They may have retired from professional life, but Beijing's senior citizens are proving that it is never too late to learn another language.

Elderly people made up the majority of students in the lecture hall of China Higher Education Press last Saturday for a free English class, which is organized to encourage more residents to take up the language.

Of the 200 or so who attended the first event of this year, more than two-thirds were retirees, with the rest mostly college students.

"Speaking English makes my life happier and meaningful," said Lin Zhaogui, 71. "I don't think I'll ever get senile dementia because I always exercise my brain when speaking English."

The classes, which have run for five years and take place on the last weekend of every month, are laid on by Beijing's foreign affairs office, with lessons taught by experts from Cambridge ESOL, Beijing Foreign Studies University and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

"Not only do the elderly want to speak everyday English, they want to express Chinese culture in English to foreign friends," said David Tool, a consultant for Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Committee who attended last weekend's event.

A professor at Beijing International Studies University, Tool and a handful of retired educators hold an English corner for elderly residents every Thursday and Sunday at Chaoyang Library. Aside from lectures, the class also visits historical sites to learn how to talk about Chinese culture in English.

Lin said his passion for English started two decades ago when he was stationed abroad with the People's Liberation Army. "I would have made more friends and understood the local culture better if I'd have spoken better English," he told METRO.

As well as learning informally with his neighbor, Lin was a frequent visitor of last year's free classes and co-organized a Huangzhuang community English corner. However, he is particularly fond of lectures by foreign teachers. "It creates a native English speaking environment," he said.

During Saturday's class, 500 volunteers from Beijing Foreign Studies University's multilingual service center were also named as volunteers, who from April will tour the city looking for badly translated signs in public areas. They will also help set up signs in other languages, such as French and German.