How to choose a good English school by Skype?
You know you want to improve your English, and you know you want to do it by Skype because it’s a convenient and flexible way to learn English.
However, when you do your Internet research, you realize that you have many different options, different ways to study, and you don’t know what to choose.
In this article, we’re going to help you identify what is a good English school by Skype.
What are the criteria to select your English school by Skype?
There are many criteria that differentiate English schools by Skype.
1. What kind of school do you want to study with?
There are different kinds of English schools by Skype. You have these huge platforms that is the meeting place between teachers and people who want to learn English. They usually offer English and many other languages. The advantage is that they gather a lot of people, the minus point is that they don’t check quality and your learning experience can vary from one tutor to the other.
You also have many website of individual tutors who open a website and offer their services online. The advantage is that you get to know more about a specific tutor, but you are tied to his sole availability and style.
The third kind of English school is what EBS offers, a choice of tutors that have been carefully selected, tutors with different backgrounds to offer variety in terms of accents, availability, and at the same a personal touch with with each tutor from the management to ensure quality.
2. Can you choose your tutor’s accent?
In some low-cost English schools, English tutors from India or the Philippines are hired to teach you. It could be OK for a short period of time, but you don’t want your accent to sound Indian!
At EBS, we only offer you English tutors from the USA, the UK and Australia. We’ve noticed that our students are very happy to be able to study with real native-English tutors, they learn expressions from these countries, they understand native-English speakers better and their accent improves a lot. Some students want a specific accent because they are traveling to a certain country, others will choose a couple of tutors, one from the USA, one from the UK to get used to a variety of accents.
3. When do you want to study English, how do you make bookings and do you cancel lessons?
EBS offes English lessons between 7am and 10pm CET and bookings are done at least 12 hours in advance, but in case of emergency you should contact our head office to see if a tutor is available in shorter notice. We do our best to find you a suitable tutor even for last minute lessons, it’s quite important if you need to prepare for a job interview coming soon.
Bookings are completely transparent and done via an online platform, our Member Area, where you can check your account and manage your bookings and cancellation. For people with a busy schedule, we even offer a 1 hour cancellation policy option.
4. What are the offers and prices?
In some English schools by Skype, you have to buy a big package of lessons. At EBS, we offer affordable prices and you can buy as low as 5 lessons at a time. If you’re not sure and don’t want to commit for huge packages, you don’t have to.
5. How are built the courses?
When you’re looking for 1-to-1 English lessons by Skype, you should also pay attention to the teaching method used and the courses that are offered. In some schools, they already have PowerPoint lessons ready to go and they won’t make an effort to adapt to your needs. At EBS, we have plenty of material that we use, however, the tutor is responsible for choosing suitable material for each of his students. Every student gets a personalized course based on its level, needs and objectives. It’s completely custom-made.
We offer 3 streams of courses, conversation (general English), professional (business English and job interview preparation) and exam preparation (TOEIC/TOEFL).
Choosing an online English school by Skype is not easy, there’s a lot of subtleties that you won’t grasp at first sight. Feel free to register for an English trial lesson at EBS to see for yourself how EBS can suit your needs.
