Walen Or Other Language - Visa Programms - Any Good?

[globalwander1]

I have read your threads, posts and tried to compare websites/schools but need some insight.

It appears that the quality schools are monthly programs therefore not able to attain a ed/student visa. Is this correct?

Walen and others posted everywhere describe 1 yr with visa for 25k. I have to assume the attraction is the visa. Do any of you have experience with these schools?

Not knowing from experience I may be completely off base placing quality and what not so please advise from your experience with the 25k/ visa schools.

I would like the visa but also a proper shot at grasping the Thai language.

Thanks much

Jim

[MacWalen]

Hi Jim,

We offer one week free, why don't you just join and judge yourself? Your experience might not be the same as that of other students. At Walen you will certainly get good quality but judge yourself. If you are considering other schools also ask them for one week free and tell the that Walen offers one week free, they should not have a problem with matching our offer or would that be too much to ask of other schools? After one week you can tell they do it for visa or actually you learn Thai.

Walen - fully transparent

www.thaiwalen.com

[globalwander1]

Hi Jim,

We offer one week free, why don't you just join and judge yourself? Your experience might not be the same as that of other students. At Walen you will certainly get good quality but judge yourself. If you are considering other schools also ask them for one week free and tell the that Walen offers one week free, they should not have a problem with matching our offer or would that be too much to ask of other schools? After one week you can tell they do it for visa or actually you learn Thai.

Walen - fully transparent

www.thaiwalen.com

Great!

First....excited to get a reply!

I would like to understand the goals of this format. What I mean is; Does this course prepare you to listen and speak, read and write or a general all basic?

To be fair, I don't have enough experience to have a particular request. I am curious as to what the outcome at the end of the course should be.

I do like the idea of coming in and checking it and may just do that.

Reading a very detailed post from Chula, I am under the impression that the advanced is not a goal of mine.

If I could ask a simple question of; What is the difference between individual intense courses or the 180 unit course and the outcome?

Sincerely

Jim

[mangkorn]

If you are considering other schools also ask them for one week free and tell the that Walen offers one week free, they should not have a problem with matching our offer or would that be too much to ask of other schools?

Walen - fully transparent

I have no dog in this fight (as they say), but am curious to know - for the sake of full transparency - whether it is true, or false, what another poster suggested: that Walen requires one to pay for that "one week free" if he/she chooses not to continue?

Thank you.

[harrry]

If you are considering other schools also ask them for one week free and tell the that Walen offers one week free, they should not have a problem with matching our offer or would that be too much to ask of other schools?

Walen - fully transparent

I have no dog in this fight (as they say), but am curious to know - for the sake of full transparency - whether it is true, or false, what another poster suggested: that Walen requires one to pay for that "one week free" if he/she chooses not to continue?

Thank you.

Walen have said repeatedly that if you do not continue you do not pay. If you continue you pay including the lessons you have had.

[MacWalen]

If you are considering other schools also ask them for one week free and tell the that Walen offers one week free, they should not have a problem with matching our offer or would that be too much to ask of other schools?

Walen - fully transparent

I have no dog in this fight (as they say), but am curious to know - for the sake of full transparency - whether it is true, or false, what another poster suggested: that Walen requires one to pay for that "one week free" if he/she chooses not to continue?

Thank you.

Just to confirm, you do not pay for the free week if you chose not to continue. It is free. That is the whole idea. We want students not to be afraid to try our method. If you do not like you do not pay, if you like and want to continue you pay. That simple. If after one week you do not like and do not wish to continue we will not charge you even one baht for it.

Walen School - one free week and no hidden charges

www.thaiwalen.com

[Scottish Thailander]

I have no dog in this fight (as they say), but am curious to know - for the sake of full transparency - whether it is true, or false, what another poster suggested: that Walen requires one to pay for that "one week free" if he/she chooses not to continue?

Thank you.

Just to confirm MacW's actual words. . . . as MacW's post above was not as transparent as an independent members post would have been. . . .

If they do not like the method they do not pay anything . . .

(apart from buying a book for 390 Baht). . . .

