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“Please avoid like the plague.”

written by la.gina on 09/02/2012

I enrolled at the NEC last year and I asked if it were possible to do my French AS and A2 Level to sit both exams at the same time, I was told yes (on the phone I just felt as if they wanted to get my money).
It is awful, the teaching was basically non-existent, you send off your work to a 'tutor' mine was horrifically rude, would correct things with sentences that were overly long and complicated and would mark me down for not using things that I hadn't covered yet. If ever I emailed him asking for help with something he would refer me to a page in the book and not at all answer my question.
Eventually I got a private tutor who found so many mistakes in the NEC work, who would listen to the tutor's feedback with me and also find him rude, condescending and as if he wanted to show off his level of French rather than actually help me.
They "prepare" you for exams with OCR and I can only guess that their modules and advice were not relevant as I ended up getting awful grades for my AS and failing my A2, I went to a uni interview, who seemed to think I had a good level of French (I can only thank my tutor) and the only reason they could think that I did so badly on my A levels was the preparation.
Any time I tried to contact NEC I felt like the people on the phone were rude, and they basically don't care about you once you hand your money over. Also the price you pay doesn't include your books or exams. The exams are very costly. I understand this isn't ideal for everyone but I can only recommend getting a personal tutor that you can actually sit down with and talk to, get the books do the work and enter yourself for the exams privately, you may as well.