In addition, AACE were offering return flights for approximately A$300.00 above the average market price at that time (although this did include having someone from NOVA meet you at Tokyo airport). This compares to other schools actually paying your airfare for you. BUT, AT AACE ONE HAD TO ACTUALLY SIGN A PERMISSION FORM IF YOU WANTED TO TRAVEL WITH ANOTHER AIRLINE!! This is staggering, and right from the start NOVA's heavy policies were suffocating me!
So NOVA and AACE have stitched you up even before you get on a plane - and I could go on about what happens after to get to Japan! . . . . . .So the moral is - teachers look elsewhere for employment.
" Please mention on your page that students CAN get their money refunded. While the schools and the managers will say otherwise this is true, students may need to threaten legal action but it is possible.
" NOVA's textbook, "American Streamline", was published for Spanish in the US. The content, which emphasizes only grammar necessary for trivial everyday conversation, is extremely easy for Japanese, especially for students, who are very good at grammar.
I went to NOVA as a high school student (one year ago). I experienced levels 7B-6. The lessons were so boring. In a lesson (~2500yen/40minutes), we usually practiced only one turn of phrase and did other nonsense things. Furthermore, I unfortunately had many lessons of GAMES like Sugoroku (a Dice game). The games were filled with a heavy silence, and people sometimes just said a short sentence... They were terrible and a waste of money and time.... I am a NOT a little kid!!!!
VOICE was also terrible. Upper level students were constantly speaking in Japanese English...that it was... It was difficult to acquire clear English pronounciation as strange Japanese English was flowing.
I am now a student at university in the US. I went to the US right after graduation from high school. I've finished my first quarter at university, and now stay in Japan when on vacation. I do not feel that the English I learned at NOVA was usuful in everyday conversation, not to mention academic life in the US. I paid about 500,000yen for NOVA(150points). This amount is similar to a cost to spend one quarter at university earning credit!!
"I was a student of NOVA way back in 1988. In those days, there were only two or three schools in Osaka. What I was not happy about NOVA were:
1) Some of the teachers were non-native speakers of English. I learned English from a German and a French. Both of them had strong accents and their vocabulary was not as versatile as native speakers.
2)Teachers were extremely frustrated because of the terrible working conditions and some teachers were so frustrated as to make me scary of them.
3)The teachers were bound by an extremely irrational contract. The following are some of the conditions stipulated in their contract with NOVA:
*Teachers who quit NOVA must return to their native country immediately.
*If, for example, you are behind the lesson schedule, a fair amount of money (I do not remember the exact amount) was to be deducted form your salary, which was not sufficient enough to live in Japan. Teachers' salaries were based on this deduction method.
4)Some teachers were exhausted because of an excessive work.
5)NOVA says that you can take a lesson whenever you want to. But, in reality, the number of teachers were too small considering the number of students and all the lessons became fully booked just after the reservation was open (at the noon of the day two week prior to the lesson date, they started accepting reservation, but, at noon time, their phones were always busy. You might be able to reach NOVA 20 minutes after noon, but chances were, the lesson was fully booked). Some students thought that they were cheated.
6)You are right. Even in 1988, they were using American Streamline series.
7)Teachers often left the classroom to during the lesson time to give a level check test to potential customers.
8)Free conversation room (sorry I forgot the name) was always occupied by talkative, rude and air-head Japanese so-called Obatarians.
I don't know why they could expand the number of schools despite their inferior service. They seems to be quite successful in this business but I am not sure if they are really earning money considering the massive TV commercials and other advertisements. According to a NOVA teacher, Mr... Saruhashi was a hippie and was traveling abroad. He is said to have started this business with his non-Japanese friends with whom he got acquainted while traveling. I am wondering if a true hippie is so obsessed with money like Mr. Saruhashi.
"I started to learn English at NOVA Hiroshima school about two years ago. At that time, my English was level 7C, because I could not speak English very well. Learning English at NOVA used to be excellent, because my teachers used to be good.
However my English is level 6, and I have taken 130 times lessons since my English has improved to level 6. When I take the lesson of level 6, I always have to use the same textbook as you know. So I have thought that all of NOVA lessons are so boring recently. The NOVA teachers who are working for NOVA Hiroshima school now are so bad. Some of them have no experience, because they have the working holidays VISA.
