Welcome to April at GEOS Calgary! As Spring warms up our beautiful city, there is more and more to do! Come and join us!

If you would like to stay in touch with GEOS Calgary, please join our Facebook group! Feel free to also upload pictures and share your experience with your friends and even former students. You can get information on our activities at any time. You can also have a look at our students’ testimonials on our website.

	Kevin Ellwood School Manager		Kaori Takase Marketing Assistant / Student Advisor
	Perry Vitalis Head Teacher		Janet Mah Accommodations Coordinator
	Imelda Nicholas Registrar

This month, we welcomed our new staff Imelda Nicolas!

She is the new Registrar at GEOS Calgary. She immigrated to Canada from the Philippines three years ago. Imelda taught at the Faculty of Engineering for 11 years at a university in the Philippines. While teaching, she also worked as a Registrar for four years in the same faculty.

 

She enjoys meeting new people from different countries to learn about their culture.

 

Her experiences as a teacher and a Registrar will make her an effective addition to the GEOS Calgary team, and will enable her to provide a high quality of student care at GEOS Calgary.

 

“Hello! My name is Imelda De Guzman Nicolas, the new registrar at GEOS Calgary. I was born and raised in the Philippines and immigrated to Canada in late 2007. I finished a Master’s Degree in Agricultural Engineering and taught for 11 years in the Philippines. I grew up, studied and worked in the same university where I spent 33 years of my life.

 

Five years ago, I had the chance to visit the beautiful country of Japan when I was accepted on a 3-month training course. I met participants from seven different continents of the world and lived with them under the same roof in a training centre. My visit to Japan made me come out of my shell and I realized that there is so much to see around the world. A year after that, I traveled halfway around the globe to live in Canada.

 

Now that I am working at GEOS, I have more opportunities to meet people from different nations. I can learn from their culture, I get to try their food whenever we have potluck parties and share our experiences as newcomers to Canada."

On February 8th, GEOS Calgary held an Open House to mark the return to our regular location after two months due to water damage. Our newly renovated facilities boast new carpet and paint. As well, we have a new TOEFL computer lab. Visitors of the Open House were given tours by our friendly students. As well, snack and refreshments were enjoyed by all. Visitors ranged from students interested in studying with us to our excellent homestay families. We also had visitors from the community involved in supporting new immigrants to Canada.

May is the when many places that closed for winter are now open. Some popular places that open include Calaway Theme Park, go-kart tracks, and Calgary Olympic Park mountain bike paths. Near the end of May we celebrate Victoria Day which is the last Monday of the month. Many families decide to go camping or hiking to celebrate the new season. Other people may wish to go to Heritage Park where they can drink tea and learn about Calgary and Canada’s history. On the last Sunday of May, Calgary has the lilac festival where people have an opportunity to shop at over 500 craft, food and entertainment vendors along the 13 blocks of the festival. This is a great outdoor festival where people can see all that Calgary has to offer and experience while living in Calgary.

Currently we have 19 Nationalities represented in the school among our 109 students. We extend a warm welcome to all the students studying English with us!
Korean: 26.61%
Saudi Arabian: 16.51%
Japanese: 11.01%
Colombian: 8.26%
Thai & Mexican: 7.34%
Chinese: 5.50% each
Germany, Hungarian, and Indian: 2.75%
Others: 9.91%

Our first impression of this school was good, the induction process and the test to determine the level was impressive, in this moment, we knew that this is a serious and professional place. The teachers always are motivating us and given whole support that we needed in order to get a good progress in short time. The classmates are interesting people, we had learned a lot about of other countries and cultures at same time we improve our English. Our English level when we came to GEOS was irregular, we could read well but the other abilities had serious problems. Today, our English level had improved a lot, now we can speak with the people and write much better. People don’t have doubt, come to GEOS Calgary is a great place and all people work here are a good people. They always are worried about you learning and you staying here in Calgary. Without any doubt we recommend you GEOS Calgary to learn English and have a good experience in your life.

Pamela Soto & Marco Serón
Chile

Our TOEFL course starts every Monday!

The morning class consists of Speaking and Writing. Students work on speaking and essay writing skills. The class atmosphere and teaching methodology encourages self and peer correction, which helps students to focus on responsibility for their own learning, and faster improvement.

The afternoon class focuses on Reading and Listening. Students do practice tests in the computer lab. They also discuss their answers, the various reading and listening topics, to encourage students to think, which will help prepare them for the test.

From the Teacher: "Do you need a good TOEFL score? Do you want to improve your English skills quickly? Do you like a challenge? Then the TOEFL iBT Prep course is for you! The morning class focuses on speaking and writing. For the speaking, we record the students' speeches on video, play them back, analyze them, and score them. In the writing part, we practice writing essays within the time limit. The pressure is quite high, so it's a great way to prepare for the TOEFL exam. In the afternoon, we improve our reading and listening skills in an active way: we summarize the reading and listening passages in the form of a speech, so we are always developing our communication skills. This not only prepares us for the TOEFL exam, but it also helps us to communicate better in the real world."

If you are interested in any of our courses, feel free to contact us at info@geoscalgary.com.

Welcome home GEOS Calgary!

This month we had an open house to show our newly renovated facilities! This also gave our students many chances to show off their English skills! Students gave tours to the many visitors. During the tours, other students from our ESL and TOEFL programs gave presentations to visitors. As well, the visitors could try free model lessons in Listening & Pronunciation, TOEFL, Working Skills, IELTS, Writing, and ESL. We also had information sessions for our very popular Study & Work Program. The day finished off with a draw for the door prizes. It was a great day enjoyed by all involved!