ISI Language School Kyoto

The school is very good. My class was small (six students) so we all a lot of attention from the teachers. School facilities were excellent. There was a teacher for each day of the week, which was good because we experienced different styles, views and accents.

The weak point was that I was placed in a class which was way ahead of my proficiency level, so I didn't understand quite a lot of what was going on and I had the impression that I was disturbing my colleagues. However they never complained and helped me a lot.

While I could have profited more had I been placed in a more appropriate class, it was a good experience.

I passed an excellent time in Kyoto. As always time goes so fast, you still want to stay in Japan to enjoy the country life.

There were around 18 people in each class. The classes were divided into skill levels and you get assigned to one of the classes after you took your initial level exam. Most of the students are college students. There were a lot of tests, daily Kanji tests and a grammar review test twice a week, which needed preparation to get good grades. The classes started from 1pm and ended at 4:10pm which was a bit inconvenient if you wanted to do sightseeing.

The teachers were nice and each class had a different set of 5 teachers. Each day another teacher was teaching the class. The classes were in Japanese for intermediate and up. There were a lot of written exercises, but I would have preferred more spoken exercises.

Facilities were modern and new and opened from 8am to 5pm. The location was near a JR station Enmachi and a variety of bus lines.

The classes were really nice, especially mine. I found the chairs really interesting and innovative, and so did my classmates. The teachers were great, some of them only though. The problem with the school is that the teachers change every single day, this hinders the learning experience in my opinion. As I was in the total beginners class, some teachers understood what it meant, but some did not. Therefore, in some days, we, as a class, did not understand a single thing the teacher was saying, as she did not translate it nor gesture it. The location of the school was nice, and so were the facilities.

The activities provided by the school also need improvement. Though I only got the basic programme, I could only go to a few activities, due to my stay being 3 weeks only. The problem with that was that my friend was able to get the standard course staying 3 weeks, while I was denied to get it due to the duration of my stay. Regardless of that, the activities required us to walk for 15 minutes to the second nearest station, which in the boiing heat and sun was not pleasing at all. As well as the school only took us to the place, they gave us the tickets and everything, but they did not give us the tickets back.

The housing was really good, I was fortunate enough to have a lovely host family. Though I was unfortunate to receive a really bad transfer from Osaka Airport to my host house. The transfer company was suppose to take me directly to my host house, as aforementioned, but the driver left me in the middle of the street at 9 pm. He noticed that I did not speak a word of Japanese, but he still said 'You should call them'. I did not have any idea where I was, it was really dark, I spoke no Japanese, I had no telephone service. I had to find myself a public telephone and get my host mom to try to find me in the middle of the night. Please, ensure that the transfer company does better next time, it was a complete nightmare for me.

The classes were well organised with excellently trained staff in an ideal facility , the staff were more than willing to provide help and I learned a lot from the experience.

Kyoto school is a new campus so basically everything is new. The teachers and cafe staffs are very welcoming and friendly.

I took the general course so there were plenty of activities like culture experience, visiting etc. The activity schedule was passed out before the start so students has an idea what was going on.

For the classes, there were 4 lessons a day. For my case (general course), first 2 lessons, students were place according to level while the last 2 lessons all level students were mix together. Last 2 lessons would be elective chosen - conversation/reading,writing/ JLPT preparation/ cultural class (it can be change monthly according to student preference). Some people don't like it (as what I see). I personally would said I don't learn much in last 2 classes as I don't really get what other high level students trying to said or write. I think it would be better if students can just stay together with the level.

I really enjoyed the concept of involving and connecting the culture to the language classes as well as the use of hand gestures to help knowledge really sink in. I would have personally appreciated some grading and tests to keep students motivated to continue learning even in the summer course. However that aside, the entire experience was fun.