I always ask NOVA teachers and Japanese staff the problem of my English, because I hope to be able to speak English very well, so I would like to know about English that I never know. This means I want to be improved to level 5. However they never tell me the problem of my English, I can not understand why.
"A Japanese friend of mine went to practice English in NOVA for a while. He had to pay a large sum up front. Eventually he found out that it wasn't worth the time. He said he ended up "dumping a lot of money in the ditch".
"I enjoyed your page about NOVA. I agree with everything you said, that`s probably why I`m now a former NOVA teacher. I worked just over a year to get a new visa and then turned in my resignation. I got a new teaching job where I`m able to prepare my own lessons, talk to students outside of school etc. NOVA is the biggest scam going in Japan. Unfortunately, there is such a demand to learn English in this country that people buy NOVA lessons without realizing how big a joke the system is. When I think back to a year and a half ago when I started teaching , I had no idea how to explain many basic rules of the English language. I know there are a helluva a lot of so-called teachers who are worse than me. I really feel sorry for the Japanese people who spend their hard earned money on NOVA lessons simply because they don`t know any better. I hope you can keep your page up for a long time to inform as many people as possible about the NOVA nonsense.
"I tend to agree. Most people I know who work at various NOVA schools have told me similar stories. Many of my Japanese friends who enrolled there to study (at times for numerous years) have said they haven't learned or retained much.
I know many male teachers that consider NOVA a "meat market".
"Unfortunately,my daughter began to go to NOVA.. First, we do not live in the Tokyo area, but in Shikoku. Second, greedily enough, NOVA made her pay registration fee and another kind of fee totalling more than 13,000 yen and never wanted to give it back. Third, she neither minds so much the degree of teachers,nor expensive school fee. She were in a hurry to study together with teachers and fellow students, for she had long been studying English all alone. Anyway that was her choice, I cannot invade into her affairs, I cannot accept though.
I have another question to ask you. My family including her lived in the Philippines before. But we have not talked about it to anybody in Shikoku. Because, you know, we are something like gaijin here, we will be faced with something like racial discrimination especially in such an exclusive district as Shikoku. That's why we kept it secret. NOVA, however, knows about it. Does NOVA investigate all the students' personal history like spy or detective? Why is it necessary for NOVA to do it?
"I must say my English skill in conversation haven't improved at all since I started there.....
.....most teachers there just do the same lesson with the textbook called streamline. What I usually learn there is just to remember the sentences and repeat them after teachers. It is always the same in each lesson.
I have been being just continued such lessons by teachers, so I am already tired of learning there.
Since I was 7A or so, I have found that most teachers prefer talking with a student who has the best English skill in a class. For example, if I am seemed the lowest level of other students in a class, teacher rarely talk to me.
"From what I understand from talking to students who have studied there, they have some ridiculous system by which a student enrolling there has to plunk down 400,000 yen for 200 tickets (1 tik per lesson). If you break it down, I guess each individual lesson is relatively cheap. But you have to admit, that's a LOT of money to pay in advance. And if a student wants to quit the school before he's used up all his tickets, too bad, he ain't getting his money back.
"Actually, unless the student has a *lot* of free time, it ends up being more expensive at Nova. The time frame allowed to use up each package of tickets is much too short.
" (I had really great teachers when i started to study at NOVA .) But now.... there are really bad teachers.
And NOVA staffs are awfule. when i need their advice about my English they don't really help me.. But when my lesson tickets were only few left. they suddunliy became really friendliy.. and they saied to me. You need to take more lesson to be higher levels. if you don't buy new tickets now. your file won't take to teachers meeting for being new levels....
but when i was low level the Vice was awfule for me..
if there were someone who were High Level .. they talked all the
times
witought thinking low levels students
And teacher too. they just want to talk with High levels student in
Voice
room.....
" I am not defending NOVA's business practices because they suck
" I don't think people [In Britain] would put up with going to a language school like Nova ... which exist only to make money and have very little interest in whether or not the students actually learn anything.