The Alternative Story (TAS) - Discussion

[phtthp]

if compare TAS with Mexxi3 (Jurong East), which is better ?


http://www.mexxi3.com/courses.htm

[hquek]

How to compare le? Based on what I heard in Mexxi, kids have to write and re write their compos. I personally don’t like becos that kills writing interest in most kids, but others may like it if it trains the kids to hone their writing skills. Not sure if that has changed. TAS kids don’t re write their compos.


Up to individual to decide if it is good. But both centres are located in different parts of Singapore, and I have too heard good stuff about Mexxi. I have bought the compos published by Mexxi, they are amongst the more interesting ones on the shelves.

[coolit]

Quite hard to compare. Each centre has their own methods and both are well known for teaching creative writing. Personally I have no experience with mexxi but I heard they are good. But I prefer tas. Personal preference.

When I compare the writing books by both centres while both are good I feel the teaching methods in the tas books are clearer and the writing seems better? But this is my personal opinion. Mexxi has helped many kids too (heard from friends) so it really depends on which method suits your child.

[The Alternative Story]

Hi parents,


Thank you for highlighting this issue to us. We know that it is difficult to get through our phone lines. However, we would like to clarify something: the administrators do not ignore the calls, rather, they are busy talking to parents on the phone and cannot answer calls that come in while they are talking to that particular parent. After finishing with one parent, another calls and so it is very hard for them to call everyone back and they also handle payments and enquiries from parents who walk in.

However, we do know that it can be very frustrating to try to reach us. We are working on refining our website and incorporating an online booking payment system into it. We are still working on this with external companies. If all goes well, it should be up by the end of the year. However, everything is rather tentative and it is not confirmed that we can do this. But we are working on this as we know that our current system is not able to handle the volume of calls and enquiries that come in.

In the meantime, to help alleviate the problem, this is what we plan to do.

You can contact us through the following:

1) Email: [email protected]

2) Call us at 67588744 or 90615592 at the timings put up on the website

However, as you have mentioned, it does take time to reach us and many times, you cannot reach us at the phone lines.

Hence, we are going to have a third line, and this third line will be manned by a different person from the people handling emails and phone calls so she/he can devote more attention to this. This third line is only for smses. You can contact us via sms but not by calling in as the person manning the line might be involved in certain meetings and cannot take the calls on the spot.

We will try our best to get back to you as soon as possible, we should take about 1 day during the weekdays and 1-2 days during the weekends as we are busier then.

We cannot promise an immediate answer, but if it is an emergency, you can state in your sms that it is an emergency, we will try to get back to you as soon as we can.

Thank you for bearing with us. We appreciate your feedback as it helps us to know in greater detail the problems you face and the concerns you have. Thank you TAS parents for helping to explain our methods and the way we work to non TAS parents.

This is the number to sms: 82862271. You can sms us anytime from 10 am to 10 pm on any day except for the period in which we are closed. This line is operational starting from today.

Thank you for your understanding.

TAS

[phtthp]

anyone had the experience of sending children to both Learning Point (LP) and TAS before ?

http://www.learningpoint.com.sg/

compare LP with TAS (evaluation) -
which one better / stronger in terms of guiding children in Creative Writing ?

[hquek]

TAS no longer gives written assessment. Previously kids going for trial class will get to do a paper (I peeked a bit only, it’s mostly mcq I think); this is no longer practised. The purpose of the paper as I understood was to gauge the kid’s level and see if he may be suitable for that grade/higher/lower. I have never known them to decline a kid because that kid’s english standard not there - but I have heard them suggest to a parent that this child may be more suited to go for a lower level class.


Trial classes still going on, and it’ll be the teacher who will make the assessment going forward.

[Laurenwkids]

Sure, happy to help in anyway:) Also what I feel is TAS main goal is not just to have a lot of A and A stars that is why they do not turn away weak kids. I think their main aim is to help kids improve whether the kids are weak or good.

[The Alternative Story]

Hi parents,


We are having some holiday programmes for the end of the year and the information can be found at this link:
http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=7586&p=857608#p857608

TAS

[CMF]

Hi TAS parents


Would appreciate a referral for TAS @ AMK. Kindly PM your child’s details to me. Thanks.


Update : Received with thanks.

[baobei06]

anyone can advise Learning Point (LP) and TAS , which one is better in their teaching / creative writing? Do you know do LP and TAS conduct show and tell?