Walen School Of Thai In Chiang Mai

[WinnieTheKhwai]

Can't comment on the lessons themselves though I would agree that teaching letters and reading and writing at an early stage is the right thing to do.

When looking at the website though it seems more like a visa-ploy than a language school? With big phrases "Free Ed visa for up to 10 years!" and "Unlimited stay in Thailand!" instead of highlighting the merits of the study it kind of makes me wonder what the aim is. The Baht bus ads in Pattaya also took this line, focusing more on ...using visa laws creatively... than actually learning Thai.

[newbie001]

"I heard there were a lot of English teachers looking for a job in CM."

I am confused MacWalen. Why would a Thai language school be looking for English teachers?

[MacWalen]

The aim is simple Winnie, to get as many students/clients as possible. That is the aim of Coca-Cola, AIS, Mercedes-Benz, Gillette and the list can go on forever. The same with the Walen school, we are interested in getting as much business as possible so we can have funds for growth and development.

For some people the visa factor, being able to say in Thailand long time without any hassle, is something that makes them decide to learn Thai. Is it bad? Is it good? Who I am to judge, we focus on providing good service. Both teaching Thai and ED visa assistance if someone requires it. Perhaps you do not need visa to stay here longer to learn Thai but a lot do. If you were in that situation you would probably like to have both taken care of.

We always encourage to come to our school and learn for free to see if you like it or not. We never had an opinion of an easy school. Still the only one using just the Thai alphabet.

Winnie, in any case thank you for your contribution. It is good to listen to different opinions.

Walen School - yes, we do help with visas

www.thaiwalen.com

[MacWalen]

"I heard there were a lot of English teachers looking for a job in CM."

I am confused MacWalen. Why would a Thai language school be looking for English teachers?

Walen School is a larger organization. We also teach English. As a matter of fact this was always our main business. The idea of teaching Thai using a direct method came from our experience in teaching English.

We have a lot of customers wanting to learn English at Walen, so we are looking for an English teacher.

Walen School

Edited March 2, 2010 by macwalen

[amexpat]

Do you still offer the 400 baht trial lessons with a free workbook?

Or is it the other way around? Vice versa.

[newbie001]

"Macwalen: Still the only one using just the Thai alphabet.:

This is not a true statement. There are other institutions that offer classes that are whole language learning and not just communicative.

I know that you are trying to promote your business but as a consumer, I really hate exaggeration and outright lies. It is like TEFL schools that claim to be internationally accredited. There is no international accreditation for TEFL.

I must agree with Winnie, I think that the strength of your advertising would be more concrete if you focused on the system of education and not the edvisa. It does sound like one of the scam schools out there that allow you to sign up for 1-2 years but don't have to attend classes. If people are just paying the tuition so that they can get a visa and don't actually make progress in your school, you will make short term profit but in the long run your reputation as a language school will suffer.

I know that your staff is new and that you need to start somewhere, but building a reputation through excellence in language instruction needs credible students.

I have had a few people recommend AUA to me, telling me that they attended a few courses there and really liked it. However, the majority of those people could barely order a meal and had no communicative ability in Thai whatsoever. If your graduates and students are your ambassadors and if they cannot communicate Thai after attending your classes, your reputation will suffer. Serious students are needed to create an academic reputation. But if you only want money, then keep selling the cute girl teachers and long-term visas.

Personally, I just don't understand why you don't just offer topless tutoring, if all you want is money.

[elektrified]

Personally, I just don't understand why you don't just offer topless tutoring, if all you want is money.

That's a really great idea! I'd even be interested in taking a course.

[rrose070]

Mac, I've PM'd you.

[MacWalen]

Do you still offer the 400 baht trial lessons with a free workbook?

Or is it the other way around? Vice versa.

I'm glad new members are joining! Yes, we still offer free trial lessons. The book is 390 baht but if someone does not want to purchase it they can borrow it from the reception. It really makes sense to come and attend our school for a week as it will give you an idea how we teach. Some comments are made by people who never attended our school.

Edited March 3, 2010 by macwalen

[MacWalen]

newbie001, please let me know which school in Chaingmai or anywhere else is using only Thai alphabet from the very start. I do this for a living and I am yet to hear of such a school.

Also when you say outright lies what do you mean exactly? What are we lying about?

We do not 'only want money', as a business we want to be successful. Is there anything bad about it? Of course we want money, schools that do not make money go out of business, this is so very simple that there is nothing to understand.

