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London is one of the most cosmopolitan cities on the planet. People from all over the world are drawn to the city for any number of reasons. Some come because family or friends reside in the city, some come for the bright lights and bustle, while many come for business purposes: London is one of the capitals of international trade and the dominant city for European finance. Because of this, and the city's cosmopolitan make-up business language courses are perennially popular. There are a number of excellent language schools in London and the surrounding areas; whether you want to study something popular like a German course, or something considered more 'specialist', like an Arabic course or a Hebrew course, you will find a good number of highly qualified teachers.

It is important to choose the correct school and teacher for your needs. Some schools specialise in teaching businessmen. These will often charge more, work with smaller classes (or one-to-one) and focus on different parts of the language to schools who mainly teach to children and younger people. For anyone needing to learn English for business in London, it makes good sense to choose a specialist school and not one that aims to provide French courses and Italian courses to school age learners. For the schools, the benefit of teaching business languages is that it will often be paid for by the students' employers. Because language schools are all businesses at heart, this is important: it can be hard work chasing payment from all over the world.

There is no formal assessment for language schools, although you can usually tell a good one because it will have regular British Council inspections. The British Council is responsible for promoting British culture around the world and this includes ensuring the quality of language teaching. Anyone wishing to study English in London would do well to find a British Council approved school in which to do so. That is not to say that all good schools have British Council approval, as some choose to opt out of the scheme.

You can find some excellent resources for language learning and training on the internet. English teachers can check out Guardian Online's excellent education section and the listings on TEFL.com. Other sites like the BBC are very useful - they have a variety of online classes to help with the basics of language learning. There is, however, no substitute for practice and this is found most easily in the classroom.