Traveling the World

Since I have had so much free time lately, I took it upon myself to jot down any thoughts that come into my mind about how to learn language (based on my Psychological education, common sense, and personal trial-and-error). When I was working at New Oriental all my students asked me how they could improve their English. I would give them a few tips but I never gave them everything because then how could I make this book (or whatever other thing I could turn my ideas/knowledge into)?

The problem with training schools like New Oriental is that they don’t care about students. They only care about how much money they make, when they make it, and how much they can keep for themselves. It’s a damn shame that this is the reality of the English learning industry in this country, but what can you do?

Mark and I are working on a plan to start a private tutoring service, and I want it to run in a manner that has the students and their progress in mind FIRST. I strongly believe that people want to learn, yet are kept in the dark about how to do it so that training schools like New Oriental can make them repeat customers. I spoke to a student of Mark’s yesterday (a student from New Oriental) and she said that she has friends who have failed the IELTS examination (which allows a Chinese student the ability to apply to a university outside of China) several times and went back to New Oriental each time for “more preparation” on the order of 20,000rmb per time they return. Now you may think this is an outrageous number (about $3000), and it is.. but this is called the “VIP Student Program.”