Our Programs

At The English Academy, we offer a variety of programs to meet our

clients' needs. These courses are taught in our private classes, group
classes, or offered to professionals for corporate training.

 Accent Reduction: Students will work on consonant and vowel sounds,

pitch, basic sentence intonation, stress, rhythm, vowel lengthening and reduction,
and linking and joining sounds. It is designed for those who want to improve their
pronunciation, speak more clearly, and be better understood. A diagnostic test will
be given to students before the course begins to determine their errors and provide
them with opportunities to learn and master the sounds and patterns of English.

 English Grammar: This course focuses on the proper construction of words,

phrases, clauses, sentences, and verb tenses in both spoken and written English. The
teacher will provide students with feedback along with the instruction of punctuation
and mechanics of written English used in emails, tweets, essays, letters, texts, and
more.

 Writing: In this course, the teacher makes writing fun, encouraging, and exciting
while enforcing the proper use of grammar, punctuation, spelling, mechanics, and
word choice. The teacher will provide essential feedback to ensure students
are communicating and organizing their ideas clearly in various forms of writing.

 Idioms/Conversation: English idioms are phrases and expressions that are

hard to understand, but they are used so often in everyday English, it's impossible to
avoid them. The teacher will present them in context, simple conversations, and role-
play, to build fluency as they are an essential part of the cultural element of the
English language. Some examples are: rule of thumb, to think on your feet, to be
under the weather, to look like a million dollars, and more!

 Listening Comprehension: Listening comprehension is the basis

for students' speaking, reading, and writing skills. This course will help students
communicate effectively in daily conversations, outings, meetings, or just talking!
 Our teachers use practical, fun, and efficient techniques to engage students in many
activities to improve their understanding and pronunciation of the English
language and build confidence.

 Communication Skills: Having responsive and engaging communication

skills will leave a powerful impression, whether it is a face-to-face conversation or in
a formal email. In this class, students will learn to communicate with others with
confidence in formal and informal settings, formal and informal writing, strengthen
interpersonal skills, and make a positive first impression. Students will leverage the
knowledge gained to enhance their rapport and employment prospects.

 Presentation Skills: Students will practice and work on developing the

confidence to stand up and deliver a captivating presentation to any audience. In this
class, the teacher will use techniques to help students learn and practice the
fundamentals of making a presentation, such as using the correct body language,
pacing, voice modulation and control, encouraging audience interaction and keeping
them engaged, and finally delivering the presentation successfully.

 Business Speaking/Writing: Developing extensive speaking and writing

skills in the workplace is the key to success. Writing outstanding proposals, reports,
agendas, emails, and other forms of business writing will give students the benefit to
distinguish themselves in the business world. The teacher will enforce using proper
sentence construction, grammar, developing spelling skills, punctuation, word
choice, learning email etiquette, and writing tweets and texts.

 English for Special Purposes: This course is customized for each

student and focuses on the pronunciation and spoken and written communication
skills needed in specialized areas, such as business meetings, giving a lecture,
banking, food and retail services, medicine, management, and various industries. The
curriculum focuses on the learning level and pace of the student and includes
vocabulary, pronunciation, listening/speaking, and writing while allowing students to
engage in role-plays, interact with the teacher or other students, and practice in and
out of the classroom in real-life situations.

 Language Arts: We teach reading, writing, grammar, and vocabulary

to native and non-native speakers ages K-12.
 Test Preparation: TOEFL

Our Clients
Our classes whether private, semi-private, small groups, or
for corporate training, are custom-tailored to meet the needs of
our students. We design and develop lessons, use a variety of
materials, and focus on helping each student reach their objective.
We provide a productive student-centered learning environment
for our students, make every lesson interesting, practical and
applicable, and create opportunities for group discussions
to practice real-life situations in the classroom. We provide
constructive feedback to our students and welcome their input to
help us deliver the best learning experience.

