Speaking Your Best Policies
Payments for speech evaluation and courses
- Fees for speech evaluations must be paid in advance of the scheduling meeting date and time.
- Courses can be purchased directly on the Speaking Your Best website and must be paid in full prior to the start of the course. Fees are not refundable once a course has begun.
- Speaking Your Best accepts all major credits cards, as well as PayPal and Venmo.
- Payment plans may be discussed with your instructor and will be arranged on a case-by-case basis
Student responsibilities and information
- Students will receive a homework assignment following each class and are responsible for completing them in order to make appropriate progress.
- Students will have access to Speaking Your Best Online (SYB Online), which is our student website containing a wealth of information regarding American English. They can complete their weekly assignments there. Audio files for most skills taught during class can also be sent via dropbox or email attachment, so that the student can practice their newly learned skills while they are away from their computer.
- After a course is completed, students will continue to have access to Speaking Your Best Online for as long as they wish. This is encouraged, so as to maximize improvement in spoken English skills taught during a course.
- If a student needs to cancel a class, he or she should contact the instructor as soon as possible (24 hours ahead of time, if possible) to let the instructor know. This way, the class can be rescheduled to a later day and time.
- "No shows" will count as a class and cannot be made up.
- If a student pauses a course due to work schedule, vacation or other reasons, the course must resume within one year. No refunds will be given once a course has started.
Course requirements
- Each student is required to be fluent in English. Speaking Your Best's program picks up where ESL ends. This means that a student should be able to understand American English and be able to carry on a conversation.
- There are no level requirements for speech clarity. This means that Speaking Your Best will work with any individual, regardless of the level of accent they have. Classes range from working with individuals with mild to very heavy accents.
- Classes will be conducted on video conferencing software, such as Skype, FaceTime, Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Other video conferencing software preferred by a student is also acceptable.