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About Us
Introduction
ECC (Thailand) opened in 1983 and is now the largest private language
school in Thailand, with branches in Bangkok and all over Thailand,
from Chiang Mai in the North to Hat Yai in the South.
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runs a wide variety of courses from general conversation to specialized
test preparation.
Our students range in age from young children to retirement age
adult learners, and in ability from absolute beginners to advanced.
ECC is firmly committed to providing professional, affordable tuition
to our students, and we are proud of the fact that almost all urban
Thais with a regular job can afford to take our courses. We also
offer regular scholarships. We are committed to providing a challenging,
supportive, rewarding working environment for all our staff, teachers
and admin.
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Our Schools
ECC’s branches are normally located in commercial areas.
In Bangkok we have branches across the city. Many are in modern
shopping centers, while others are on busy commercial streets. In
the provinces we have branches in many provincial capitals, usually
in a central location convenient for both our students and staff.
All schools are readily accessible by public transport, and have
a variety of reasonably priced accommodation in the vicinity.
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The schools are open every day of the week - you do
not have to work every day of course - from about 8.30 in the morning
until 9 in the evening, although we close earlier at weekends. All
schools are air-conditioned, and the classrooms are clean, bright
and well ventilated. Each room has a whiteboard, desks and chairs
and a CD/cassette player. TVs, VCRs and OHPs are also available. |
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The average class size at ECC is ten to twelve students, with
a maximum of sixteen. The teachers’ room contains a full range
of textbooks including accompanying teachers’ books, reference
books, cassettes, supplementary teaching activities and games. There
is also access to photocopiers. All ECC schools have a no smoking
policy, which includes the teachers’ room and coffee bars.
Our Academic Programme
Our curriculum is wide ranging and includes courses for learners
of English, courses in Japanese and Mandarin, computer courses,
and our teacher training programme. We offer courses for both adults
and children. The typical length of an ECC English conversation
course is one hundred and twenty hours, broken into four thirty-hour
blocks, for example Pre-Intermediate A-B-C-D. Other courses can
be as short as twenty hours or as long as one hundred. The majority
of our courses are based around course books by the mainstream EFL
publishers such as Longman, Heinemann and Oxford and others.
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We focus on conversation courses, although we also offer more specialized
courses, for example in grammar or writing. We allow our teachers
scope to adapt our course materials to suit the needs of the students
and the teaching style of the teacher, and do not try to impose any
rigid methodologies on our teaching staff. We encourage teachers to
use supplementary materials and there are many supplementary activity
books in each school. |
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Our curriculum is regularly reviewed and updated in order to ensure that we are offering the best quality courses to our students, and that our materials reflect the latest developments in EFL theory and practice. We provide our students with all relevant materials. All students entering group classes are placement tested. Our courses have a gently graded syllabus, with extra levels at the lower end of the scale, to allow us to place students more accurately. Although most of our teaching is done on premises at our branches, we also have a busy corporate training department, which conducts classes at corporate clients’ offices all over Bangkok. In addition, many of our teachers work for a few hours or more a week in a local Thai school, an opportunity to gain a real insight into the Thai education system, and to work with Thai English teachers.
Our curriculum also includes other languages, currently Japanese
and Mandarin Chinese. Taught by fully qualified native speakers,
these courses focus on conversation, but also include reading and
writing at higher levels. Our curriculum also includes computer
courses. These are taught in Thai by Thai computer teachers and
include courses for children and adults, beginner to advanced. There
are courses in all the major software packages, all popular programming
languages, and other areas such as webpage design and using the
Internet.
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Our teachers
Our teachers come from all parts of the English-speaking world.
We also employ a number of non-native English speaking teachers
to teach some children’s courses, and a few low-level adult
courses. It’s difficult to say what a typical ECC teacher is
like since there are so many different kinds of people working with us.
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There are recent graduates fresh off a TEFL training
course, experienced EFL teachers, teachers who have made a career
change after working in a different field for much of their adult
lives. Many of our teachers are full time; others work with us part
time, perhaps weekends only or a few evenings. Most of our teachers
have a range of classes, although some specialize in a particular
field, for example Business English or teaching children. A few things
we hope all our teachers have in common are excellent academic credentials,
enthusiasm for teaching, an open mind, a flexible and easygoing manner,
and a love of Thailand and its people. |
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Our students
ECC students range in age from five to fifty, with the majority
in their teens or twenties. They come from all kinds of backgrounds,
and study for many different reasons. As ECC offers some of the
best value language courses in Thailand, our students come from
all sections of Thai society. In general Thai learners often have
a reasonably large passive vocabulary and understanding of structure,
but lack communicative skills. This is partly due to traditional
methods of teaching in the Thai school system, in which students
are not required to participate in communicative activities.
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They are, on the whole, fun-loving, well-mannered, motivated, and
they enjoy group work. Common difficulties experienced by Thai students
are L1 interference (where features of Thai discourse interfere
with their English), pronunciation problems, and difficulties with
certain areas of structure e.g. the English tense system. This particular
problem is a result of the fact that the concept of tenses does
not really exist in Thai.
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Our staff
At ECC we have a large and dedicated team of administrative staff
supporting our operations. These include: Student Counsellors, who
are usually the first point of contact between a student and the
school; Branch Managers, who oversee the general operations of an
individual branch; Head Teachers, usually an experienced, well-qualified
native speaker whose responsibilities include ensuring academic
standards are being maintained in his/her branch.
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