Skills for Life - Free Employability & Skills Courses
Develop the skills you need to participate fully in modern life, make progress at work and express yourself with confidence.
Whether you are a cleaner or a junior manager, office or construction worker, beginner or advanced level, our courses will help you develop the most in-demand workplace skills and at same time improve your general communication, English, ESOL, Data Literacy, Maths and Digital Skills. Our courses will also improve your skills and competences for life outside work from going to the doctors and filling out forms to talking about politics and discussing art.
Inside and outside work, in all types of jobs, at all levels, adults need to be problem-solvers, analysers, decision-makers, team-players, to see the bigger picture and be detail-oriented. Join our courses, online or face-to-face, and develop these universal essentials skills with our motivating, innovative and professional tutors.
Which course is right for me?
To make sure you book onto the right course, we'll ask you to do a pre-course assessment. A face to face assessment is best and we advise you to do this. If you can’t do a face to face assessment you can do it online.
- Online assessment - Choose a course from the list below and on the next page, click on ‘Start Assessment’.
- Or book a face-to-face assessment - call 020 8078 0482 or contact us by email at universal.skills@citylit.ac.uk for an appointment.
For English, Maths and ESOL, face-to-face assessments take place every Wednesday evening between 6pm and 8pm and every Friday (from 21st April onwards) between 11am and 1pm.
For Digital skills (Computing) courses, face-to-face assessments take place every Friday (from 21st April onwards) between 11am and 1pm.
Most of our courses are FREE if you are on a low income or claiming benefits. You will also usually need to do a pre-course assessment. For more details contact universal.skills@citylit.ac.uk or click the links below.
- English language GCSECourse start date: Thu 27 Oct 2022 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Are you excited by the English language? Do you want to engage with fiction and non-fiction? Do you need to improve your writing and critical thinking across a range of topics and themes? An English Language GCSE is an essential qualification for anyone wanting to practise higher-order reading skills and use these to develop fluent and effective writing. It is one of the most commonly required qualifications by employers and universities, and will enhance your job and education prospects. This specification will ensure that you can read fluently and write effectively, demonstrate a confident control of Standard English and write grammatically correct sentences, deploying figurative language, and analyse texts.
(Assessments including mock tests will take place in the City Lit building and you need to be able to attend these in person as required).
You MUST pass the Introduction to English Language GCSE course (see website) before you can join this course. You also need to complete a pre-course assessment face-to-face or in person. Contact universal.skills@citylit.ac.uk / (telephone temporarily unavailable) or click the Start Assessment button on this page.
At the same time you complete your pre-course assessment, please also complete our pre-course form and tell us more about yourself.
. https://forms.gle/2iQBRRsjsuociqVW6.
This course is free for learners who meet the residency criteria and have not achieved a GCSE grade C (4) and higher in EnglishFull fee £0.00 Senior fee £0.00 Concession £0.00 - Maths for business: the essential skills to run a company and make a profit (level 1-2)Course start date: Thu 21 Sep 2023
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Are you working in business, self-employed or wishing to set up your business but confused by the differences between gross profit and net profit, simple and compound interest, mark-ups and mark-downs? This course will unpick the key features you need to know in order to run a profitable business and focus on the maths associated with these features. By the end of this course you will be confident you can appear on Dragons' Den, at ease with the numbers, calculations, and concepts you need to run a successful business.
Free course: This is a Multiply course. Multiply is a new government programme to help adults improve their numeracy skills. This course is free for Londoners aged 19 or over if you don’t have a GCSE in maths at grade 4/C or equivalent.Full fee £0.00 Senior fee £0.00 Concession £0.00 - English pronunciation: stage 3Course start date: Thu 28 Sep 2023 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Kean Street Wellbeing Centre
Tutors: David John GwillimDesigned for students who have completed 'English Pronunciation' stages 1 and 2, and those who have near native placement. Conversation and the reading aloud of a variety of texts will help to pinpoint those pronunciation worries still to be addressed when speaking English as a non-native speaker. This course will be taught in the college.Full fee £219.00 - English pronunciation: stage 2Course start date: Thu 27 Apr 2023 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Kean Street Wellbeing Centre
Tutors: David John GwillimDesigned for people who have completed ‘English Pronunciation: stage 1’ although new students with sufficient skills can join. Develop confidence and clarity, explore diphthongs and triphthongs, inflection and the rhythms of Standard English. This term the course will be taught in the college.Full fee £219.00 - English dialogue: speaking, listening, pronunciation, performance (level 1-2)Course start date: Thu 4 May 2023
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Do you want to sound ‘more English’ when you speak? Do you want the chance to experiment with becoming expressive in English, playing with how you sound when you speak different dialogues? On this course, you will work on different dialogues from everyday speech and well known plays. And you will also create your own! The chance to work on how to perform and enact this speech will enable you to focus on how to link and ‘chunk’ words, develop your rhythm and stress, work on your fluency and ensure that the meaning of what you are saying becomes expressed. You will also be working with ‘real’ language, not the sometimes artificial language of English course books. Although you will be performing the texts, you do not need to be an actor, just willing to give it a go. By writing your own dialogues, you will also develop your writing skills so by the end of the course you can write and perform together with your classmates your own 5 minute play!.
You need to do a pre-course assessment face-to-face or online. Contact universal.skills@citylit.ac.uk / (telephone temporarily unavailable) or click the Start Assessment button on this page. Log on with your email address (not name). Use Chrome if possible.
This course is FREE if a) you are on a Low Wage or b) you are either on Jobseekers' Allowance (JSA) or Employment & Support Allowance(ESA) or c) you want to get a job or progress into a better job and you receive other state benefits (including Universal Credit). For more information click hereFull fee £159.00 Senior fee £127.00 Concession £80.00
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