Term time courses
Build your confidence and extend your skills with our short online courses. The courses have weekly classes and normally last for 4 to 6 weeks. They are designed for current UAL students and are free to attend.
The courses from 12 October to 6 November 2026 focus on speaking skills, academic study skills and discipline-specific language skills, see below and follow the links for further details.
Speaking skills:
Build your confidence in speaking English in an informal environment talking about art and creativity. Class sizes will be small to make sure everybody has a chance to speak.
Build your confidence in communicating in general English, with a clear focus on speaking, listening and language (grammar and vocabulary). This will support your communication in all contexts: study, social, work.
Develop your confidence and learn key language for communicating with students and staff in seminars, group work and tutorials. Improve your speaking skills by focusing on fluency and functional language eg agreeing/disagreeing, speculating, clarifying, introducing ideas.
Writing Skills
Language for academic writing
You will learn about the features of good academic writing and how to organise your sentences and paragraphs appropriately, how to select and expand vocabulary for your assignments, and how to produce the noun phrases and sentence structures that will make your writing more precise, clear and objective. You will learn how to include your own ideas and the ideas of others, using paraphrasing, citing and referencing.
Academic study skills:
Academic AI literacy and language: going beyond the prompt
This course will support you with the use of AI – Artificial Intelligence (MTT and LLM) for each academic language skill that you are developing through your studies. You will learn how to use these generative AI tools with greater purpose, success and appropriacy, particularly with regard to developing your academic English language and skills.
British academic culture
This is a general introduction to British Academic Culture, and you will be introduced to the key aspects, conventions and skills that are required of you at university level study. You will learn about our approaches to teaching and learning and how you are assessed, including how to do well in assignments.
Discipline-specific language skills
Gain a better awareness of the language of design and its discourse - raise your confidence in use through a focus on vocabulary, critical structures, reading and speaking about theory and practice, and writing both as designer and critic.
Intensive courses
We offer intensive Academic English Skills courses during the winter and spring holiday periods.
-
Gemma Courtney-Davies, MA Graphic Design Communication, Camberwell College of Arts
Academic English resources
Academic English resources and useful links for art and design studies (PDF 1.2MB).
-
Realf Heygate,BA Fine Art, Central Saint Martins
Machine translation tools
Student guide to the use of machine translation tools.
-
Cats and interiors by India Tuersley
Online resources
Academic support resources to help you communicate and make the most of being part of a diverse global community.
