Questions as for language training in the Center

• How many people are there in a group?
• What is needed for registration and how to realize it?
• What shall I do if I have "a flexible schedule"?
• In what way are the lessons given?
• How much time it will take me to become perfect in English?
• Have you got a license for English training?

Miscellaneous: regarding the English language

• What vocabulary is needed to communicate easily?
• How many people in the world speak English?
• How many words are there in English?
• Is your Center related to the American Language Center?

Questions as for language training in the Center

Q. How many students are there in a group?

A. According to our rules, at basic lessons a group consists of no more than 10 students. Minimum number of students is 3. The amount depends on time of lessons and semesters. But in any case the number of students ranges from 3 to 10 (5-6 persons on average).

Q. What is needed for registration and how to realize it?

A. During registration (it actually lasts for 4 - 5 days before the beginning of a semester; the date of coming registration is here) you will be offered to pass a test to determine your knowledge of English, whereupon we will set your time-table. By the way, you can test yourself on-line and bring the results at our office. In this case you need only to pass an interview, after which runs the registration itself. The procedure foresees filling in a questionnaire, conclusion of an agreement and payment. To conclude an agreement your passport data is a must, therefore the passport availability is a single obligatory condition for registration. A passport can be either Ukrainian (for the residents of Ukraine) or foreign one, including passports of other states (for nonresidents). Unfortunately, driving licenses, students' cards, etc. do not give the right to conclude an agreement. All questions and claims refer to our respected Tax Inspection.

Q. What shall I do, if I have "a flexible schedule"? Can I take lessons with different groups at different times?

A. not. Different groups of the same level are carried out by different teachers and, if you change groups, your training will be ineffective. As under terms of training the number of students in a group does not exceed 10, attendance of lessons by a stranger, despite he is our student, is forbidden.

Q. Should I do homework? In what way are the lessons given?

A. Doing homework is necessary and is marked separately, as well as ability to make up dialogues, student's pronunciation and grammar. Training is intensive enough, so it will be hard to achieve positive result without independent work.
At lessons given by foreign teachers the textbooks of Publishing House Longman "True Colors" are used with purpose to develop colloquial skills in English; therefore you will be taught to make dialogues, to discuss the specified issues and to work over texts (audition). At these lessons grammar is paid minimum attention to, as there are special grammatical lessons, where you work deeper over the grammatical themes, touched by foreign teachers at their lessons, with the skilled Russian-language teacher.

Q. How much time it will take me to become perfect in English?

A. Before talking about the time frames of mastering perfect English, we would like to put a counter-question: Do you perfectly know you native language? Don't hurry to answer "no problem". If you have thought over our question and still answer "yes", consider, how much time it took you to master the native language to perfection. After answering this question, you will determine time frames to become perfect in English.

Q. Have you got a license for English training?

A. We asked our lawyer, Natalia Lazareva, Director of law firm Kolan Ltd, to answer this question; at the same time we sent a letter of inquiry to the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine.
Here are some quotations from the answer of the law firm (No. 5, dated April 20, 2004): "The question of licensing of education is regulated by the decision of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine No.1380, dated September 29, 2003 "About Licensing of Educational Services". According to it, services in such field as preschool, general, secondary, out-of-school, vocational and higher education are subject to licensing provided the proper professions are included in the State Classifier of Professions DK-003-95 and provided to issue the document of education of State standard to the trained persons.

Thus, if courses of foreign languages are not resulted in assuming of qualification and issuing of the document of education of State standard, they are not subject to licensing".

The official answer of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine (No. 6/1-162, dated March 30, 2005) see here.

Thus, those courses of foreign languages in Ukraine, which proudly declare availability of license, to put it softly, deceive their students. Some set up a license of out-of-school work with pupils for a license of foreign language training, others boast of a license belonging to college, where such firm resides. But both licenses are nowise related to the courses of foreign languages. Looking through the license, pay attention, for what person, program or activity it was given out.
In general it is more appropriate to be interested in accreditation of courses, but that is another matter.

Miscellaneous

Q. What vocabulary is needed to communicate easily?

A. There is a list of 850 words, enough to communicate in English, - OGDEN's BASIC ENGLISH (operations - 100 words, things - 400 + 200 picturable, qualities - 100 + 50 opposites). You can take them here.

Q. How many people in the world speak English?

A. English is the third language, taking into consideration the amount of native speakers, i.e. people for which it is mother tongue (322 million in 2000), but the most popular "second" language in the world (114 countries). In all about 510 million people speak this language. English belongs to the German group of Indo-European family of languages. For more details see here.

Q. How many words are there in English?

A. This question, by the way, is one of the frequently asked one in Internet. And none of the sites gives a clear answer. The point is that the question arose up because of wrong understanding of language as such. For example: a word "mouse". The question is: Should we such words as a mice, mice, a baby mouse, interpret as one lexical unit or a separate word? A mouse as the rodent and a computer mouse are different words or one?
(To demonstrate difficulties in calculation of amount of words, we can cite as an example the attempts of researchers of different ages to count the amount of words in Shakespeare's works. The difference of 16 000 to 30 000 words talks for itself.) However, have a look at the second edition of Oxford English Dictionary to make sure, that the greatest dictionary counts 290 000 lexical articles with 616 500 different forms of words. But words, related to slang or dialectal words as well as many scientific and technical terms, are not included there. (For example, there are about 1,4 million of described types of insects.) Taking into account the foresaid, when speaking about the general amount of words which CAN be USED in modern English, it enabled to figure out over 3 millions. But, in English only about 200 000 words are in frequent use. Well-educated American can know about 20 000 words, but in everyday use are no more than 2 000.

Q. Is your Center related to The American Language Center?

A. . No, it is NOT and NEVER was! ELC has never sent and is not going to send SPAM and other types of the obtrusive advertising by Internet, post or personally, under any pretext. We consider such ways of advertising the unworthy methods of running business and we denounce them in every way.
P.S. We have regularly got so called "business proposals" to teach English in Moscow Center of American English. To relax read notes of ALC manager, sent us in one of SPAM-letters, but this time by their "competitors".

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