Please click on the navigation arrows to choose the class that fits
you best!

http://www.eslcafe.com/students/

We have over 100 students; most clients are repeat business. We offer courses at any level
or for any specialization. Preparation for the new school year, exam preparation,
professional courses for Companies and courses in state schools. The work requires ideally
two full time teachers . The school is in rented premises (special rent for buyers),
on the second floor of a building right at the heart of town and above a bank. There are 2
classrooms, one of which is suitable for groups. All classrooms are equipped with boards,
CD players and teaching material. There is a large reception area with computers that can
also be used for one to one tutoring with internet access. The school
is equipped with a fax machine and a telephone, professional laser
photocopiers and three computers. We are situated an hour from Venice and beach
resorts and few minutes from the Dolomite mountains. The selling price include all business
plus a well equipped kitchen and a spare bedroom. Ideal for a young couple who would like
to relocate in Italy. Bathroom is complete with shower, possibility of using the space both as
a flat and language studio all in one place and one rent! No need to have a car, everything
is walking distance. Train station 10 min walk, airport, one hour train.
So You Want to Open a Language School?
by David Will

One direction you can take, as you wend your way through the realm
of language teaching, is to open your own school. The rewards are immense and varied,
but the stresses are greater than anything you are likely to have encountered so far. In a
brief article it isn’t possible to be comprehensive but there are certain areas where you must
get it right in order for a project to fly. Four of these are finance, people, promotion and
passion!
Let’s grasp the nettle at the start and sort out finance, for without a proper arrangement in
place you have nothing to underpin your activities. Few in language education still think of
profit as a dirty word, thank goodness! Unless you are lucky enough to be working for a
publicly funded institution, or a religious one, how else are you going to fund the
improvements to your school that you will want to make? How will you pay for your
teachers’ professional development? So make sure you have a profit plan and a balance
sheet drawn up before you start. The mere thought of how to construct such plans can send
shivers up the spine of the uninitiated and end up with them being consigned to the bottom
of the ‘to do list’, especially when there are far more interesting aspects of the business to
be planned! But they are vital. They force you to think through the tough questions such as
‘do I have enough capital available or do I approach a bank?’ and ‘are my assumptions
about profit going to cover my planned costs?’
This is where a good accountant comes in. Look for one running their own firm if possible.
Their own experiences will be more closely related to yours. They are also more likely to be
understanding about keeping start up costs to a minimum. They may even help you
organise your plans for no more than a few hours of their (pricey!) time, on the
understanding that they will do your annual accounting once you are up and running. And
those annual costs can be kept down too. If you present your accountant with a plastic bag
of cluttered receipts and ticket stubs each month you will, of course, be charged to sort it all
out. There are very good accounting software packages such as MYOB on the market
these days. It isn’t hard to learn how to operate these, or to pay a bookkeeper a few hours
each week to do it for you. By presenting your accountant with a neatly kept memory stick
of monthly accounts you will slash the bills! One other thing worth checking is your
government’s business development packages. These often come in the form of a
department or agency offering free advice, and sometimes start up grants or access to
loans.
Without the right people you cannot go far, and we’ve discussed the value of a good
accountant. A sympathetic bank manager, and an inexpensive lawyer (tall orders both, I
grant you!) can be very useful. Most of all you will want to focus on employees. No matter
how much of the managing, ‘DOSing’, teaching and administration you do yourself there will
come a time, more quickly than you might think, when you will employ people. I’ve always
thought that employing somebody who will work closely with you, and to whom you will
entrust large areas of responsibility of your carefully nurtured baby, on the basis of an
interview or two to be absurd. So this is when the trial period and performance review are
important. So many contracts stipulate a trial period which is not then observed. Yet this is
the only real opportunity to observe your new DOS/librarian/teacher in a working
environment. Set up a good long period; three months if industrial relations legislation in
your country allows it. To be fair to employees, and systematic yourself, it is good to give
them some feedback halfway through the trial period. This allows them to adapt their work
