As many sensible posters on this board have said before, training school are totally superfluous, they have no useful purpose, never did have, never ever will have. The people who own and manage such places are nothing more than criminals, any "teacher" who knowingly works at a crap school is also guilty.

Im not going to comment about the thread linked, but instead the post above, I dont know the original thread it came from, but I think its a ridiculous and inaccurate statement. Nonsense.

Between 2000 - 2005 I made 15 visits to Spain, and I thought it would be a good idea to make an attempt at learning Spanish. Of course, it would have been pointless and impractical to enrol on a University course, and I didnt see myself as an independent learner through Rossetta Stone, so I joined a 16 week evening course at a training centre. This served a very useful purpose for me, and as well as learning some Spanish, I made some new friends and enjoyed the course thoroughly. No purpose? Rubbish!

I recently finished working at a Chinese training centre (lots of posts in another thread about this!) and I enjoyed, and still enjoy, a good friendship with a student from my training centre. This student has finished her Uni education, does have CET-6 as well as some other Uni qualifications, but found that her English skills were not good enough within her employment, especially when chairing conference call meetings. She works for FoxConn and has lots of conference calls with native speakers. She took 10 weeks off from her job, came to the training college, and had 10 weeks of classes and interaction with foreign teaching staff in a safe and secure English environment both in and out of the classroom. Without a shadow of a doubt, her English, especially listening comprehension, improved and she is back at work with a greater confidence in both her job and language skills.

I spoke with her sunday, and she is back to working 10 hour days, 6 days a week, and has nothing but fond memories of her 'superfluous' training school.

It all about horses for courses. The woman that I refer to had her years at University learning English, in large classes of students and with FT's she saw once a week who delivered lectures and anecdotes as often as they gave the students a platform to use English, but no one is saying Uni study is pointless.

Perhaps some training centres dont deliver what they should, this is the same for many University programs too. One is no worse of better than the other, but may serve a different purpose to different students.