If they like it they just pay for the lessons taken. ...

Kind regards,

Walen School

Edited October 23, 2009 by Scottish Thailander

[MacWalen]

I'm not getting it so I guess others will also not understand your post. Can you make your point clearer? Are you questioning that students do not pay for the lessons if they do not like our method after a week?

Walen School

www.thaiwalen.com

[Rikker]

There seems to be much confusion here. Macwalen has been consistent, but it's the use of the word 'free' that is confusing people.

Unless I'm mistaken, here's how the free week works:

1. You study for one week

2. You have two choices: continue or not continue

3a. If you do not continue, you pay nothing (the week of lessons was free).

3b. If you continue, you pay for a course, and the week counts as your first week of lessons you just paid for (the week of lessons was not free).

It's only free if you decide you don't want to continue the lessons.

That is correct, mac, is it not?

It's kind of like a sample magazine subscription where you get 3 months free, but if you decide to subscribe, those 3 months are counted against your year's subscription. Obviously this type of free rubs some people the wrong way.

[MacWalen]

Rikker, all that you wrote is correct.

Now some points that were mentioned here.

1. One free week (if you do not want to continue).

Do you know a better offer on the market?

If there will be one, it will be as a result or rather response to our offer. It is fair that if you were happy with the service you pay for it.

Or is it not fair?

If you were not happy you do not pay anything for the lessons taken. Ask other schools if they can be as generous as Walen and all start offering free week trials. I will not be surprised if they follow and actually do it. It would be yet another proof that Walen can move the whole market in favor of customers. Just lately after we reduced the price to 24,960 Baht another prominent advertiser changed their price from 28,500 to 25,000 Baht. Can't argue that Walen saved potential students hundreds of thousands of baht.

Scottish Thailander have you ever come across a better offer from any of Thai schools?

Can you question that is it risk free trial? If you do not like you do not pay anything.

How much risk do you see in this offer if you were to try our school?

2. Buying a Walen book for 390 Baht.

Again Scottish Thailander, i thought this is not hard to understand why we charge for the book but I will explain it so there is not doubt. Scottish Thailander, you perhaps think we make money on the book and that would be the reason for offering free lessons. We do not make money on lessons but we make on the books? Maybe you think we can sell so many books that it will generate significant profit. Is that the thought process? Our rent in Times Square alone is 260,000 Baht a month so selling a few books will not make a difference.

The real reason we sell a book to students who take one week trial is that they use those books during lessons, they like to make notes, also just putting them in their bags and taking them out a few times makes them look second hand so we would not be able to sell them to other customers. We inform students that they will need to buy a book. If someone did not want to buy one what would they do during the lesson? Ask a neighbor to use a book with them? Not really convenient.

Also if someone does not want to buy a book that costs only 390 baht and wants to get one week free lessons, that would tell me that that person is not a genuine trial student. The idea of free lessons is to investigate if the Walen Method of teaching Thai is for you or not and in order to do that you need to make yourself familiar with our book also. Hope this is not too much to ask.

Again, do you know a better offer in town?

Walen School - test if yourself, its free

www.thaiwalen.com

Edited October 23, 2009 by macwalen

[Scottish Thailander]

. . . Our rent in Times Square alone is 260,000 Baht a month so selling a few books will not make a difference. . . .

Walen School - test if yourself, its free

www.thaiwalen.com

MacW,

Ok. A suggestion for you. You say (above) that the cost of a few books does not make any difference. Therefore, if you are so confident that they will like your school and then after the trial sign up for more, give the students the book, and only make them pay for it IF they sign up. That would make it free to try, and, as you say, no problem for you as the costs of the books are insignificant, and YOU are confident that they will sign up anyway because you say it is good. Better still, as an incentive to sign up, do not charge for the book 1, only charge them for book 2 onwards when they sign up to continue further.

Just a suggestion as you set the "insignificant" cost ball in play. It would make you look more sincere.

ST.

Edited October 23, 2009 by Scottish Thailander

[RickBradford]

test if yourself, its free

What does that mean? It's not fully transparent to me.....

