Found an ad in the Blick am abend for Flying Teachers. They do a one month intensive course for 400CHF + course material, Mon-Fri, 60 x 45 min lessons in all.

I thought this was a great deal, compared to Migros for example, but I'm well aware of the adage, you get what you pay for, so I was wondering if anyone had any experience with them. How big were the groups? Were the teachers any good? etc etc

Any help would be greatly appreciated...

Best thing to do is call them up and ask to sit in on the class (or one like it) that you would be taking. That way you can see for yourself what the school is like and how the classes are. You will also be able to talk to current students and find out first hand if it is worth your money.

Completely agreed.

Im currently taking classes with the flying teachers school and so far it has been great, mostly due the fact that my teacher is really good. Other people i have meet in the school had not been so lucky and changed to another one, the reason the price is low is because some teacher are students and they are doing their practices in this school... so there is a chance you can get a good teacher or a bad one.

However you will found out that no matter where you take classes the quality always comes to the teacher, you can find bad teachers everywhere. I been hearing also from another schools that the quality was not the best and they ended up in my school and they are happy there.

The best course of action as Ziger said is to go to school and ask for more information and find out if you the like the course, teacher, size group etc..

From my personal experience i will recommend it.

Good luck with your language learning

Thanks for your help folks. I'll go along today, see if they'll let me sit in.

Good luck, I tried to work with them but it didn't get sorted out. They had great intentions, but I definitely got the impression that they had young, inexperienced teachers and in the end I went with a private instructor who is very experienced and has her ducks all in a row as they say! There are lots of options if that one does not work out. I think it does depend on if you get lucky with your assigned teacher.
Cheers

Just an update to this thread.

I've now completed my B1/1 with flying teachers. It was a three week course (normally four but shorter because of Christmas thus 45x45 min lessons and 300 CHF instead of 400 CHF). There were only 6 of us in the group, all of a similar level so we progressed nicely. Because of the room sizes there I get the impression that there would never be normally more than 10 students per class.

The teacher was great, although it was her first teaching experience (excluding her training). Very patient and professional and if I hadn't known I would have guessed she been teaching a while. Perhaps I was lucky to get such a good teacher because it does seem that for most it is their first teaching job, but then shouldn't they be more enthusiastic than those who've been teaching the same thing for years?

The course followed a book - Schritte 5, published by Hueber - cost 30CHF, if you buy your own make sure you get the correct edition.

We're due to get a certificate of completion posted which is not official apparently but who would know/care (ok teaching jobs etc)

All in all from my experience I would recommend them but I guess, like anywhere, a lot depends on which teacher you get.

If anyone wants a discount, let me know - I have a 1 month credit that I wont be using.

I want to take a class in August. I would appreciate a discount...