|
Why do you
have a rotating loan system? Why not just lend all the cards
for a one year course? |
| |
| This way we can share one
year’s set of cards between 2 or 3 users. The reduction on our
investment in card production helps to make the free offer. |
| |
| Isn’t it too much
material? |
| |
| It seems to be just about
right. Look at how much we do learn naturally: |
| |
| "Word learning generally
begins around the age of 12 months. Therefore, high school
graduates, who have been at it for about 17 years, must have
been learning an average of 10 new words a day, continuously
since their first birthday, or about a new word every 90
waking minutes. Using similar techniques, we can estimate that
an average six-year-old commands about 13,000 words
(notwithstanding those dull, dull Dick and Jane primers, which
were based on ridiculously lowball estimates). A bit of
arithmetic shows that preliterate children, who are limited to
ambient speech, must be lexical vacuum cleaners, inhaling a
new word every waking two hours, day in, day out." |
| |
| Steven Pinker - The
Language Instinct |
| |
| Is it really this good? |
| |
| In some senses it is
better - the magic of the kid’s progress really has to be
experienced to be believed. But as we say elsewhere on the
website, we are a small company, passionate and enthusiastic -
and our service has occasionally in the past lost coninuity...
We plan to give excellent service all the time, and sometimes
the plan doesn’t quite work. |
| |
| My school is doing ok.
We use a mainstream course and our clients seem quite happy.
Why should we consider YES. |
| |
| If you are doing ok and
your students make good progress, then fine. YES might be
better than what you are using. If you do not consider it,
then you might find a competitor does. Then again, maybe you
will keep doing fine. It is your choice. I know YES is very
good, I do not know who it is specifically good for until I
talk to the enquirers. |
|
|
| Why start now - surely
I should wait until YES is more well-known? |
| |
| We find that parents
really appreciate YES and love recommending it, well-known or
not. The longer you wait, the more you miss out on this
potential to increase your business. |
| : |
| Can you advise on
marketing? |
| |
| We can share our
experiences in marketing techniques and leaflet design for our
Eikaiwa. We are very cautious about telling people ways to do
it, as a lot of small business people are very independent
minded. I should know - I am one of them! I see it more as a
mutual sharing. Please ask. |
| |
| Can you help start a
school? |
| |
| You might well be able to
start using YES if you are planning to expand to more than 30
students. How hard are you prepared to work? |
| |
| Can you help recruit
teachers? |
| |
| We can point you towards
useful web sites and other recruiting grounds. We can not
recommend individuals |
| |
| Do you use songs and
music in your lessons? |
| |
| Melodic vocal use and
chanting are built into our teachers’ vocal techniques. We
have found exterior sources to be a distraction and can not be
integrated into the tapestry of English we weave. |
| |
| How do parties and
events for the children fit into your system? |
| |
| Three years ago I bowed to
a colleague’s opinion and did a little Christmas party in each
lesson in December. We were inundated with complaints asking
why we were not teaching their child -‘Why aren't your lessons
enjoyable enough that you have to make special party to cheer
the kids up? I was unhappy with receiving complaints. I was
delighted that my clients understood that YES really worked
and gave their kids plenty of fun as well. Since then we have
stuck to YES (it is enough) and my colleague always bows to my
superior wisdom (in my dreams, at least). |
| |
| |
