Learn English online, lose money because of 'zero' quality

Pay to learn by yourself?

Responding to Thanh Nien Newspaper reporters, dozens of people studying English online at LeaderTalks English Center and Study Abroad Consulting (LeaderTalks for short) said they were very upset because the center advertised falsely, violated its commitment in teaching the "English Mastery" course, and shirked responsibility even though the tuition fee ranged from 39.95 million VND to 44 million VND, depending on the form of payment, whether in one or multiple installments.

Specifically, according to the memorandum signed with students, LeaderTalks informed that "English Mastery" is an "online English training" program for beginners with 5 modules taught sequentially. Students will be trained via Zoom for 52 weeks (about 1 year), attending 2 classes per week with teachers and studying in groups for 5 sessions with teaching assistants... "But the reality is completely different from the advertisement", Ms. Nguyen Thi Thanh Huong (living in Ho Chi Minh City), representative of the student group, affirmed.

Regardless of entry level, LeaderTalks Center guarantees that students will increase one level in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages ​​(CEFR) upon completion of the course.

Accordingly, although the center introduced a team of teachers with many years of experience and international English teaching certificates, after 6 months of studying, Ms. Huong recognized that only a few "core" people were in charge of all the classes, the rest either quit teaching or were "dismissed" by the center itself. On the other hand, many teachers who actually taught were reported to have stuttering pronunciation, not knowing what to teach, and not publicly disclosing their professional qualifications.

"After completing the first semester, many students were asked by the center to become teaching assistants for the new course under the guise of 'if you want to be good, you have to teach'. Some long-time teaching assistants were arbitrarily appointed as teachers by the center," Ms. Huong added. Meanwhile, Ms. KT (living in Ho Chi Minh City) reported that she had many problems with her larynx health after following the breathing technique to practice English pronunciation as instructed by the center's teachers.

Not only the quality of teachers, many students are also upset with the learning process. First, although the center announced that it would conduct an entrance exam to place students in classes, it still put students in the same class and studied the same curriculum regardless of their level. Next, LeaderTalks said it would provide detailed practice instructions and edit each person, but in reality, students had to study the curriculum by themselves, practice by themselves, then record videos to post on the center's own system, then continue to go into the videos to comment on each other, according to the students.

Students said that each lesson required a lot of time to complete the center's self-study requirements, but the center did not respond to or evaluate their assignments.

"The teachers and teaching assistants did not respond or correct the exercises given to us, making the practice efficiency almost zero. The teaching assistants' only role was to correct mistakes during the lessons, sometimes even correcting mistakes, with a limited time of only a few minutes per person because the class was too crowded and the lesson only lasted an hour and a half. Not to mention it was very time-consuming and impossible to take care of the family if we seriously followed the requirements before, during, and after each lesson set by the center, which was mandatory if we wanted to retake the lesson or get a refund when our learning did not progress, even though they did not actually teach anything," Ms. Huong confided.

Threaten to beat students?

Not only teaching poor quality, the group of students also reflected that the center cut class hours by many different methods.

For example, with Ms. Huong and Ms. KT's course starting in October 2022, LeaderTalks changed a class session into a grammar and vocabulary test with a basic level of difficulty and did not give any feedback to the students after the test. "Those were very meaningless sessions, especially when we were learning to speak and were not taught grammar or vocabulary," the students condemned.

In another case, Ms. MT (living in Ho Chi Minh City) said that the center's leaders praised the class for "reading English very well" and suggested ending the course early to start the next path, even though many students at that time still could not speak fluently. In the last courses, Ms. MT continued to be "disillusioned" because the learning materials were TED program videos or Friends movies available online, which were not only uncreative in the curriculum but also "ineffective in learning".

Content in "proprietary" document accused by students of being publicly available online

Some other negative issues related to LeaderTalks pointed out by the student group are that although the documents are copied from many sources on the internet, they claim that they are copyrighted and must ask permission from the center if they want to use them for other purposes; arbitrarily using student images to promote the course without prior permission; not providing financial invoices when requested by students...

Disappointed with the quality of the course and the unsatisfactory arrangements from the center, the group of students repeatedly emailed LeaderTalks to request changes to the program, but received only empty promises and no satisfactory solutions. After that, the center began to "ignore" the students' requests and the leader continuously avoided meetings and refused to refund the tuition.