From what you say you would be very happy if we failed. Hope to disappoint you. We always had students supporting us. If we fail in Chiangmai that would be very sad indeed and who knows, one day you may also need our help.

Walen School - hope to be there when you need us.

www.thaiwalen.com

Edited March 3, 2010 by macwalen

[WinnieTheKhwai]

Alright, fair enough. I do applaud you for answering questions so patiently and politely, in the face of jabs from various angles.

You passed.

WTK (15 years.. never attended language school. )

[newbie001]

"From what you say you would be very happy if we failed. Hope to disappoint you. We always had students supporting us. If we fail in Chiangmai that would be very sad indeed and who knows, one day you may also need our help.

"

NOt true at all. I actually hope that you do succeed, but your term of success and mine are different. I think that an educational facility should put the results of the students ability as the primary measurement of success and not how many students they teach or how much profit they make. You can teach 10,000,000 students and still not one of them able to communicate fully. I wish your students success and hope that your teachers develop into good instructors, but I have never cared if one business or another achieves financial success. To me financial success isn't proof of a good school.

Personally I wonder if you yourself used the same methods that you teach to learn Thai. If the owner himself cannot speak the language fluently, why should students study at your school?

Your prices are very high more than 30% higher than other local places, but you don't pay your Thai teachers more than other schools. So you are making huge profits and not giving back to those that make them for you.

800 baht an hour for private lessons is pretty high for Chiang Mai.

I have found that it is just cheaper to study classes at the university in Thai rather than study Thai. I take some philosophy classes, history and literature courses. Content based learning works better for me and by far is much cheaper than paying for Thai language courses. I still find it ironic that Thai teachers get paid less than English teachers but Thai lessons cost more than English courses.

[MacWalen]

"From what you say you would be very happy if we failed. Hope to disappoint you. We always had students supporting us. If we fail in Chiangmai that would be very sad indeed and who knows, one day you may also need our help.

"

NOt true at all. I actually hope that you do succeed, but your term of success and mine are different. I think that an educational facility should put the results of the students ability as the primary measurement of success and not how many students they teach or how much profit they make. You can teach 10,000,000 students and still not one of them able to communicate fully. I wish your students success and hope that your teachers develop into good instructors, but I have never cared if one business or another achieves financial success. To me financial success isn't proof of a good school.

Personally I wonder if you yourself used the same methods that you teach to learn Thai. If the owner himself cannot speak the language fluently, why should students study at your school?

Your prices are very high more than 30% higher than other local places, but you don't pay your Thai teachers more than other schools. So you are making huge profits and not giving back to those that make them for you.

800 baht an hour for private lessons is pretty high for Chiang Mai.

I have found that it is just cheaper to study classes at the university in Thai rather than study Thai. I take some philosophy classes, history and literature courses. Content based learning works better for me and by far is much cheaper than paying for Thai language courses. I still find it ironic that Thai teachers get paid less than English teachers but Thai lessons cost more than English courses.

Newbie, you indeed must study something other than business or law or things that require being more precise. To start with you said we were lying, you still did not answer the question from my previous post, can you first do it before you go on with other points.

Market verifies if a product is good or not, basic business concept, unless you operate in a monopoly environment but as you obviously did not study business you would not know, talk is cheap. The fact that an institution is profitable means that most likely customers are happy with the service. You cannot compare government funded institutions with private businesses, that is not comparable.

The fact that you do not care if a business makes money or not is showing your attitude. If you lost a job because a company could not keep you employed you would care then, would that not be right?

Regarding my language ability if we compared our skills overall you would most likely lose, I speak several languages at a native level speaker so it puts me definitely in a top percentage of all language school owners in Thailand.

Huge profits? I thought you do not know much about business and it proves it, we did not yet get our investment back in CM so talking about huge profits is total nonsense like some other things you wrote. Regarding teachers salaries and bonuses it depends on a performance of the school but it is above industry standard. So again nonsense statement.

You say very high, 30% more, I do not know how much other schools charge but if you come to our school and see how much we spent you might thing that 30% more is not so much more at all. If you said 100-200% more that is 'very high', 30% is reasonable if you consider what you get. Again, I don' know where you get the % from, hope not from your hat.

We do not have 1 hour private lessons but 50 min, and it does not cost 800 but 750 if you take just a small number, it gets cheaper, 600 Baht if you take more lessons. Make some research before you use any more numbers. You are really unfriendly guy, what is it really that makes you dislike our school?

Thai lessons cost more than English lessons? I assume you are still talking about Walen as the topic is Walen, again, 60 lessons for Thai cost 9,900 Baht for English 60 lessons cost 12,600 Baht, where did you get the info from?

