Posted: Wed May 15, 2013 11:04 am    Post subject:
I’m considering refusing the offer of the CELTA place from this particular institution. I wasn’t impressed with the pretentious attitude of the two tutors I met, not to mention poor e-mail responses and grammar typos on the letters they sent out – these were feelings shared by all the applicants after my interview.  There’s another course local to me starting in September, which gives me more time to study grammar, so I’m hoping to get on that instead. I’ve spent 3 years at uni looking forward to getting on the CELTA and I never thought I would refuse a place. But instincts tell me it won’t be what I was hoping for this July.

This post from Dave’s ESL Cafe comes from a user by the name of ‘Sun Shan’, and it offers an interesting insight into the low and falling standards at TBI, particularly inside the CELTA Course.We will discuss Sun Shan’s comments again tomorrow as they help to throw light on TBI recruitment as well, but today let’s focus on the serious dissatisfaction he (she?) and other course applicants felt about the quality of the TBI CELTA intake procedures.

Sun Shan’s first complaint is that TBI behaved in a very pretentious way. This comes as no surprise whatsoever to us. We have long mocked the airs they put on calling themselves “premium” when they haven’t bought new computers at their flagship school for many years! TBI has long had an unjustifiably high opinion of itself which is just baffling to outsiders. What right does this tinpot language school have to act so high and mighty? I think that the explanation is the large number of narcissists who have been in Senior Management roles. This sense of being better than others and talking down to people is part of the narcissistic mindset which was long exemplified by disgraced former Director, Ibu Mariam.

The second embarrassment here is that TBI has sent out a letter riddled with typos. This also comes as no surprise. As we have documented on this blog, all expat management besides Luke and his stooge Scott Martin have been removed, and all the school managers are Indonesian. Since the other expats have been forced out by Luke, more and more grammatically correct material has been appearing on their website. Of course Jodi Shiek (the CELTA trainer) should have checked the letter, but as we have said time and again, they specialize in making excuses for getting things wrong. She would have been much too busy and important to check for typos on a single letter.

Finally, we note that the CELTA course applicants all had misgivings about the quality of the emails sent to them. These dissatisfied CELTA course people can add themselves to the long list of people who have seen that TBI is actually a second-rate school with low standards (despite their pretensions). But they are also deaf to criticism. When we started this blog, they forced their staff and teachers to sign secrecy agreements to try and stop the leaks. They don’t fix problems; they try and muzzle them. People who expect proper responses to complaints are bound for disappointment.