Great teachers, kind staffs! The lectures are good quality!…read moreBut the price is inexpensive I took TOEFL class. My English skills were so improved I think I've made a right decision

I took TOEFL with Adam. He is the best teacher ever I had in my entire language course: 18 months…read more He is fun and motivating. IIC Oakland has a decent size campus, student teacher ratio is super good. Very good for studying. Their SF campus are conveniently located in but Oakland are spacious and newer. Teachers are in Oakland enthusiastic. Do you want to learn life in America? come to Oakland, right next Jack London Square, you can walk down the harbor walk. grab some sandwich from subway, get some ice cream in Ben and Jerry. IIC has got flexible schedule.

Arturo is a patient and calm teacher. He helps you understand the language easily and converses…read morewith you so you can practice speaking what you've been taught. It is nice having classes with other students and allows for more opportunity to speak the language. He also provides notes for each lesson plus grammar practice. If you want to learn Spanish and have fun while doing it - this is the place for you!

I am travelling to Spain this summer, where I will take an Spanish course, and in preparation, I…read morethought I would enroll in a class here. I'm taking classes right now, and while the first week was great, I'm really not so into it now. I'm in the advanced beginner level, as I took Spanish in high school (about ten years ago). I am not fluent at all, but have some vocabulary, and can conjugate in present tense. Pros: 1. Right now, it's just me and the instructor. So, I'm stoked about personal instruction for just $14 per hour. (Cost depends on length of course. Check the website for more info. http://institutomesoamerica.com/) However, I don't believe this is the norm. 2. Instructor seems to be patient with me, as I try to figure out how to conjugate the past tense. UPDATE: He's not so patient anymore... see below... 3. Must think of third "pro" Cons: 1. Teaching method is not creative. I have dittos, from which I conjugate verbs. Sometimes they are in sentences, sometimes, just the verb. Today we did this for over 2 hours of the 3 hour class. So freaking boring. 2. Sometimes I feel like the instructor is SUPER bored. Which makes my selfconciousness kick into high gear. 3. I do not feel that there is enough interaction between me and the instructor. 4. Instructor claims to use a NATURAL teaching method, and a NEW approach to teaching Spanish. Ummm. What?? Reading off a ditto is natural and new??? 5. Instructor IS bored! He taps his fingers, stretches and is not patient. Corrects me before I have the chance to correct myself. 6. Misspellings on the dittos. Gets annoyed when I don't understand the words, which happen to be in ANOTHER LANGUAGE AND ARE MISSPELLED. 7. Doesn't follow along on the dittos. Corrects me even when I'm right, as he's not looking at the ditto. 8. Somehow thinks that I will remember EVERY word we've used previously. Thanks, but I'm not magic. But I will definitely try suggesting some other activities to the instructor, and asking about specific things that I would like to learn, such as practicing being at a hotel/train station/restaurant. Hopefully, the instruction will improve. UPDATE: I added a star, because I felt satisfied with the resolution I recieved. I was unhappy with this particular school and recieved a refund. Very honest and wanted to resolve the problem, and I appreciate that.

This is a two part review: one for the summer camp, one for the Saturday school. The rating above…read moreis for the camp, because it is really great, and our sons spent a lot more time there, and I think overall Shoong should be rewarded for a great camp rather than brought down by a negative review star rating. Our sons attend summer camp here for the past three years. They are probably seen by most people as white. They attend Yu Ming Charter School during the year. My wife and I do not speak Mandarin. We have always heard positive things from our sons each day upon pick up. If you don't speak Mandarin or Cantonese, navigating administration is somewhat of a challenge, but emailing Pearl, the director, is an easy way to overcome that. I would caution against Saturday school unless you are expecting pretty rigid discipline and willingness to do the homework. It is more school-like than the camp. Our sons attended for a while when we wanted them to get more help with Mandarin during the school year. Unfortunately the teacher was harshly critical when homework was not done, and we did not understand it was not optional. Our sons were really upset and embarrassed by the teacher for not having their work done, so we pulled them out. Again the summer camp overrides our one-off bad experience with the Saturday school. We also had little way to correct the situation given our limited (non-existent knowledge of Chinese). Lastly, the camp is extremely affordable and includes government lunch. It is $110 per week as of this review. You don't have to pay for the whole summer, although this is not clear on their website.

Great after school Chinese program. My son loves it here. They even offer after school pick up.read more

My 8yr old has been in Mandarin Immersion since she was 2yrs old. She's been taking once a week…read moreZOOM lessons with Mei since February 2024 and it has been super helpful! My husband and I don't speak or read Mandarin and it's nice to have a little bit of help outside of school. My daughter loves Mei and scheduling has been super easy! She just started 3rd grade and told me that she feels her Mandarin has improved and that she's feeling super confident. I highly recommend. Mei and KaiXin Language School!

KiaXin Language School has been a really interesting and fun way to learn the basics of Chinese. I…read morehave participated in the first two levels of Mandarin taught by KiaXin's Jennifer Bai. Jennifer is extremely kind and patient. I strongly recommend her and think she is a very effective teacher.

When I say that finding Fernanda is the best thing to have happened to me this year, I mean it!! At…read morethe time that we started lessons, I was dating a Uruguayan, so I wanted to learn the language to be able to communicate with his family. We are no longer dating, but I now work with Fernanda twice a week -- which is just a testament to the love I have for her and her classes. She has such incredible knowledge of language, and also such a kind and engaging spirit. I plan to continue classes for many years to come. Love you, Fernanda!!