Walen School - check facts

www.thaiwalen.com

Ps. This guy (newbie001) is really unfriendly so this post is a little rough. This forum is not to fight with other posters but if someone decides to contribute please check if what you write makes sense and is true, if you need info you can check our website www.thaiwalen.com or can ask me. I will be happy to answer.

[newbie001]

"product " You are selling a product. I don't believe that education is a product.

You are a business man, that is fine. I am an academic and a scholar. I believe in academics above profit. I am not mean, or rude. I made no personal attacks. In fact most of my comments were generalizations or questions and not specifically aimed at you. I don't recall saying you lied "but as a consumer that I hate marketing that exaggerates or lies. I don't recall specifically targeting you but made generalizations about for profit education.

Since I have never had a job, your analogy about being paid by a boss or not is unfamiliar to me.

I am glad that you speak additional languages. I think that it is good for someone that is selling education of a topic should have that personal knowledge. You really don't want to compare yourself with me as I am not making personal attacks, but you have.

You say that I am mean, but your remarks against me were personal. I only asked questions. I didn't make statements about your knowledge of Thai language or your method for learning I asked.

"I do not know how much other schools charge "

I think that you should know what other schools charge. You make comments against my knowledge of business, but not to know what your competition charges is 101 basic.

If your rate for English lessons is what you say then it is nearly double of many other places.

"you obviously did not study business you would not know, talk is cheap."

"Regarding my language ability if we compared our skills overall you would most likely lose, "

Again, another personal comparison with me, someone you don't know anything about. Whereas, I have made no direct statements about you or your knowledge or ability in anything.

It is ironic that you condemn me as unfriendly, when your post is directly insulting whereas nothing I have written was a direct statement against you, merely generalizations about for profit learning centers and questions.

Up to this point, I agree with Winnie, that you handle questions about your school patiently and politely, but why then get into name calling and personal comparisons with someone you don't even know? Actually until you made this personal, I respected you a lot and appreciated your attempts at making a reputable school.

[MacWalen]

Really, hard to believe reading your previous posts.

[Loaded]

Newbie001's attacks certainly smell a bit suspicious, so I read some of his previous posts.

He heavily promotes CMU, their language institute and seems to know personally the main players there:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Cmu-1-Year-T...62#entry3277762

Promoting CMU language institute again:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Study-Chines...84#entry3382284

Seems to be a budy of the dean:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Beggars-t324...27#entry3223527

Seems to know the salary of the ex head of the English department plus that she receives a pension because she is on the old system and how much her farang husband makes for part-time teaching:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/Spouse-Work-...84#entry2931084

Don't know who you are newbie001 but you certainly seem to have a hidden agenda. Your posts attacking a direct competitor of the Language Institute stink.

[newbie001]

Loaded has a personal bias against me, and has made it clear in other threads. Now he is showing it in this one.

Loaded is good at using the search button but not to good at comprehension.

CMU has many deans one for every department. I happen to know of several. I also know about a few of the department heads at Payap, Mae Jo, and a few other schools. I also know the directors of a few of the language schools in the Chiang Mai area as well as the principals of 4 of the top private schools.

I actually have no bias for Language Institute and am quick to criticize many things about them if the case presents itself.

I stated that I used to recommend CMU TEFL when their prices were the lowest. I stated quite clearly that there are some crappy TEFL courses out there in CM, but all in all most are equal. Personally I would recommend the Trinity TESOL or Cambridge CELTA since they are the most accepted and well known world wide.

The Chinese center at CMU is located in the building as the Language Institute but it is a separate entity funded partly by the Chinese Government. Perhaps you think that I am a chinese spy also.

What I know about the different members of different ranks at CMU is because that it is public knowledge and if you did any research you could find these things out too, but you have to read Thai. I also have very good ears and I don't let people know that I speak Thai. You pick up a lot by listening, which apparently loaded likes to talk more than listen because he doesn't know a lot about the business of education which he apparently is a teacher. I have never been a teacher, but I do know a lot about the education system here. I do a lot of research.

Since the CMU Language Institute has a very crappy Thai course and is quite expensive also, slightly cheaper than Whalen, I wouldn't recommend CMU for Thai language.

I did not attack Whalen or his school. If you read carefully, my posts were mostly neutral exposing a common problem in all schools. My comments were mainly generalizations as I stated before.

