Berlitz | English Language Academy

Dear Shokhsanam,

Thanks for your comment.

We are surprised to see that you think the host family was just "business" to you. Unfortunately this website does not allow me to insert a photo of your note that you left the family, but I have typed your message word by word as you can see below:

"Dear XXX, Thank you so much for professional service and delicious foods. It's from me! Enjoy it :)" and signed with your signature.

Dear Vanessa,

Thank you so much for your lovely feedback. We are very pleased that you have enjoyed your lessons with us and look forward to welcoming you back to the school with a heart once the pandemic is over..unless you would like to join our online lessons :)

Wishing you all the very best and please keep safe!

Thanks and regards

Dear Dmitrij,

Thank you so much for your review! We are truly happy you enjoyed your stay at ELA and were able to learn from our extremely experienced teachers in our small international classes. We are also very happy you enjoyed the tour we gave you and the help you got from our staff.

Hope you have a truly wonderful; day.

Thanks and regards

Dear Milen,

Thank you so much for your review!

We do in fact pride ourselves in keeping the classes small and international so that students who visit ELA can maximize their stay here. Moreover, all our teachers are highly qualified and very experienced.

It was a great pleasure having you with us and we wish you all the very best :)

Thanks and regards

Dear Andres,

Thank you very much for your review!

As you rightly pointed out, ELA has always been very strong in the academic area and we pride ourselves in delivering engaging lessons which ultimately help our students improve in the language which will undoubtedly open many doors and opportunities.

At ELA we also have a fun packed activities programme for all our students. In fact, activities are organised everyday both in the afternoon and in the evening. However, we have taken your constructive comment on board and we will be marketing these programmes more with students.

It was a pleasure to have you join our family at ELA and we wish you all the very best for your future endeavours :)

Best regards,

Dear Mr. Pietsch,

Thank you for your feedback on our courses. We will be forwarding this to our Director of Studies who will ensure that your feedback for more language-based educational games in the class gets passed down to our teaching staff.

Nonetheless, I am pleased to inform you that we offer a fun packed-activities programme for all our students. These activities take place in the afternoon and in the evening as well as during the weekends, keeping our students gainfully occupied whilst interacting with students of different nationalities and getting to know Maltese history and culture. I am also pleased to inform you that these activities change weekly.

We hope to see you again next year, and please note that all of our students are more than welcome to give us feedback during their course, which generally leads to immediate results in the area in question.

Dear Jolanta,

Thank you very much for your review! We are very pleased you have enjoyed your stay at ELA and that you have improved your skills in the English language. It was a pleasure for us to welcome you to our international family and we look forward to having you again with us.

We wish you all the best!

The ELA Team.

Dear Dzhunior,

Thank you very much for your review! We are very pleased that you had such a fruitful stay with us and we will be sure to let Bianca know :) We hope we will have the opportunity to welcoming you and your friends again at ELA in the future :)

Best regards

Dear Mr Al Awihee,

First and foremost we would like to thank you for your feedback. We at ELA are always seeking ways of improving on the service we offer our students, as can be attested by the other comments on this page.

I would like to start by saying that ELA has been established since 1988 and is a founding member of FELTOM, the local organisation representing the most important schools on the island). ELA’s academic staff complement is fully qualified as per the regulations laid down by the ELT Council within the Education Department. In addition, our teachers have to attend regular CPD training to ensure they keep abreast of the latest pedagogical approaches to the teaching of English. We also observe our teachers at work and have regular staff development meetings in order to ensure that a very high standard is kept. It is in the school’s interest that this is so, since our best adverts are the many satisfied clients that leave our school content with the quality of language teaching they receive.

As you well know, on the first day you had to sit for a student placement test which consisted of two parts: a 30-minute multiple choice test consisting of 46 questions to test your grammar and lexis, together with a 5-minute oral test to gauge your level of spoken English. In the written portion of the assessment you scored roughly half the marks available, while in your speaking test you fared slightly better with the examiner’s note saying that there was a noticeable first language interference in pronunciation and also sentence structure. Moreover, it was felt that you needed to work on widening your vocabulary pool. Needless to say that these results did not reflect an Advanced (C1) level, as you insisted you were, but, rather, an Intermediate (B1 – Higher) level.

When you disputed this placement, we followed the normal procedure of conferring with your tutors, all three of whom confirmed our initial assessment. However, we consented to you sitting for a progress test, to eliminate any lingering doubts. Normal procedure in our school is for learners to be allowed to sit for this test after four weeks of tuition, however we allowed you to sit this test after only ten days, as you were very insistent that you could not possibly have been an Intermediate level learner, but in fact insisted that you were an Advanced (C1) level learner.

