Thanks     42     its being the off-season, my group was able to see 12 caves. Tourists, however,     43     (allow) to see a maximum of eight caves during peak season. When I     44     (come) out from the three-hour exploration, I was amazed that I had bought     45     (vary) souvenirs, which help preserve the memory and feel of the place.

Dark rain clouds were gathering in the sky. I was cycling as fast as I could to get home before the downpour. When I felt a few big drops on my head, I decided to head for a bus stop, about a hundred meters away. As I was nearing the bus stop, I saw a woman rushing towards it from the opposite direction, behind whom was a little boy.

Suddenly, a motorcycle sped past me, almost knocking me down. “Hey! Are you mad?” I shouted at the motorcyclist. He turned to look at me, saying, “Sorry.” However, for a split second, he just sped on. Then he was heading right for the woman and little boy! “Watch out! Watch out!” I shouted. I saw the lady turn her head to look at the motorcyclist, with a look of shock on her face.

In an instant, the motorcyclist reached the woman and accidentally hit her. The hit made the woman move backward. The woman and the boy fell on the road, landing right in the path of a truck. “Stop! Stop!” I screamed at the motorcyclist and the truck driver, waving my arms wildly in the air. Thankfully, the truck driver had seen what was happening. With a sudden brake, the truck stopped a few meters from the spot where the woman and the boy had fallen. Meanwhile, the motorcyclist stopped. He kept apologizing, explaining he was in a hurry to the hospital to see his sick mother.

I saw the woman climbing towards the crying child. Pulling over to the side of the road, I ran to help them. By the time I get there, the truck driver had reached them. He picked up the child in his arms and examined his legs.

“I think your little boy is all right,” said the truck driver. “How about you? Do you feel any pain?” The lady replied anxiously, “Please help me. I am pregnant（怀孕的）.”

“Don't panic. You'll be all right. I'll take you and your son to the hospital,” said the driver.

The driver, the motorcyclist and I got them to the hospital just in time.