Actually, from what I read, the Whalen school's methodology for language acquisition holds to similar beliefs that I carry. My only problem was the way that he promoted it. Continuing what Winnie the Kwai stated.

My only bias is that I recognize the weakness of different systems and point them out. You will find that I am equally critical of every place.

I have no businesses here in CM, I have no friends that have businesses in CM, I don't work in CM, so I don't have any personal preference or bias if one place succeeds or not. I just observe.

I just think that Schools should promote education, not cute teachers, visas or other things as their main selling point. I also don't think how much a school spends or makes is what should be used to measure their success.

Dear Whalen: I also noticed on your webpage that you don't have a link for jobs. Since you mentioned about looking for teachers, you might want to have a space on your page for employment opportunities. It might be there, but to be honest I didn't spend too much time looking and didn't see it right away. I also think that you might want to have the Thai language button right next to the English button instead of down on the second row.

Edited March 3, 2010 by newbie001

[gymboy33]

ive gt some experience learning thai at walen and i find

the teachers dont correct your tones enough for my liking

and they just fly thru the book by the letter and sentence

i know its best to learn at a normal outside normal speed

but they never expand on any sentences and try and make a little conversation...

[elektrified]

Newbie001's attacks certainly smell a bit suspicious, so I read some of his previous posts.

Don't know who you are newbie001 but you certainly seem to have a hidden agenda. Your posts attacking a direct competitor of the Language Institute stink.

He only comes on here in order to criticize others, post negative comments about C.M. business establishments or make degrading remarks about the Thais.

[newbie001]

"make degrading remarks about the Thais."

That is slander and wrong. Not once have I ever said anything derogatory against Thailand or Thai people. Unlike others here, I don't associate with the lower class people, but I don't have anything against them. Perhaps a little pitty. I may criticize the riffraff foreigners that live here but never the Thais.

Yes, I criticize things that have weaknesses. I bet if I searched through threads I will find that you have criticized things also. But when you do it or Loaded that is ok because you joined the forum before I did. As a matter of fact, when I constructively criticize something, I do also include some of the strengths. I do not purely rip anything apart. When you and some other members just go around advertising for businesses by giving them praise and not being more neutral, I add a different perspective. However you probably think that your perspective is the only correct one.

Again, 2 more posters that make direct attacks against me. In this thread, I was not and did not condemn Whalen school. I have never attended and made no negative comments against their curriculum or director. I asked questions and I pointed out some general statements about language schools and also gave some constructive advice. However, people tend to overlook those things and only focus on what they want.

Is it wrong to think that an educational institution should focus its website and advertising on the merits of its curriculum instead of its cute teachers and its long term visas?

Every school advertises that they are the biggest, the best, the only. I just find it to be lameduck advertising. Blows a lot of smoke up people's butts but doesn't really mean anything.

[canuckamuck]

"make degrading remarks about the Thais."

That is slander and wrong. Not once have I ever said anything derogatory against Thailand or Thai people. Unlike others here, I don't associate with the lower class people, but I don't have anything against them. Perhaps a little pitty. I may criticize the riffraff foreigners that live here but never the Thais.

Yes, I criticize things that have weaknesses. I bet if I searched through threads I will find that you have criticized things also. But when you do it or Loaded that is ok because you joined the forum before I did. As a matter of fact, when I constructively criticize something, I do also include some of the strengths. I do not purely rip anything apart. When you and some other members just go around advertising for businesses by giving them praise and not being more neutral, I add a different perspective. However you probably think that your perspective is the only correct one.

Again, 2 more posters that make direct attacks against me. In this thread, I was not and did not condemn Whalen school. I have never attended and made no negative comments against their curriculum or director. I asked questions and I pointed out some general statements about language schools and also gave some constructive advice. However, people tend to overlook those things and only focus on what they want.

Is it wrong to think that an educational institution should focus its website and advertising on the merits of its curriculum instead of its cute teachers and its long term visas?

Every school advertises that they are the biggest, the best, the only. I just find it to be lameduck advertising. Blows a lot of smoke up people's butts but doesn't really mean anything.

Newbie I don't think it is up to you how a business owner decides to advertise. From a pragmatic point of view, whatever brings the customer to part with his money is good for business. I can't see how you can have a moral issue here. If Mac sees that the majority of foreigners that want to learn Thai are male, then it is not a giant leap in imagination to see that pretty girls are a plus for the classroom environment. Considering that Mac has assembled a system that requires nothing more than a native Thai speaker to read the questions from the book, and the students to answer back; Why does it matter that he lets people know his teachers are pretty. Certainly the entire country uses the same approach, Pretty girls are a staple of advertising. This always will be, no matter how irrelevant it is to the product. Even major universities make sure there are plenty of pretty coeds in their ads.

