Review: Creative Horizons

My girl's English isn't fantastic. She is confused with grammar, weak with word decoding; speaks Singlish (Colloquial Singaporean English) wonderfully and brings them into her comprehension, composition and oral too.

I don't have solution for her, except being very patient in correcting her. You see, I was brought up in an environment that English is being third or four language to acquaint with, I didn't learn the language formally until i was in third year of primary school. I learnt English bit by bit slowly over the years and I am still learning the language to-date. So in a way, I don't push very hard in her study. I let the big English-speaking environment do the hard work; the school, her friends, the media are the greatest teachers, aren't they? Eventually, she should be mastering the language, right? I am just a supporting role when she's back home.

But. My home environment is kind of rojak (mixed): Mandarin, English and most of the time mixing them up in a sentence to convey a message. Even though I don't speak perfect English, I was taught the right way to speak simple English and so cautiously, I speak to my children in grammatically correct manner... by right. In such a big environment of Singlish, I am slowly localised, been quite confused with the language sometime, while exhaustively reminding her what's right and what's not. Slowly, I get into more serious business, past years' paper for her to practice, holiday programme to revise, hoping to improve her proficiency level. I hate to admit, I am doing little help to her, in her English. To some extend, I speak more Chinese to her instead. Let's go back to our mother tongue, she should be mastering the language eventually, right?

I think I was giving up in helping her.

When I received an invite to review from Creative Horizons, It was timely. Obviously, we need help. Creative Horizons' specialise in Thinking Skills as a way of mastering language. Something quite beyond the language itself, in my opinion. 

"Our unique programmes allow students to work independently. Courses adopt a THINKING SKILLS APPROACH using analysis, synthesis, creativity and evaluation."

At Creative Horizons, they develop and sharpen the students' thinking skills, encourage creativity and independent learning . When I took a look at their website, the teachers have very strong credentials, they were all trained teachers, some are editors/writers... think I could sign up for their courses too.

By the way, I came across this article by Ms Lindy Ong, Director of Creative Horizons, where she said, "Educational pedagogy recognises the need for creativity but also emphasises the critical role of accuracy". I felt very convinced that my daughter will be in a good hand. She will be learning spelling accuracy without stifling creativity.

Prior to enrol into their Thinking English programme, I was also being told that my girl was required to do a basic language diagnostic placement test. And, it is not surprised that she was slight below the passing mark set by the centre, careless mistake and what not. Hence, on top of attending the programme, she was required to go through an extra grammar component for a term, which I topped-up with another hundred bucks. It came with a book, that we are now going through some exercises even though she has completed the extra component/lesson.

At first glance to the outline of the course module that my daughter attending, it is very organised. Creative writing and critical reading are focused in this term's P3 lesson:
# Creative writing- using the thesaurus, expressing feelings, setting, etc.
# Critical reading- literal/inference questions, determining cause and effect, sequencing, etc.

I don't really know all of them, I am relearning, too. For example, logical thinking, common sense and general knowledge are essentially required in composition. This reminds me of little me when I did my composition, I tend to off the grid slightly, my story ending would not be able to connect to the beginning sometime or I wrote a not-true-in-my-real-life paragraph, difficult to put the scenario across realistically and ended my writing abruptly. I'm not sure why, but it did and now no more (I hope). Maybe writing more often helps. Similarly, I see my girl's pieces lack of these components: logic, common sense and general knowledge threading through her writing. At some point, she is very creative in her story, too creative and hard to make sense. With this simple principle in mind, I could constantly remind her and my self too.

There were more than once, "unsatisfactory" appeared in the teacher's review. It dawned on me that, my daughter is weak in English and I was procrastinating in seeking help, in getting her a good grounding in grammar and vocabulary. Good thing is, she isn't discouraged by the comment, every week she looked forward to attend the class. As I understand from her that, the teacher groups the student in 3 teams and have mini-competition among them during lesson to gain some points. It suits playful her, play and learn at the same time. I reckon they have lots of laughter in the class.

Interestingly, one of the learning material used the article "Halting Effect of Alcohol Linked to How the Worm Turns" as one comprehension exercise. My girl asked me a lot of questions on the word "Mutant" (Obviously she is not a fan of the ever-famous mutant turtles), and I got diverted and went far into the nuclear bomb effect will cause mutation, etc. I think I blew her mind away. 

I am not sure how far she has improved herself academically. The semester test has not take place yet. But, she begins to take initiative in revising her works and looks up in dictionary when encounter new word, which is the big step forward in her learning attitude. I am very grateful for the change here. So we will be continuing with Creative Horizons to the next term, which will not be complimentary anymore.

With such fun and structured guidance, I hope she is proficient in the language and ignited the joy of learning.

“The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is to running”. - by Simone Weil

After all, English is the medium of education here in Singapore. English is a global lingua franca.

Creative Horizons Language Centre

Address: 19 Tanglin Road #03-41, Tanglin Shopping Centre, S (247909)
Website: http://creativehorizons.com.sg/
Phone Number: +65 6734 4201 
Email: admin@creativehorizons.com.sg

Opening hours: Wednesday - Friday: 11.30am - 7.30pm; Saturday & Sunday: 9.30am - 6pm.

If you are interested into the courses, you can check out the programme here and timetable here.

Disclaimer: We are offered a term of complimentary lessons in exchange of this review. All opinion are 100% mine.