LCentral Discussion

[Dino mummy]

ICR also offers Pri sch programme. They claimed it is in line with MOE syabullus. LC also said the same thing. Can’t decide which one to go…

[wan2bdad]

Me too … L central or ICR? Any parents gone to both establishment to make a comparison? Will appreciate feedback. TKS!

[coolit]

do they have free trials? I do not know anything about Lcentral but friends whose kids are at ICR like it but they are only there for preprimary classes. It would good to look at the materials, go for a trial, speak to the teacher whose class you child will be joining to get a better idea.

[wan2bdad]

Kovan centre has a drop-in day on 8 Oct, anyone going?

[Dino mummy]

I have spoken to both LC and ICR. The materials & topics covered are similar.

Feedback on ICR usually is from pre school programmes.
I can see ICR is very crowded during weekends and that applied to most ICR centers. but I only see parents dropping pre schoolers…
Kind of difficult to find 1 Englist enrichmt or Tuition Center ard Bukit Panj. Tried Jan & Elly for almost 2 yrs and currently my boy is with Kip M at Bukit Panj Plaza. Am withdrawing him from Kip M after the final exam. Need to register for a new one fast cos the popular centers "sell" out fast…

[kboon2009]

hmm if both ICR and LC cover similar things then why is ICR more popular and more expensive?

[MMM]

I faced this dilemma 3 years ago when choosing between J&E, Lcentral and ICR.


My 2 older kids attended J&E phonics program. It is a very solid phonics program and help build strong foundation however it’s a little long. Eg. from mid nursery - mid K2. That is like 2 years.

At that point, I was thinking of ICR as they have many branches. However after speaking to the J&E lady (I know her for quite sometime as my older kids were there), she told me that alot of the ICR students actually went to their centre for accelerated program just before P1. My impression was that ICR teaches based on sight words rather than phonics decoding? (For parents who are familiar with ICR, pls help to comment if this is true).

But we cannot ignore the fact that different branches may have different results. Parents’ commitment in revision also plays a part.

I recalled looking at Lcentral and found it impressive but due to my familiarity with J&E and Lcentral was a fairly new player at that point, in the end, I decided to put my youngest back in J&E for phonics and LW for creative english.

She recently completed her entire J&E phonics program and right now she is with Lcentral liftoff which she will complete by year end and move to Success 1. She has been with Lcentral for 3 months and frankly, I am unsure if it is due to her readiness (as she is older), coupled with her phonics background or the program is very effective, I see significant improvement in sight word reading after she joined Lcentral and it’s only 3 months. I do hear other similar comments from a pal as well as dd’s classmate who happens to be in Lcentral. Wasn’t able to read and has been attending LW program but after joining Lcentral, the dd was able to read independently.

So with that, if I can turn back the clock, I think I would put her in lcentral for a start, maybe she would have achieved much more.

[vfong1]

My DS is with Lcentral for the liftoff program around 2 over months and so far I have been seeing positive results in his reading fluency and increased vocab knowledge. Also, parents do play a part on the reading homework. He reads better than before now.

[Dino mummy]

The review I found on this website on LC was mainly on their pre schoolers programmes, nothing much on their Success programmes for Primary level. Likewise, i heard +ve feedback on ICR on their pre schooler programmes, not on their Pri level programmes. Therefore, i cant decide which is better tho’ LC is cheaper than ICR.

I dun have good feedback on Jan and Elly. I dun see any improvements in my boy. He attended almost 1.5 yrs of writing with J&E but he did not take away much from this programme. I knew the kids played monopoly in class during lessons. I wonder what does monoploy has to do with writing…Creative?

[MMM]

Dino mummy:

The review I found on this website on LC was mainly on their pre schoolers programmes, nothing much on their Success programmes for Primary level. Likewise, i heard +ve feedback on ICR on their pre schooler programmes, not on their Pri level programmes. Therefore, i cant decide which is better tho' LC is cheaper than ICR.

I dun have good feedback on Jan and Elly. I dun see any improvements in my boy. He attended almost 1.5 yrs of writing with J&E but he did not take away much from this programme. I knew the kids played monopoly in class during lessons. I wonder what does monoploy has to do with writing...Creative?

My eldest did J&E english program for 1 year. She started J&E only in K2 and only did up to intermediate phonics. As she was in P1, she joined their writing program subsequently.... No results so I pulled her out.

Subsequent to that, we put her and my ds in British Council for 2 years! They enjoyed themselves but again no results.... dh was like.... maybe language learning takes time???? The ironic thing is that for CL, it's also a language and we see results though we converse mainly in EL at home.

So enough is enough, both my older kids are now in their success 3 and 4 programme. Lcentral is alot more academic, I sort of like it. They will go through compre, compo, grammar, weekly spellings, prep test, etc... They have been there since beginning of this year but the issue is that despite that they are doing fairly ok in lcentral, this is not translated into school results yet. So frankly.... we are still observing and it's frustrating as at the end of the day, parents want that tranlsated into school results.