This test was corrected by a different person in order to ensure an entirely objective assessment. You were given an Intermediate Level Progress Test in order to see if you had successfully completed at least 75% of the Intermediate Level syllabus. Unfortunately, the score in that test was quite a bit lower than the minimum 75% required to move up to a new level, and we were forced to strongly recommend that you stayed in the Intermediate level for at least another two or three weeks, as this had, so far, been supported by two different assessments, two different examiners, and three different teachers (apart from the fact that this review is replete with grammar and syntax errors not usually committed by a C1 learner).

We however, accepted your request to change to our business course since it would have made your lessons more relevant to your work-related needs. When we approached you to see how you were faring in class, you told us that everything was fine after this change, hence why we cannot fully understand the reason behind this feedback.

We are pleased to note that you enjoyed your time with the host family we chose for you. Since you commented that the food was somewhat ‘tasteless’, we took the trouble of contacted all the students who happened to be staying with the same family to check what they thought of this issue. All were very satisfied with the food and portions given.

One final note: At ELA we take pride in carefully assessing our students before placing them in the classes we think are most appropriate to their level. This is also important to ensure that prospective applicants do not find themselves in a situation where other students in their class have a different overall CEFR level to theirs, as would have been the case here if we had acceded to your request.

Thank you for your feedback Asia! We look forward to having you with us once again :)

Thank you very much Michele! We are very happy to see you had a great time at ELA! We look forward to having you and your friends with us once again in the future :)

We are very pleased you had a great time at ELA Imre! We look forward to welcoming you back at ELA :)

Dear Ms Abad,

Thanks for taking your time to write a review about your experience at ELA. We are pleased to see that overall your experience with us was a pleasant one and that you would not hesitate to recommend us to your friends. As regards your problems with your accommodation, these could have easily been addressed if you had approached one of the staff there or communicated this to the schools’ accommodation department, as detailed in the student pack given to all students at the start of their course. For instance, on checking with the Mercury residence, we were told that all guests that ask for an adapter are supplied with one, no questions asked. As you may know, there is no universal electrical plug system.

It is pertinent to point out that this particular accommodation option is aimed at younger students who are here on a tight budget, hence the lack of fancy furniture (in fact most of our 50+ students prefer 3*hotels in the area). However, we are pleased to note that you were more than satisfied with the overall cleanliness of the place.

With reference to the tuition offered, we are pleased to see that you did register progress in the 2 weeks here. As you rightly point out, there are a number of different methodologies that one may pursue in their quest to learn the language. At ELA we favour the communicative approach as we find students easily adapt to this fun, hands-on approach. This explains why our teachers source a number of course books and websites to plan their lessons. The workbook provided, is mostly availed of by teachers to provide supplementary homework as opposed to classwork.

We are of course glad that you found all our staff very approachable and friendly, especially since ELA markets itself as being the school that offers a personal service and were a family atmosphere reigns supreme.

With reference to the number of sessions booked, we partly agree that 40 sessions per week may be too much for some. However, not every student is the same. As you rightly point out, students can book from as little as 10 up to 40 group sessions per week. It all depends on the needs and exigencies of the student. Your suggestion of opting for a mix of 20 group and 10 individual sessions is very possible and, in fact, is quite popular with our students.

We would also like to point out that contrary to the wrong perception one may get from the review, at ELA we insist that our students are immersed in English and are totally against resorting to students’ mother tongue in order to teach English. Our policy is to mix our students’ nationalities as much as possible to ensure that this is never resorted to. Moreover, our fully qualified tutors know this and regularly undergo training to keep abreast of the latest pedagogical advances to ensure that the most effective teaching occurs in our classrooms.

Your comment regarding the need for more English comes across as somewhat contradictory, especially since the review states that 40 sessions were too much and next time round you would be opting for 30. There is also an element of truth in your final comment that one needs more time to master the language (especially seeing that the level in question was pre-intermediate ), 2-3 weeks is definitely not enough to achieve this. In fact, we always tell our students not to view language courses as an end in themselves but as the first rung of many that will eventually get you closer to that objective.

Hope the above puts your constructive comments in the right perspective. We look forward to welcoming you once more at our school.

Dear Leonid,

Thank you very much for your review!

We are glad that your stay with us was most enjoyable! With regard to the break time, I have passed on your constructive criticism to our leisure department who will be thinking of ways of how to make it more interesting for students :)

Hope you have a lovely day and we hope to welcoming you at ELA at a future date :)

best regards

Dear Tiziana,

Thank you very much for your review! We really appreciate it!

We are very happy that you had a pleasant stay with us and above all that you have improved your English.

We hope to have the pleasure of welcoming you back at ELA in the near future!

Best regards