Since Mac cannot guarantee pretty students, he can at least guarantee attractive and friendly teachers. I can assure you that the pleasant nature of Walen teachers makes a big difference to the whole experience. And it serves to help keep the whiny expats from getting their nose out of joint at every turn, which is a real problem.

The same can be said about the visa issue. People want visas, if Mac can offer visas, he would be a fool not to leverage that to bring in business.

You seem to be confusing running a small business with some fantasy of an educators moral duty to be androgynous, charitable, and impartial.

[MacWalen]

Our Thai teachers in Chiangmai, I can assure you that they can do a very good job teaching you Thai. Also they are very lovely and it makes learning Thai a very pleasant experience. We offer free lessons so please come and see for yourself.

Walen School - Fantastic teachers!

www.thaiwalen.com

[Drew Aitch]

ive gt some experience learning thai at walen and i find the teachers dont correct your tones enough for my liking and they just fly thru the book by the letter and sentence. i know its best to learn at a normal outside normal speed but they never expand on any sentences and try and make a little conversation...

Fair Critisism gymboy33 and it's nice to get mini reviews from those who have tried the various Thai teaching methods. ALL business', no matter how good they are or think they are, have room for improvement too

If any businesses is just plain bad though, it will fail sooner rather than later (whatever 'it' happens to be).

It appears that Macwalen is expanding with new location(s) on the cards. Generally speaking, company expansion derives from a stream of happy customers, whereas business SCAMS tend to be short lived (unless very clever), or they are more latent and tend NOT to be established in the 'real world' (bricks & mortar).

Such things would be the likes of say money making opportunities handed over to the trust of unknowns (boiler room cons, ponzi schemes, or online rip-offs etc), where the operators can run and hide from their clients pretty easily.

That why the internet is so valuable because of its transparency. Being able to read real customer reviews online helps us folks to make better informed decisions based on weighing up the pros and cons ourselves. This is far better than the bygone age where we relied more on the the sales hype fed by the company, retailers, and or brand paraphernalia alone.

I have no experience with the Walen School Of Thai (though i may try later in the year), but they do seem to be doing reasonably okay. If folks weren't learning anything or hanging around, then the expansion would prove a bit pointless let alone fruitless. I can't believe they are only growing due to the ED visa opportunity - surely? But then I'm not in that business to know for sure.

It's like the ole saying goes, 'There's no such thing as One Size Fits All', and language methodology would be no different.

Maybe a better quote is:

"You can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not please all of the people all of the time."

Aitch

[MacWalen]

Aitch, great post! It is so very true that it is hard to please everyone. Saying that it does not mean that we just ignore all the suggestions and ideas for improvement. We are committed to 100% customer satisfaction and we value comments from our students. Work is in progress on how to make our school better.

We have been in business nearly 9 years so we certainly have to please at lest enough students to support ourselves. We have the ambition of becoming one day the biggest language school in Thailand. We are the biggest Thai school already (total number of students) but we still would like to gain more Thai students and that is not so easy as the English language school business is very very competitive.

I hope to start offering free Thai multimedia trial lessons very soon, if some students do not want to try the Walen Method hopefully they will be willing to try our multimedia lessons and progress from there. We want to promote Thai as much as possible as there are still so many foreigners our there who simply do not believe they are able to learn Thai, because of that they do not want to go to any of the schools. It is quite common to meet foreigners who have been living in Thailand for 2-3 years and never attended a single Thai class.

They need to discover that they can enjoy living in Thailand so much more if they speak at least basic Thai.

Walen School - discover the joy!

www.thaiwalen.com

[nivram4491]

I am one of the unlucky person who tried High Speed Thai.

I was very excited at first when reading the description, so after a while i decided to order the programme, being comforted by the no question asked money back guarantee.

I quickly received 2 DVDs, which i installed right away, or i should rather say copy. Because HighSpeedThai is not a programme. It's a bunch of files. 5GB of data. And my disk count is giving me around 12 000 files (probably including some of the inside software files).

So basically you buy this programme thinking you will get something fully integrated like Rosetta or other language software. But this one is VERY different. You basically goat a 1000+ black and white text only PDF file (yes over one thousand pages of text!), and a bunch of files in different folders that you need to open one by one) and you quickly end up having your pdf reader open, your music player open, your video player open, the few related folders open, and on top of that you have the Anki software. Anki is something like the Rosetta software, but a very basic version. Again text only.

