Six questions to ask a language centre before you pay

Every language centre says the same four things: experienced teachers, modern methods, individual approach, guaranteed results. None of them can be checked before you have paid, which is why they are all there. The questions below can be checked in one conversation, and the answers are what actually determine whether you can speak in a year.

How many students are in the group, and what is the maximum. Not the average, the maximum, because the average is what the school wishes and the maximum is what happens in September when a group fills up. Above five, someone stops speaking every lesson and it is usually the person who most needs to. If the answer is a range, ask what happens when the top of the range is reached.

Who teaches my lesson, and will it be the same person in March. In a lot of centres the teacher you meet at the trial is the best one, and the teacher you get is whoever is free on Tuesdays. A school that cannot promise the same person for a term is telling you something about how long its teachers stay.

How much of a lesson do I actually speak. Ask for minutes, not a philosophy. Sixty minutes with fifteen students is four minutes each if the teacher says nothing at all, which is not how a lesson works, so the real number is smaller. This is the single question that predicts whether you will be able to hold a conversation, and almost nobody asks it.

What happens if I miss a lesson, and what happens if you cancel one. Both directions. A centre with a clear answer to the second has thought about it, and a centre that has only thought about the first is running a payment policy rather than a course.

What can you not do. This is the one that tells you most. A school that answers it, we do not prepare for exams right now, we cannot offer a class at 7am, our building is one room, is a school describing itself accurately, and accuracy is the thing you are actually buying. Ask us: the answers are on this site, and some of them are inconvenient.