How to prepare for your course

What to bring

• Personal clothing. If you are not sure about the weather, email your teacher before you depart or check on the BBC Website
• Personal items such as toothbrush, toothpaste, shaver etc
• Pens and notebook
• Dictionary

We recommend that you bring some information about yourself, family and home life to help generate and stimulate conversation with your teacher. For example:

• photographs of your home, family, pets and friends
• information about your company or job
• local tourist information about where you live
• supermarket promotional material explaining prices of food items with pictures – this is an excellent means of comparing prices between the UK and your country.
• Information and pictures of houses and apartments for sale in and around your home town. This is excellent information to compare with the UK and to practise using larger numbers and money.

Sportswear

• If you enjoy jogging or swimming, why not bring your swimming costume or running shoes?!

Life with your host family and teacher

Telephone

Please do not use your host family’s telephone without asking. If you do need to use the telephone, you should offer to pay for the cost of the call. If you are calling internationally, you may find it cheaper to buy a ‘pre-paid’ calling card before you leave home. This should allow you to access a free-phone number in the UK to make international calls.

Washing

Your host family will usually do washing once or twice a week. Your host family will ask you at the end of the week if you have clothes that you need to add to the wash. Make sure that you separate any white items from coloured items!

Meal times

Your host family will let you know their meal times. If you are not sure, please ask. Most families will have breakfast between 07:00 - 08:00 so that you are ready to start lessons at 09:00 or 09:30. Lunch will be around 12:30 - 13:30. Dinner is between 18:00 and 20:00, earlier than many Europeans may be used to eating. Most families will go to bed around 23:00.

British food

British food does not have the best international reputation. However we can assure you that British home cooking is better than you expect! Please let us know at the time of your booking of you have any special food likes and dislikes. Your host family will usually ask you again on arrival if there are any foods that you do not like. If your host family do not ask you, please make it clear to them if there are foods that you really cannot eat!

Breakfast

Most people have a simple breakfast such as cereal (cornflakes etc) with milk, toast with jam or marmalade and coffee or tea and fruit juice. Some people may have eggs for breakfast (boiled, scrambled or poached). The traditional English breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausages, black pudding and bread is rarely eaten at home as most people are too conscious about their health to enjoy this!

Lunch

Lunch is often simple for example sandwiches, soup or salads.

Dinner

Dinner will usually be a main course and dessert, followed by coffee or tea. The British diet is quite varied and your meals will be a variety of pasta dishes, meat dishes (pork, beef or lamb), fish, along with salads and vegetables.