OK. I had bought it, so i said why not give it a try anyway. Or at least try to. Believe me it is the most user unfriendly system i have ever seen in my life! After a couple of weeks, I did contact the maker of this system to suggest him some much needed improvement, but he constantly replied by copying clients testimonials (which of course were all positive about his programme) and more or less saying that his programme couldn't be any better and that everybody is happy about it. I was kind of "motivated" to give it another try, and passed the 30 days money back guarantee without really paying attention. After a while, and many attempts to try learning with this unfriendly system, i decided to give up and contacted again the maker of the programme asking him about the money back guarantee.

Again i had a flow of clients testimonials who were all agreeing that this is the best programme in the world to learn Thai. May be I am the only one to find it absolutely off-putting and uninviting. I was always told that learning should be a fun process, and the 4 other languages i speak have been learnt in a fun way.

Having said that, the maker of the programme offered me a deal, that if i complete 10 lessons and still don't like the programme, he would give my money back. I did accept the challenge, and forced myself through the 10 lessons. Passed the calvary of a couple of hundred pages of plain text in PDF format, and the juggling with files and folders, i completed the 10 lessons. But our programme maker was still not satisfied, and wanted to know all the details of my boring learning, adding here and there very positive testimonials of other clients.

So i just gave up and forgot about asking my money back. It is just not worth the ordeal really.

So may be it is just me not liking this programme. I don't know. If any of you wish you buy my version, I will be more than happy to get rid of it at a discounted price. I would even let you try it before you buy and show you how the whole thing works. I wouldn't want you to feel tricked the way i did!

I would like to back up the post above. My feelings exactly about HighSpeedThai!

I find it totally misleading because in all the advertising that is done you get the impression that this is an integrated multimedia program instead of a mismash of individual text pdf files and audio files. While the material seems reasonable I just can't cope with amateurish presentation. It is possible to make effective learning tools using pdf files if the audio and video files are linked or embedded. It takes a lot of work but from the amount charged for HighSpeedThai one would expect it.

I also found that Anki, as used in HighSpeedThai does nothing for me.

Before paying big bucks talk to someone who has done the course and have a look at the presentation if possible. Some people may be able to cope with it but I certainly couldn't. My first reaction was to try to making something decent out of the huge collection of unlinked files.

[richard10365]

I have done a price comparison on Payap's prices and Walens prices in the past and Mr. Walen does have very competitive prices. The cost per hour of instruction is really not much different Than Payap's prices. To say he is 30% more is simply not true.

I studied Thai at Payap for 2 years as part of the degree program there; however, I'm considered studying at Walen's just to get Thai from a different perspective in a different environment. Foreign language is a perishable skill. If you don't use it properly, it will fade away.

Chiang Mai is a great little city to live in. With so many foreigners living and visiting this city it is good to have variety to choose from when it comes to language programs. In the long run, the various different programs (the supply) help to keep prices reasonable for consumers.

This and the charm of the city helps attracts more people to want to learn Thai language in Chiang Mai. This not only helps the foreign language providers it also helps the local community as well.

[TrippRitter]

When looking at the website though it seems more like a visa-ploy than a language school? With big phrases "Free Ed visa for up to 10 years!" and "Unlimited stay in Thailand!" instead of highlighting the merits of the study it kind of makes me wonder what the aim is. The Baht bus ads in Pattaya also took this line, focusing more on ...using visa laws creatively... than actually learning Thai.

I am a student of Walen, I have been going since October and I really like it. The teachers are very professional and they take their jobs seriously, it is far from being just a visa school. It's a bit daunting at times as they move really fast and cover a lot of ground. I would recommend it for anyone who will be living here long term as you will learn to read and write as well as speak. Short term less than a year, I would probably go with a conversational school instead and skip learning the reading and writing.

I think it's understandable that Walen advertises visas. The visa hurdle is one of the most intimidating things you have to worry about living in Thailand. Not all schools offer this, not having to mess with Visa runs and Visa paperwork is fantastic and is something that should be advertised.

[WinnieTheKhwai]

Why don't you have to deal with visa runs? What happens after three months?

[TrippRitter]

Why don't you have to deal with visa runs? What happens after three months?

With a one year non-ed you don't have to worry about visa runs. At 3 months Walen gives me a folder of paperwork, I take it to immigration, pay them $1,500 baht if I remember the price correctly and walk out with another 90days. Easy stuff.