[globalwander1]

Rikker, all that you wrote is correct.

Now some points that were mentioned here.

1. One free week (if you do not want to continue).

Do you know a better offer on the market?

If there will be one, it will be as a result or rather response to our offer. It is fair that if you were happy with the service you pay for it.

Or is it not fair?

If you were not happy you do not pay anything for the lessons taken. Ask other schools if they can be as generous as Walen and all start offering free week trials. I will not be surprised if they follow and actually do it. It would be yet another proof that Walen can move the whole market in favor of customers. Just lately after we reduced the price to 24,960 Baht another prominent advertiser changed their price from 28,500 to 25,000 Baht. Can't argue that Walen saved potential students hundreds of thousands of baht.

Scottish Thailander have you ever come across a better offer from any of Thai schools?

Can you question that is it risk free trial? If you do not like you do not pay anything.

How much risk do you see in this offer if you were to try our school?

2. Buying a Walen book for 390 Baht.

Again Scottish Thailander, i thought this is not hard to understand why we charge for the book but I will explain it so there is not doubt. Scottish Thailander, you perhaps think we make money on the book and that would be the reason for offering free lessons. We do not make money on lessons but we make on the books? Maybe you think we can sell so many books that it will generate significant profit. Is that the thought process? Our rent in Times Square alone is 260,000 Baht a month so selling a few books will not make a difference.

The real reason we sell a book to students who take one week trial is that they use those books during lessons, they like to make notes, also just putting them in their bags and taking them out a few times makes them look second hand so we would not be able to sell them to other customers. We inform students that they will need to buy a book. If someone did not want to buy one what would they do during the lesson? Ask a neighbor to use a book with them? Not really convenient.

Also if someone does not want to buy a book that costs only 390 baht and wants to get one week free lessons, that would tell me that that person is not a genuine trial student. The idea of free lessons is to investigate if the Walen Method of teaching Thai is for you or not and in order to do that you need to make yourself familiar with our book also. Hope this is not too much to ask.

Again, do you know a better offer in town?

Walen School - test if yourself, its free

www.thaiwalen.com

I think it is pretty clear.

The cost of the book 390b is relevant also.

Thanks tv

[mangkorn]

Sorry to have fanned this raging brushfire again. The policy is now clear to me (and seems reasonable). Thanks for the clarifications.

[globalwander1]

Sorry to have fanned this raging brushfire again. The policy is now clear to me (and seems reasonable). Thanks for the clarifications.

Your fanning was helpful...

[sanook2me]

test if yourself, its free

What does that mean? It's not fully transparent to me.....

I thought Scottish Thailander was being a true tight Scot but actually macwalen is misleading by saying its free when you have to pay 390 baht....

Initially I agreed with Macwalens post about the little cost but then the rebuttal by Scottish Thailander made more sense.

If something is free you do not pay anything..no admin...no surcharge for books etc....

I don't think anyone really minds the 390baht but advertising free when it is not is a little sneaky and to be honest if i made an effort to go to their office to sign up for a free class then be hit for 390baht it would make me suspicious of what other hidden costs will sneak in once i had signed up for a years class.

This is a good topic for me because in the New Year I am planning on studying at a school as i think this is the next step needed in my learning i have read about Macwalens or Thammasats courses but cannot find much info about Thamasats classes their website looks a little out of date.

[tlcwaterfall]

. . . Our rent in Times Square alone is 260,000 Baht a month so selling a few books will not make a difference. . . .

Walen School - test if yourself, its free

www.thaiwalen.com

MacW,

Ok. A suggestion for you. You say (above) that the cost of a few books does not make any difference. Therefore, if you are so confident that they will like your school and then after the trial sign up for more, give the students the book, and only make them pay for it IF they sign up. That would make it free to try, and, as you say, no problem for you as the costs of the books are insignificant, and YOU are confident that they will sign up anyway because you say it is good. Better still, as an incentive to sign up, do not charge for the book 1, only charge them for book 2 onwards when they sign up to continue further.

