AUA

Some English learners want to speak English fluently, but as I know, they speak Thai as much as possible every time and everywhere even in their English speaking classrooms. Some students told me that they could not improve their language skills by learning at AUA. On the contrary, after I studied at AUA in Academic English Program (AEP) for many classes last year, I had good experience and learned many things because all of the teachers under whom I studied were excellent.

First, in addition to contents on the schoolbooks, what they taught were extremely valuable and useful information. For instance, One teacher gave me four simple factors to consider in order to use the words other and another correctly. Another teacher introduced an excellent reference grammar book Practical English Usage to his students. Unlike Some teachers who probably give incorrect grammar rules to their students unintentionally, he also used it when teaching; therefore, the information he gave was not only correctness but also completeness. Nowadays, I still use this book for correcting my essays before sending them to teachers. Besides what they taught, when they checked my writing homework, I also discovered many surprising mistakes that a Thai student like me had never realized they were wrong because Thai students use these expressions for the whole of their lives; for example, a teacher wrote on my paper that the sentence “I don’t like it, too” was not considered one hundred per cent correct. In addition, because the teachers often raised our grammatical errors on the boards and let us correct them, we became aware of the important mistakes we did, the real errors that occurred when we wrote, we learned how to correct them, and we could avoid making the same mistakes again.

Besides the knowledge they gave, they paid attention and did the best things for their students’ needs. For example, in writing classes, because they known that the students came here to improve their writing skills, and an effective way to achieve this goal is composing, the teachers assigned writing homework regularly and spent their considerable time outside classes thoroughly reading and checking our papers. Because of the teachers’ hard effort, the students’ skills were improved significantly, as they wanted. Furthermore, like child center education, some teacher asked the students what they wanted to emphasize. As a result, the teacher quickly taught or sometimes skipped some lessons that his students had already known, and the students could focus mainly on what they really needed.

Moreover, they managed our valuable time in our classes effectively. For example, if some activities or exercises that the students could do them individually took time, they asked us to do at home instead of consuming our short time in class. Another example is that I was in a speaking class with a number of students. I thought, “How long do I have to keep my mouth shut in my speaking class”, but almost every hour the teacher divided the students into many small groups, and let the students speak. Consequently, we could practice speaking without waiting for each turn for a long time.

Finally, the teachers were very kind and happy to discuss any study problems. The teachers always answered our questions kindly. They always commented kindly on our writing homework. Besides that, once, my classmates and I had some problems with a teacher. Not discussing, some of my friends dropped out of AUA angrily. Luckily, some talked to the teacher directly and openly, and because of the teacher’s kindness, every student in the class and the teacher eventually got the pleasant solutions together.

To summarize, at least one reason why AUA is a good language institute is that the teachers are great. Many Thai students like to take English courses abroad, spending their time and money with nothing guarantee the institutes’ quality. What will happen if the institutes are not as good as they are in their brochures, and we have already paid for a six month period? For me, I think we are here; we are on the right track. The only thing I hope for my next term is that there are more foreigners in my class because I can practice speaking and listening more when talking to a person who has different accent and background.

Siripong Pongpinyopap
สิริพงษ์ พงศ์ภิญโญภาพ

GW5A-MD