hello,

a friend of mine, russian, is attending an english course and permitted to stay in thailand with an ED visa.

i dont know how long is the visa nor how long is the course. i read could be 1 year, 6 months or so.

what i heard, he went to laos mid february for visa purpose, before mid may he has to extend the visa (i guess the 3 months period), but at chaengwattana, they gave a month, till mid june, stating the english course end mid june, thus the visa extension will be till mid june.

tomorrow he is suppose to have a test at school, and quite soon to bring paper for an extra test at MOE.

here my questions

is there a mandatory test at schools ? also a mandatory test at MOE ?

does the test refer to a step up on the course..basic...intermediate and so on....or it's just an usual practice after a due time frame ?

i wonder if the school is helping him or what.

thanks if u have any advise.

he has been in huahin for 2 years on ED visa, this year he moved to bkk and things seem tufts

1) Each school does as they please, but the only test I ever had was for MOE

2) MOE test are sat at each level, according to the MOE. For most schools, especially in BKK, you have 3 levels completed in 6 months each, so the total course is 18 months. Yep they expect you to be advanced in 18 months by listening to dictation of vocab lists. If you are not fully proficient by then, you are a useless scammer who deserve to be extorted at each extension. I heard in Chiang Mai you still have 3 year courses.

3) Some will make an actual effort at helping you with Thai but teacher qualifications are non-existent. You have some "naturally" good and talented teachers too, but those are rare and don't stay long.

all right.

so basically the test at school is some kind of pre-test to prepare students to the real MOE test ?

i can understand it's a mandatory test each 6 months of course.

is the MOE test set to determine the language knowledge, so....MOE will grant the next level, duration and so on ?

Theoretically yes, MOE test assign you in the level suited for you.

in practice anyone can register as any level, and everyone choses "beginner"