Just a suggestion as you set the "insignificant" cost ball in play. It would make you look more sincere.

ST.

I also have no axe to grind with any posters or business in Pattaya.

Having said this and with no disrespect to any posters I would hope that people reading this thread are fully aware that this business as with all businesses is here to provide a service but also make a living! Seems a rather obvious statement I know but the idea of giving away a free book worth 390 baht would mean this business will therefore lose money if student opts not to continue with the course!

That certainly is not good business practice as there may well be people(cheap charlies) who would take advantage of this offer if it were implemented and cause business to lose money.

I do not know what is in this book that costs 390 baht and perhaps the business could tell us what information is in the book and this may make it easier for posters to understand the value or not of said book and whether they feel they are getting good value for their 390 baht!

Maybe people can then make a more informed choice as to spending their hard earned on said book.

Just my 2 cents worth

[smint]

This is a very interesting thread. I would not mind sharing my experiences here as a current student of Walen if you ask me about it, I can tell you more. For now, what I can say is Walen does its visa business quite professionally and swiftly (well as far as I know and as my experience with it goes..) For the positives, they really lived up to their promises in terms of the visa, so I am satisfied with that so far. For the negatives, I have some doubts about it but it is too early to say and I do not want to say specifically unless maybe you want to ask me by PM I'm alright.

Teaching wise for Walen, it might suit certain people, it might not suit others. It is really a good system if you can get used to it and put effort into it, in my humble opinion. Read the threads around and they will describe how the lesson goes. I agree with macwalen that you should get a trial to check it out. But basically I think the key is to have an open mind and good attitude towards learning.. If you want more info just ask..

For the book, to answer you ticwaterfall, it's just all in Thai, which I was OK with as I did not want to have the phonetics like in many phrasebooks as I think I will learn slower that way. But for other people, they might learn faster with phonetics below the Thai words, so it is up to personal preference. Basically the book is very useful during the lesson, for demonstration. Some of the sentences sounds quite weird sometimes but I guess it's okay for the sake of learning, I don't mind it but some find it ridiculous :S I don't know. But don't expect it to be a phrasebook because it really is not as there is very, very few "phrases" or sentences or greetings so to speak. It just teaches normal, daily vocab, but not very conversational. But some of the teachers do take the effort to speak some Thai to you and correct you, even after the lesson. But not all.

And since many people are on the topic of the book, macwalen, I have an idea for you as a student of your school. Why not offer the subsequent books free for current students (or maybe just 1 book) since it costs a hefty 390 baht for a book, and the book is just pure black and white, soft cover binding, 100 plus pages, a plastic at the front&back and it does not come with a CD. (I didn't understand why it cost 390 baht for the first book but I paid up anyway) Doing this might also entice current students to continue staying on in Walen and paying for more lessons if they have used them up.

I was attracted to the Walen school because of what I've heard from friends and also impressed by how macwalen deals with situations (in this forum sometimes) but after paying 29,000 baht for 180 lessons I'm not sure now because of certain reasons. It seems that they have dropped the price to 24,900 baht, and the quality seems to be dropping with the price, because of more students in a classroom(?). There was just an incident today in school but I shall not talk about it.

I just paid up in full before the price reduction. (Well they said I had to pay in full) Not trying to say that we should be given a discount, but it seems to me, macwalen, that you have forgotten about your current students and are only focusing on the new students or your new potential customers in this blazing advertising campaign that I have observed recently in your posts.

I think it would be great to extend your goodwill to current students to show that we are not a forgotten bunch. I'm sure many students on the 180 lessons would be happy if you offer them subsequent books free as we are also part of your customer base, even though we have already paid. After all, the binded book takes very little cost to reproduce and we have already paid much and contributed to the cost of writing the book in our hefty fees as well. I'm impressed with how you have run the school and I'm sure after sales service and customer satisfaction are also part of your business strategies, no? If current students are satisfied with the school, we recommend it to friends, and the good name of your school will spread by word of mouth. If current students (or ex students, like some in the forum) are not satisfied with the school, perhaps no advertising campaign will make up for this in this cyberworld. And I say this on behalf of many students who have signed up for 180 lessons as well, as they definitely also feel a little unjust too, maybe? What do you think?

