Alumni Student Messages 

Hello everybody! I am Daniela Coss from Saltillo, Mexico. I am very glad to talk about some experiences from Canada with you.

Before I was there I just couldn't imagine how gentle are the people there. I was in Victoria, British Columbia for 3 months, living in a home stay where I feel like in my home and I love my Canadian parents.

I know it is just a little time in your whole life, but it changed me. I am very happy because I was there; I spent time with people from all over the world, now I can say I have friends from Korea, Japan, South Arabia, Brazil, Taiwan and many other countries.

I was one of the youngest girls in KGIC. I was just 17 years old. There was where I found the best people, my friends, the ones who I miss a lot, and my teachers who care about me, who helped me when I needed. Thanks for all and I hope I'll have the opportunity to visit you again.

  Most students who have studied at KGIC's Vancouver campus the last few years know Jay Ho. Jay has long been a popular teacher at the school and is well known for his straight talk, as well as the efforts and time he makes for students outside of the classroom. He often helps students with getting a cell phone, opening a bank account, finding a place to live and preparing to find a job in Canada.

  Before Jay started teaching at KGIC in 2008 he taught for close to eight years in Japan. When Jay first started at KGIC he felt that he owed a debt to students.  According to Jay, when he was overseas a lot of people helped him to make his transition smooth. He understood the difficulties of dealing not only with a different language, but often a different way of doing things and wanted to pay back all the help and support he received in Japan. Since then Jay claims that he finds helping students to be even more rewarding since he can show them how English is applicable to their daily lives. In his words, "it makes me feel good to see them use what I've taught."

  Aside from the regular curriculum at KGIC, this month Jay has started teaching one of the several new electives Speak Like a Pro and a special Test-Prep course. The Test-Prep course reviews the TOFELiBT and IELTS tests, but the focus is for any standardized language testing. Students study and practice the areas of reading, writing, listening and speaking.

  Speak Like a Pro is a course limited to high level students. Often these students become frustrated with their language learning as they go through the natural plateaus of language acquisition. Speak Like a Pro works to improve their fluency and accuracy through intense error correction and feedback.

  Jay works hard with students to help them develop strategies they can use for speaking freely. He finds that students will freeze up when faced with an unfamiliar topic and will focus more on understanding every detail of the topic rather than talking through and exploring the topic. Jay's ability to talk plainly to students makes him ideal for these new programs.

  With over ten years of teaching under his belt Jay still shows a strong passion and love of teaching. Jay told us that teaching English is a job he loves as it gives him a chance "to meet a lot of different people from around the world, from different backgrounds and different social circles that [he] wouldn't normally be able to meet."