to your priorities and offers you an opportunity to encourage the mostly good aspects of
their work. If, at the end of the period, they are not up to the level you want for your students
then don’t kid yourself. Do what’s necessary. For the majority, once they are successfully
employed find ways to encourage independence of thinking and initiative-taking. Show
confidence in them and they will surprise you endlessly. Remember, whatever they do, they
reflect on you!
Promotion is the next essential and it’s useful first to clear up the oft-confused terms of
marketing and promotion. In brief the former means understanding what your markets want,
and preparing your courses to suit their needs. Promotion is telling the market about them!
The familiar observation that if your marketing is done right your promotion will take care of
itself has a lot of truth to it, though it is not the whole story. To illustrate using the obvious if
you are opening in L1 territory (teaching English in Vancouver, or Mandarin in China) then
your markets are often thousands of miles away. Your full-time students will want intensive
courses of 20-30 hours a week so there isn’t much point in preparing a three hour per week
evening course for them. Incidentally there are also implications for your profit plan here.
The time lag between your expenditure on promotion and any return is lengthy and you
shouldn’t expect any resulting income for at least six months. On the other hand if you are
opening to local markets you can hope for almost immediate response to promotional
efforts.
Either way there is a wide range of promotional options available to any business, and
establishing where you get most ‘bang for your buck’ is too often done through painful and
expensive experience. To reduce your risks (which is what you are trying to do every step of
the way) try to find out from the promotional outlets about their target markets and the
extent of their reader/viewership. Ask what experience they have in promoting language
schools. They know they have to deliver the goods in terms of getting students if they want
repeat business from you, so ask them how they will go about this. Look at where other,
successful language schools (your competitors) promote. Either way if you have produced
the right kind of course, at the right price, your promotional work will enjoy better results.
You can also increase you credibility in the market place by joining an industry body, such
as NEAS in Australia which is compulsory in most states, or ARELS in the UK which is not.
In each case the advantages are twofold; by meeting their requirements you check yourself
and maintain high standards of operation. You also attach your school to a recognized level
of quality. Affiliations (such as with I.H.!) can be useful too, but remember to build the cost
of membership into your profit plan.
The last thing I have space to mention is passion! It comes down to knowing yourself,
something we spend a lifetime learning! No matter what advantages you have going for
you, setting up a language school is hard work. Like any business you will suffer knocks
along the way. There will be times when you think you are going bankrupt, and other times
when employees berate you when you believe you are doing the right thing. You will be the
one forced to make the hard decisions. If you don’t everyone will suffer but you’ll be the one
who pays most! There will be times when you are unpopular, no matter how familiar and
friendly an atmosphere you manage to set up (and it is to be hoped that it is as happy a
place to work as you can make it).
The only real way to ride out all of this is if you believe in what you are doing. Your passion
for what you do will take you forward, out of the dark valleys and into the sunshine again. It
will infect those around you, energize and inspire them. It will make your school a fun place
to work and socialize, and everybody who passes through its halls, students and staff alike,
will leave a little better than they came in. If you can achieve that it will be no small thing.
Running a language school can provide a nice living, but few who do it retire to the
Bahamas aged forty! If you want to do that then take up real estate or invest in the stock
market. It comes down to what you want to do. So be sure that you are living and breathing
the project before you start. Be sure you can thrive on the edge and without the security of a
steady job and a pension, at least at the beginning. Be sure you love your project! If you do
then trust yourself and jump in with both feet!
Postscript
Such a large subject cannot be covered comprehensively in a short article so I’ve focussed
on a few important areas without which I don’t think you can (or should!) even start. People
who are thinking of opening a school might like to ask me questions about the many things I
haven’t covered here. Anybody who would like to write to me for a bit of free advice is most
welcome: d.h.will@hotmail.com
and participated in weekend English clubs.

Things Needed
 Business plan
 Capital
 Classroom space
 Teachers
 Teaching resources