What the United Kingdom can offer to India that other countries cannot, says the new British High Commissioner to India James Bevan, is the English language.Britain is providing English language training to a million Indian teachers, a programme that will indirectly reach a third of India’s population.

The British Council Colombo has served as the educational bridge between Sri Lanka and the United Kingdom for some 60 years now, specializing in language studies, and strengthening educational and cultural exchange between the two nations. Now it is preparing to undergo a complete refurbishment.

China is taking note. It has begun flying Indonesia's Islamic scholars to China on study tours in order to show how Muslim minorities thrive in China, despite its official atheism. It's the kind of public diplomacy that the US has used for decades to burnish its image, so it's hardly surprising that China is doing the same.

The Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program has been around since 1987. This program, the largest component of which places native English speakers in Japan’s junior and senior high schools for year-long tours of duty as Assistant Language Teachers (ALTs), has thousands of alumni from around the world – more than 20,000 from the United States alone.

Teachers and learners of English can now access a new resource to help build vocabulary and improve language skills thanks to the British Council’s latest Facebook app. Pic-Your-Wits is an interactive English vocabulary game with pixelated pictures for learners to guess the words and beat the clock. It is available on Facebook today for free.

The programme is aimed at improving confidence of teachers in using English, to create an atmosphere for students to interact in English and to encourage teachers to adopt child-centric methods in the classroom.

Teachers and learners of English have now got a new tool to help master the sounds of the English language thanks to the British Council's latest iPad pronunciation app. Sounds Right is an interactive learn english pronunciation chart...