How We Teach

There is no secret method. Every school in this industry teaches the same language out of broadly similar books, and anyone claiming a proprietary system is selling you the packaging.

What actually differs is structure: how many hours you speak, how quickly mistakes get corrected, how often somebody checks whether you are improving, and whether the rest of the day supports the lesson or undoes it. That is what this page describes, because it is the part you can compare between schools and the part that decides your result.

One teacher, one student, one hour, working from a textbook matched to your level. That description sounds unremarkable until you compare it with a classroom, where a talkative student can speak for ten minutes and a shy one can get through an entire lesson without saying a sentence.

In a private hour there is nowhere to be quiet. You talk for most of it, and every mistake is corrected while you are still making it rather than summarized in a report at the end of term. That correction rate is the whole argument for one-on-one teaching, and it is why every course here is built around those hours rather than around a classroom with private lessons bolted on.

"How do you teach speaking" has a timetable for an answer rather than a philosophy. Speaking gets worked on in six different places across a day; reading gets two. If you know which skill is holding you back, this is the table to read.

"Around campus" is not a figure of speech. The English-only policy is what turns meals, the walk to the gym and the queue for coffee into practice rather than time off.

Which of those columns you get depends on the course. The lighter courses are built almost entirely from one-on-one hours; the fuller ones add group classes; Eco Hub ESL adds a chosen track on top, whether that is public speaking, business communication or general fluency. The comparison page lays the combinations out side by side.

Improvement you cannot measure is a feeling. The cycle here is deliberately short, so a wrong placement costs you weeks rather than a whole term.

• First daysA level test places you. It is not an exam to pass: answering it honestly puts you in a class that stretches you, and answering it optimistically puts you in one you cannot follow.
• Twice a monthBi-monthly tests check that the level is still right while there is time to change it.
• Every monthA post-test at the end of the month sets your level for the next one. This is the one that actually moves you.
• Not optionalMissing either test carries a penalty and blocks a teacher extension. The rule exists because a student who skips the measuring is usually the one who most needs it.

Teachers are assigned for four weeks. If yours suits you, submit the extension form by 17:30 on the Wednesday of your fourth week and you keep them, up to a maximum of eight weeks with the same teacher. Miss the deadline and you are reassigned automatically. That cap is deliberate: eight weeks with one person is long enough to build real rapport and short enough that you do not spend a whole term adapted to a single accent and teaching style.

Textbooks work the same way. New students can request a change during their first week if there is a good reason, free of charge as long as the book is undamaged. Use that window. Working through a book pitched slightly wrong for you is a quiet way to waste a month, and the fix costs nothing in week one.

A teaching day is a few hours long. The rest of it either reinforces those hours or quietly undoes them, which is why the evening is structured rather than left to chance.

The vocabulary class runs Monday to Thursday with a booklet matched to your level, compulsory for every student in the first four weeks. Optional group night classes run on the same evenings, one activity-based and one discussion-based. Daily writing homework is available as an optional program, and joining it commits you for at least four weeks, because a fortnight of writing practice teaches nobody anything. The study rooms stay open late for the people who work best then.

And underneath all of it sits the English-only policy, which is the least popular rule here in week one and the most credited one at the end. The full daily shape is on the day in the life page, and the terms behind these words are in the glossary.