h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

If you live in London, I can't recommend the City Lit highly enough - I only speak from personal experience of learning Italian there, but the prices are very reasonable, the teaching is of a high standard, and the kind of students it attracts makes attending the courses pretty interesting. In fact, quite a few excellent teachers choose to teach there in the evenings on the basis of the students that attend.

On a general note, at the first couple of classes, be careful about who you sit next to! People tend to sit in the same places throughout the course, so if you don't feel compatible with the person next to you (either you find them annoying, or they don't work at the same level as you) then make sure you sit somewhere else the following week.

There's an old Korean guy in my Italian class, and he's really lovely but really shy, and his English isn't very good and his Italian isn't really up to scratch. I ended up sitting next to him for about three weeks because I kept being delayed on the way to the class, and spent most of the lesson trying to explain to him what was going on and missing what was being taught at the time - I was dragged down to his level very quickly, and soon realised why the bloke who'd been sitting next to him for the first few weeks had transferred to another class! I feel a little bit guilty on a human level about having avoided sitting next to him ever since, but on the other hand I'm paying £70 a term to learn Italian and if I sit next to him that doesn't happen...

As far as keeping up with the homework, what I've found works well is if I declare one night a week a TV-free zone, and put on some nice music and that helps me concentrate on actually getting it done.