Fernanda is a very intuitive, empathetic and energetic teacher, and each time I have a class with…read moreher, it is over before I know it. Her classes are a mix of conversation, grammar, translation and even some written expression and she teaches in a very lively manner using materials such as a workbook, magazines, film reviews and homework assignments in her lessons. She knows how to coax conversations out of me, elementary as I am in Spanish. Every time I finish a class, I am newly excited about improving my Spanish. I highly recommend her classes!

Jasmine is a wonderful tutor and we highly recommend her! In fact, I've already referred her to two…read moreother families. She's smart, responsible, and easy to work with. She's engaging and makes the sessions fun for our daughter. Jasmine is local, but given the current environment she teaches our daughter online. Unlike other online programs where there may be a language barrier between the teacher and student, the ease with which Jasmine switches from English to Chinese and vice versa makes the lessons so much more effective. Moreover, the students feel heard and understood so there isn't a lot of time wasted on misunderstandings. During the lessons, Jasmine always stays focused and gently keeps my daughter on task. She has learned more with Jasmine in the last 6 months than she did in the last couple of years at Chinese school. If you want your child to learn Chinese, I strongly recommend you reach out to Jasmine!

I grew up speaking Cantonese and Toisaan. As it is with most languages, if you don't use it, you…read morelose it. I am well into my adulthood and was yearning to practice and continue using Cantonese again. It's cute to understand but I wanted to be more active with it. It is incredibly useful in my profession. I have basic sentence structure down and some vocabulary. I found it difficult to practice with family because they tend to be impatient, and realistically, judgmental. I found Jasmine and was so glad I did! We had twice weekly Zoom sessions and she was very well worth it. She was patient with me and walked me through a workbook. While most languages can be learned through an app or book, the tonality of Cantonese is VERY important. Are you saying horse or mother, the number four or dead. Tones matter so having a teacher to give you feedback right on the spot is so valuable. I went back to school and still work my full time job so I don't get to have as many lessons as I want. I HIGHLY recommend Jasmine for her patience, knowledge and teaching style. Need to learn Cantonese? Get a hold of her!

Kyle Laoshi is the most fun Mandarin teacher! My daughter started Mandarin with Kyle Laoshi in…read morekindergarten, and now she's in 4th grade. She always looks forward to Kyle Laoshi's class -- there's a fun game to learn Mandarin in every lesson. Her Mandarin has improved so much. Kyle Laoshi is very patient and always makes the class interactive and engaging. I highly recommend her if your kids want to learn Mandarin.

My 2 sons have been taking Kyle's Mandarin Conversation class since 2021, and it's been wonderful…read moreseeing them become more comfortable with the language and even laughing and having fun during her class time. They are in an immersion program at their school and this has been a great supplement to their curriculum. I also truly appreciate Kyle's communication and organization, and I always feel like I know where we are with billing, class scheduling, etc. Thank you, Kyle!

We used Aspire for several tutoring sessions, a practice exam, and exam review for our son who…read moreneeds to take the ISEE as part of the private high school admissions process. The one-on-one attention he received was invaluable and the cost was reasonable; but more than that, the flexibility to help our son even on a Sunday, having someone come in just to assist him, showed a commitment to his success that went beyond the other study services. In addition to tutoring for these and other exams, ASPIRE, as a non-profit, has a mission to enhance the opportunities for kids of low-income families. For us, it meant that we were supporting a good organization even while paying for high quality tutoring services. There was no trade off between the individual attention and the high quality our son received on the one hand and, on the other, their non-profit status. In fact, they complemented each other. It showed that this was more about Will's success and not a business transaction. Indeed, we were so grateful to the team there, we made a further donation to assist them in one of their programs: a volunteer-based literacy program for low income preschoolers in the East Bay. We highly recommend them.

I used Aspire back in 2014 when my daughter was preparing for the SAT. They did a great job…read moretutoring her and helping her maximize her score without an undue amount of stress. The staff were excellent, professional, and very knowledgeable. I liked it so much that later when I wanted to switch careers, I became a tutor at Aspire, and worked with students through them. It has been a privilege working with the very good, very talented staff there.

I have taken two classes, both with Ruby: organic gardening and bare root fruit tree orchards. On…read moreboth instances I walked away with a better understanding of the overall concepts and a few good pages of notes. Very comfortable and conversational learning environment. Very helpful, and great to have such a locally sourced program for learning these types of things.

I cannot recommend the Institute of Urban Homesteading's Cheese Making Intensive enough…read more This day and a half "intensive" is a combination of the cheese making 1, 2 and 3 classes, taught by IUH founder Ruby. It's fast-paced and she throws a lot of information at you, but the whole process is warm, interactive and accessible. I immediately felt like I could leave Ruby's home and make these cheeses (and other dairy products!) we had learned in my own. I especially love that she's found what seems like the perfect middle ground between science lesson and home-cook/homesteader understanding. She brings her personal experience in with just enough of the science and technical understanding to make home cheese making incredible accessible and attainable. I also love that IUH also has a sliding scale for fees because it demonstrates the value they put on what they teach in making these classes more widely accessible. I already have the summer farm tours on my calendar, and I can't wait to take my next class.