"Too indignant, we attended a Zoom session on April 16 with Ms. Dao Thi Hang, the center's owner, to give our opinions. But instead of calmly conversing, a person who was possibly Ms. Hang's husband (the center's director) loudly swore and threatened to hire someone to come to our house to 'beat us up'. That moment left us all 'frozen' because we could not believe that an educational institution could behave like such a thug," Ms. Huong recalled.

Ms. Dao Thi Hang's husband (2nd row, left cover) threatened to beat a student during a Zoom class on April 16.

Three days after being threatened with a beating, Ms. Huong said that LeaderTalks had locked her personal account and that of several other students on the center's private system, and sent an email announcing her suspension from studying on the grounds that she had "disrupted the center." And five days later (April 21), according to Ms. KD (living in Hanoi), a student who had participated in giving feedback, there were strangers blocking the road and threatening her and other students who were also living in Hanoi.

At its peak, on May 18, nearly a month after being threatened, Ms. Huong received a call from the delivery man asking her to come down and take a photo to confirm the receipt of flowers and gifts given by others, and she asked her son to come down and receive them on her behalf. But when her son arrived, the delivery man immediately threw paint and used an iron bar hidden in the gift box to attack her son. Fortunately, Ms. Huong's son successfully escaped and the entire incident was recorded by the apartment's security camera.

The recklessness of the strangers is also the reason why many students at this center wish to remain anonymous. Recently, the Investigation Police Agency of District 12 Police (HCMC) received an urgent request for help from Ms. Huong regarding LeaderTalks organizing classes against its commitment and threatening to beat students. "Currently, we do not expect to get our tuition fees back, but only want to expose the fraudulent tricks and hooliganism of LeaderTalks to warn society," the group of students stated their opinion.

What do LeaderTalks representatives say?

Speaking to Thanh Nien Newspaper reporters, Ms. Dao Thi Hang, Director of LeaderTalks Foreign Language and Consulting Center, said that she had received feedback from students. However, according to Ms. Hang, many professional feedbacks such as the center cutting class hours, allowing unqualified teachers to teach, and no one correcting assignments... were untrue, affecting the center's operations as well as the daily learning process of more than 300 students.

The iron bar that assaulted Ms. Thanh Huong's family was hidden in a gift box of a fake shipper.

Ms. Hang also said that recently, a group of 4 students had actions that she considered "serious violations of the 2019 Cyber ​​Security Law and the center's operating regulations", forcing LeaderTalks to temporarily suspend the students. When asked if the center's staff really threatened to beat the students during the Zoom class as reported, Ms. Hang said that these were just her husband's "hot-tempered" words, "completely unrelated to the issues between the students and the center".

"Regarding whether the group of students were threatened by strangers outside the classroom or not, we do not know and consider this to be one-sided and unverified information from the group of students. We are asking the authorities to verify. If the information is intentionally fabricated to discredit the center, we will file a lawsuit," Ms. Hang stated her opinion.

The Size of LeaderTalks

According to the website, LeaderTalks was founded and owned by Ms. Dao Thi Hang (commonly known as Hang Mam Ruoc) since 2014. Ms. Hang studied for a master's degree in sustainable development at the University of Adelaide (Australia) and then returned to Vietnam to work.

With the advantage of her reputation, Ms. Hang continuously uses her personal image to advertise LeaderTalks' English teaching programs such as the online course "English Mastery" which is said to have more than 2,000 students enrolled, the summer boarding course "Hama Summer", and the children's course "Global Passport". The courses range from 29-50 million VND, but many students have complained that the training is superficial, only focusing on the stage of making graduation products to gain media images.

Recently recorded on the LeaderTalks website, the "English Mastery" course has just had a new update on duration and tuition. Specifically, compared to the old training time of 52 weeks with 2 classroom sessions, 5 group study sessions/week, the new course only lasts for 42 weeks, 3 classroom sessions and 3 self-study sessions at home/week. Tuition also increased by 1 million VND for each payment method.

Source link: https://thanhnien.vn/hoc-tieng-anh-truc-tuyen-mat-tien-oan-vi-chat-luong-nhu-khong-185230603221046971.htm