Congratulations to our evening language course winner! April-July 2011

At Cactus we have come to the end of another term of evening courses, and are delighted to have chosen the winner of our feedback questionnaire prize. This is awarded to the person who we feel has given us the most useful and structured feedback, upon completion of their course, and the prize is a refund of their course fees.

In this case our winner, Geri Tuneva, will be taking a continuation course with Cactus, and so rather than receive a refund she has opted to receive a complimentary subsequent course from Cactus.

Geri took a Level 1 10-week evening course in Spanish at our centre in Kings Cross, London, with teacher Aurea Ruiz Marcos. All in all she found her course to be excellent and scored an outstanding 5/5 for each category. We haven’t picked Geri simply because she enjoyed her course, however; Geri gave useful feedback and suggestions that our team has taken on board, especially relating to our course materials and Facebook profile. Thank you Geri and we hope you enjoy your next course!

Language learning resources you find useful: “The podcasts you provided were really useful as it gave us some more to the classes than we could get in the 2 hours we had per lesson. Also, it gave us a chance to practice and think about pronounciation”.

Course: (5/5) ”The course was excellent and I really enjoyed each lesson. The classmates were really fun which lead to a great learning environment.”



Content comments: (5/5) “The content was generally great, there were some lessons that were much harder than others, it would be great to challenge us in each lesson. However overall it was all great and is a good beginners course as it covers basic things you need to get by when speaking with in Spanish”.

Teacher comments: (5/5) “Auri was amazing, really lovely and she made an effort to make us use more than 1 sense in order to learn more quickly – one of the exercises was to have us blindfolded and for us to be guided around an obstacle course. What a great idea, really fun and we definitely learned how to give directions in Spanish!!”

Materials comments: (5/5) “The coursebook was really good, simple and understandable.”

School comments: (5/5) “So far you guys have answered all my emails promptly, even when I didn’t expect it, and this effort on your part really shows. Well done!”

Language Minis comments: (5/5) “These did not follow the course structure exactly, but this was good as we learned some new things from the podcasts we didn’t get a chance to cover in class”.

Value for money comments: (5/5) “For the price I think this is a great course, and the great thing is that the textbook is included in the price. This is a big selling point of yours and you should promote it as much as you can”.

I really enjoyed… “The whole course – Auri was fantastic, my classmates were great and the Kings Cross facilities were generally great too (apart from the toilets which were consistently out of toilet paper and soap). I really liked the structure of how were sitting – in a circle, as it felt like we could all contribute to the class openly”.

I didn’t like… “The fact that the course books were so late, but I understand this was not your fault. The electric blackboard was giving us many problems as it was hard to use (especially if you are not very tall!). Other than that everything was pretty spot on!”

I would have liked… “The listening exercises were really good as it gave us a chance to hear how fast Spanish people speak, making it a bit harder than in class (but more realistic). We could have had a few more listening exercises, as I think this is really useful. In class we speak slowly and we all know the material we have covered – the listening exercises move us out of our comfort zone a bit more”.

Have you made any progress? “Yes. I was a complete beginner before I started, I had never had a Spanish lesson in my life. Now I can talk about myself and my family and friends, give directions, talk about my likes and dislikes, etc. (all in present tense of course!!) 🙂 It feels great to get so far in 10 weeks of classes, and I feel very prepared for my trip to Spain this summer!”

Would you recommend Cactus to others? “I have already been recommending you guys to all my friends, and I know that at least 2 people will be booking their next language course with you.”

Why did you choose this course / Cactus? “You guys have a very professional website which is very reassuring. You are such a big company but you are very responsive and it feels like you are a small company – which is great as you have a big reputation that you are clearly upholding. You should promote the fact that you are in so many countries and have such a great reputation a bit more – as this is one of the most reassuring things for people looking to start a new language.”



Any other comments: “It would be great if you guys had a forum or better yet a Facebook group for each language where people could join and practice the language as well as meet others with the same interests. I would like to meet other students on higher Spanish courses, not just beginners, as this is great for practicing but also for keeping in touch with people you’ve met along the way. We created our own Facebook group for our class where we post things in Spanish that we find and think are useful – this is really good as it engages you with Cactus and with your classmates even outside of class. This would be great for your branding and web presence”.

Cactus runs evening and part-time language courses in 41 locations and 24 languages across the UK. Courses are available at all levels, from beginners to advanced, and start on regular start dates throughout the year.