2019 has been a year of great effort and impressive results for and from Connect English students. Our team has used hard work, creativity, and dedication to accomplish these milestones in 2019. Which ones do you like the most?

For years, students in San Diego have been asking Connect English to open an evening schedule, because the limited evening study options at other schools were boring and unconstructive. Connect English answered the call in April, and opened our Business English MAX (BEM) classes so that motivated students could have a quality program option on their preferred schedule. We took the students on five field trips to San Diego-area businesses to give them hands-on, real-life learning opportunities.

In the summer of 2019 we also added more afternoon schedule options. There is an early-afternoon option starting at 12:10pm, and new a new late-afternoon schedule that begins at 2:00pm. We offer English MAX and TOEFL MAX in the afternoons. And these schedules come with nice discounts!

In the spring of 2019, UC San Diego’s Health Sciences International reached out to Connect English for TOEFL help. Their pharmacy students were finishing all of their courses and doing very well in their program, but were still having trouble getting the extremely high TOEFL scores required to get a pharmacy license in the USA. Connect English created customized training programs for these students, and is helping them cross the finish line. We are extremely proud to partner with the best university in San Diego to help international students reach their academic and career goals.

Community colleges are where students can cheaply and conveniently complete their first two years of a four-year bachelor’s degree in the USA. Lots of students arrive at Connect English with the goal to go to college in the USA, but they don’t yet understand how good community colleges are. This year we helped dozens of our students get into Grossmont, Mesa, MiraCosta, Southwestern, and other community colleges. They are now on their way to getting their degrees from US universities! Check out videos of some of our campus tours.

Connect English always wants the best teachers. The best teachers want to be at Connect English. This is because excellent teaching is the #1 priority at Connect English. This year our team grew as we added some amazing new people to our teaching roster. Shannon, Carson, Kristina, David, Krista, Dana, Derek, and Brandon, all of you teachers have shown Connect English students that they can expect high-quality lessons every day at our school.

In 2019, we expanded our library of free online classes to include our new #ConnectInAMinute video lessons. Each lesson is just one minute long, and it helps students learn about common mistakes in English and ways to avoid them. Fantastic teachers Elsa, Charles, Joey, Victoria, Nick, Renee, Megan, and Brian all created mini-lessons this year. Check them out!

Our goal this year was to reach 100,000 social media followers, so that our free lessons could get all around the world more easily. Well, in September we reached that goal, and now we are well on our way to 200,000 in 2020. In addition to being our way to give free English lessons to the whole world, the Connect English Facebook and Instagram accounts give interested students an authentic window into the student community and the learning environment at our schools.

Speaking of our student community, in 2019 we created an online activities system that makes it easier than ever for our students and friends to sign up for field trips and events around San Diego. Connect English organizes student field trips and activities every week, and we want maximum participation. Want to take a look at our online activities sign-up system? It’s at http://tinyurl.com/y6cyxqbt, or you can just scan this QR code with your phone to go directly to it.

Our advanced students have always enjoyed the Slang, Idioms & Phrasal Verbs (SIP) class, because they love learning real-world terms that native speakers use in conversations. In the spring of 2019, we published our first edition of the SIP reader, full of activities to get students familiar and comfortable with phrasal verbs like “flag down” and “monkey with” that you’ll hear a few times per week. The Connect English SIP reader helps advanced students keep advancing thanks to our program.

The Brazil office of Connect English has worked diligently in 2019 to support aspiring Connect English students. Fabiana and Carol attend education fairs and host events for students who have big plans for international education. Lots of high school and college students in Brazil have dreams to study abroad in their near future. When Fabiana and Carol meet with these students at international education events, they can make their dreams into real plans.

With the growth of our online library of English lessons, we also saw a huge increase in viewers of our lessons. 2019 was by far the most popular year ever for Connect English online training. Our pronunciation classes, vocabulary lessons, grammar explanations, and problem-fix classes got more than 2.5 million views this year. Thank you for counting on Connect English for convenient and effective lessons on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube!

In March of 2019, Connect English had the honor of hosting a Japanese young-women’s soccer team. They spent their mornings improving their English skills in our classes, and then spent afternoons playing soccer against San Diego-area high school soccer teams. They were enthusiastic students in the classrooms, and amazing soccer players on the field. We were proud of their hard work and the results they got in California. In 2020, we will host them again, and are excited to give them another memorable and meaningful experience in San Diego!

And now 2020 is arriving. You can be a Connect English success story in the coming year. Contact Connect English to make a plan for your English-learning experience in beautiful Southern California!