Our classes are absolutely conversational, consisting of short presentations followed by guide conversations focusing on the topics presented. However, there is a lot more to it in order to close the acquisition circle. All the necessary interaction with our exclusive material, comprising written exercises, Internet research for presentations, vocabulary development, listening comprehension boost and above all auditory memory bank development is done in our language laboratory (lab) hour, which normally follows the class hour.

Although this class is supervised by our monitoring team and teachers, and our books bring Study Guides that tell the students what to do in the lab during each week, many students still felt a little lost as to which exercises and activities to do first, and many times worked too long on one type of activity and neglected others, creating an “unbalance” development. In addition to the, as the social media grew and smartphones became commonplace, students were often driven off their assignments by oncoming messages or social media contents during their lab hour. In addition to that, there was also the problem with the online students. After the Covid-19 pandemic, when we were forced to migrate to online platforms temporarily, we launched the permanent online programs, reaching students all over the world, including in Canada and the United States. These students, though, had to do their lab activities basically unsupervised, in spite of the open video chat channels we made available for them during their lab time to clear out doubts and check pronunciation exercises.

Prof. Ray von Schmalz came up with the perfect solution, based on a project he had devised about eight year ago, in 2016, with a detailed plan to create a video series with a step-by-step tutorial with detailed explanations about every exercise for each and every lab class for each one of the seven books. Although the project was perfect, it would require an immense amount of time and work to be implemented.

Upon the return from a research trip to the United States from December 2023 to January 2024, he decided to take the bull by the horns and launch the program and produce almost 300 videos, which meant hundreds of hours of hard work. The program was launched in February 2024, when just about 20% of the videos and support material had been produced.

After only six weeks, the results have surpassed our expectations. Not only are all students following the Study Guide without problems, but also showing significant better results in their overall development. This project has been proved to be an absolute success, adding a remarkable improvement to our already outstanding educational method. And the studio production goes on at full speed. Today, almost 80% of the videos are done and the entire project will be completed by the end of April.

It’s the Canadian English Centre through Prof. Ray von Schmalz’s unique educational talent offering you the best education!