If I have missed out something or maybe you want to know more about how's my experience going I'll be willing to share, just post here or PM me..

Edited October 29, 2009 by smint

[Tod Daniels]

Contrary to what ANYONE says at ANY school, it is my experience that there are no pioneering revolutionary new break-thru methods in learning the thai language.

To learn this language takes; TIME, dedication, hours of practice outside the class, and then quite a bit MORE TIME. Anyone thinking they are going to attend a thai language school the government required minimum of 4 hours a week and speak anything resembling thai, IMHO is just plain deluding themselves.

I have YET to meet a single person attending ANY school for those few of hours a week who could speak anything close to thai. I have met more students than I can count who could parrot phrases from the text book like 'trained seals', err I mean 'trained parrots'.

What I didn't meet were students who could understand the meaning of what they were parroting when asked to translate what they read into engrish, nor did I meet any who were able to used previous learned vocabulary to construct other sentences. Also for the most part if the teacher went even slightly off script when phrasing the question (if she didn't say EXACTLY what was in the book word for word, even if the meaning was the same) the students were completely lost.

Quite honestly no one needs to attend a thai language school for a week to see if their methodology meshes with the way you learn things. If you can't tell in an hour lesson if a school's method will work for you, most likely IT WON'T.

I believe the school(s) which offer a week's worth of free lessons do so because their books/classes repeat endlessly. The very first time you enter the classroom you might be on page 6, page 66 or page 106. There will be students in that class who have sat thru the book many, many number of times and can parrot it word for word. Some students have english transcription above every word in their book and read it that way. It can and often is discouraging for a beginner to walk into a learning environment with sooo many disparate levels of students in one class.

Depending on what you want from a school; an easy year's visa, to speak, to read, to write or any combination of the above, the different methods used by the various schools in teaching thai will work better or worse for you and your goals.

I urge everyone to try as many free lessons at as many different schools as you have time for. Believe me, one school's method WILL click with your way of learning, of that I am certain.

[Scottish Thailander]

Contrary to what ANYONE says at ANY school, it is my experience that there are no pioneering revolutionary new break-thru methods in learning the thai language.

To learn this language takes; TIME, dedication, hours of practice outside the class, and then quite a bit MORE TIME. Anyone thinking they are going to attend a thai language school the government required minimum of 4 hours a week and speak anything resembling thai, IMHO is just plain deluding themselves.

I have YET to meet a single person attending ANY school for those few of hours a week who could speak anything close to thai. I have met more students than I can count who could parrot phrases from the text book like 'trained seals', err I mean 'trained parrots'.

What I didn't meet were students who could understand the meaning of what they were parroting when asked to translate what they read into engrish, nor did I meet any who were able to used previous learned vocabulary to construct other sentences. Also for the most part if the teacher went even slightly off script when phrasing the question (if she didn't say EXACTLY what was in the book word for word, even if the meaning was the same) the students were completely lost.

Quite honestly no one needs to attend a thai language school for a week to see if their methodology meshes with the way you learn things. If you can't tell in an hour lesson if a school's method will work for you, most likely IT WON'T.

I believe the school(s) which offer a week's worth of free lessons do so because their books/classes repeat endlessly. The very first time you enter the classroom you might be on page 6, page 66 or page 106. There will be students in that class who have sat thru the book many, many number of times and can parrot it word for word. Some students have english transcription above every word in their book and read it that way. It can and often is discouraging for a beginner to walk into a learning environment with sooo many disparate levels of students in one class.

Depending on what you want from a school; an easy year's visa, to speak, to read, to write or any combination of the above, the different methods used by the various schools in teaching thai will work better or worse for you and your goals.

I urge everyone to try as many free lessons at as many different schools as you have time for. Believe me, one school's method WILL click with your way of learning, of that I am certain.

Did I write this? Matches my experience/observations. Agree with every word. Are we in the same classes/schools Tod?

ST